Iran: African reactions

  

Africa calls for restraint as bombing in and around Iran intensify, urging their citizens to stay safe 

Following the attack launched by the United States and Israel on Iran on Saturday morning, and the risk of regional conflagration, the African continent is making its voice heard. Iran's allies denounced a violation of international law, like South Africa and Chad. But mostly the African continental and regional called for restraint and their citizens in the region to stay safe.  

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Melissa Chemam

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South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa was the first African leader to react. He said on Saturday that the US and Israeli strikes on Iran violated international law.

"Anticipatory self-defence is not permitted under international law and self-defence cannot be based on assumption or anticipation," he said in a statement, calling for "maximum restraint".

South Africa was until recently the only African member of the BRICS group, which includes Iran, Brazil, Russia, India and China, but recently accepted a few new members from the Arab world and beyond (Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates).

Despite its ties with Tehran, the South African government reacted in a measured manner, calling on all parties to exercise restraint.

But in the South African political landscape, other parties were more vocal. Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) reacted very differently, with the radical left-wing group insisting that Iran "has the right to defend itself" and denouncing a Washington-Tel Aviv alliance "resolutely determined to defend Israeli interests throughout the region, whatever the human cost."

Calls for restraint

The African Union (AU) said in a statement that the military strikes carried out by the United States in coordination with Israeli forces against targets inside the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Iran's subsequent response, "represent a perilous and deeply troubling escalation—one that marks a serious intensification of hostilities in the Middle East and threatens to engulf the entire region in an uncontrollable cycle of violence, suffering, and pain."

It also called for restraint, urgent de-escalation, and sustained dialogue. "All parties must act fully in accordance with international law and the United Nations Charter to safeguard international peace and security."

The Chair also condemned on Saturday evening the Iranian missile and drone attacks against its neighbours Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) has also expressed its deep concern regarding the escalating hostilities in the Gulf. Ecowas emphasised that "any prolonged disruption in the Persian Gulf would threaten global oil and gas flows," according to Afrik.com.

"A surge in energy prices would have an immediate impact on West African economies, already weakened by inflation and dependence on refined product imports," the organisation added.

It also underlined risks to food security, as many African states rely on imports of cereals and agricultural inputs transiting through sensitive trade routes.  

Most African media, like Seneplus in Senegal, TSA in Algeria and Ledjely in Guinea note that populations in Africa sympathise with Iran and its strategy to counteract the USA's dominance, but fear retaliation.  

Different allyships

Elsewhere on the African continent, reactions have been pouring in since Saturday. Several African countries are calling for de-escalation and respect for international law, but others are taking a clearer stance.

Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Déby began by expressing "fraternal compassion to Ayatollah Khamenei, as well as to the entire brotherly people of Iran in the face of this adversity that has struck a sister nation." N'Djamena clarified a few moments later that it also condemns with equal firmness the Iranian attacks against brotherly countries.

The Kingdom of Morocco, closer to Israel since the signature of the Abraham Accords, denounced in a statement the "abhorrent Iranian missile attacks that violated the integrity and security of brotherly Arab states."

Other nations, such as Senegal, Algeria, Kenya, and Ghana, have been calling for an immediate ceasefire since Saturday, while urging their citizens to exercise caution.

Africans in the Arab peninsula

In the South West Asia region itself, African inhabitants have been living in fear these past few days, notably in Dubai, as Iranian missiles have already caused damage, including at the international airport.

"This morning, I was woken up by a missile that exploded over my neighborhood," Ibrahima, a young Senegalese man who lives in Dubai, told RFI. "We're trying to keep our families informed, and they're keeping us updated through the news channels. 

He added the situation is quite stressful. "We get alert messages on all our phones when the missiles are approaching. We see and hear the intercepted missiles coming from Iran. It’s true that it’s quite dramatic and stressful, all day long.”

A Cameroonian woman contacted by RFI said: “The instruction given so far is to stay home, not to go out onto balconies or look out of windows, because the missile debris that has been falling since last night is serious."

A five-star hotel was hit overnight and large shopping centers are closed because of the debris.

The authorities in Cameroon, through their diplomatic missions, called on the entire Cameroonian diaspora residing in countries of the region to strictly adhere to the preventive security measures issued by their host governments.

Ghanaian authorities also called their citizens residing in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to stay home as much as possible and "comply with directives issued by local authorities."

"illegal act of aggression"

 

Trump and Netanyahu’s attack on Iran is an illegal act of aggression

 - by Kenneth Roth

Their actions are no different from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo

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We shouldn’t beat around the bush: Donald Trump’s and Benjamin Netanyahu’s military attack on Iran is an illegal act of aggression. There is no lawful justification for it. It is no different from Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The United Nations charter allows the use of military force in only two circumstances – with authorization of the UN security council, or as self-defense from an actual or imminent armed attack. Neither was present.

In his video justification for the war, Trump spoke of Iran’s “imminent threat”, but there is no evidence to support it. He recited a litany of past attacks that he attributed to Iran, but none of them is ongoing or imminent. At best Trump sought to prevent future harm – Netanyahu used the term “pre-emptive” – but prevention is no justification for war because it would open Pandora’s box to countless armed conflicts.

To prevent future threats, governments must resort to diplomacy combined with non-military forms of pressure. Iran is already subject to comprehensive sanctions, but Trump and Netanyahu cut diplomacy short because they didn’t seem to want to accept yes for an answer. With each leader facing political challenges at home as elections approach, they appeared all too eager to Bomb Iran!

Remarkably, it isn’t even clear what the focus was during the now-suspended negotiations. Trump, never one for precision, said that Iran must agree never to have a nuclear weapon, but it has repeatedly said exactly that. To underscore the point, it seemed open to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities and to dilute what remains (after the June 2025 US bombing) of its highly enriched uranium.

Rather, the sticking point seemed to be whether Iran could enrich uranium. At various stages the US government had demanded that Iran forsake any enrichment. The Iranian negotiators resisted, noting every government’s right to enrich under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. There were some indications that Washington had backed away from an absolute version of that demand (although Trump repeated it on Friday), and that Tehran was offering face-saving compromises such as a limit on enrichment to the modest levels needed for medical or scientific isotopes but far from what is needed for weapons.

On some occasions, the US government had also sought limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles and its support for regional armed groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. But recent accounts of the negotiations suggested that these demands may no longer have been at the heart of the discussions.

We will never know how these negotiations might have played out. Trump seems to have decided that Iran wasn’t serious about reaching a deal so he launched the attack. Netanyahu never wanted a deal; as is his wont, he preferred a military solution. An avoidable war – a war of choice, not necessity – thus was initiated in blatant violation of international law.

With the bombing having killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump has urged the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the government that has long suppressed them. “The hour of freedom” is at hand, he announced.

There is no doubt that the Iranian government is despicable. It met January protests by mowing down protesters – at least 7,000 dead, if not many more. But the goal of regime change is no defense to the crime of aggression.

Nor is there a case for humanitarian intervention. Given that killing is inherent in war – not to mention the risk to civilians, such as the school that was hit on the first day of the bombing, killing dozens, mostly children – humanitarian intervention can be justified only to stop ongoing or imminent mass slaughter. There was nothing of the sort. Humanitarian intervention cannot be invoked merely to retaliate for past repression, which is the most that can be said for the Trump-Netanyahu attack.

For these reasons, the international response to the US-Israeli attack has been cool at best. Britain refused to allow US bombers to attack Iran from its military base at Diego Garcia. Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement that was critical of Iran but notably did not endorse the invasion.

One can understand their disquiet. The greatest threat to Europe today comes from Russia, but the attack on Iran hands Putin the argument of hypocrisy to counter challenges to his invasion of Ukraine. It is harder to defend international law when the world’s most powerful government openly flouts it.

As with any military attack, the consequences can be difficult to predict. The Iranian leader was 86 years old, so the regime undoubtedly was preparing in any event to name a successor. And regime change is difficult to accomplish from the air, as Trump discovered in Venezuela where he removed Nicolás Maduro from the scene but otherwise kept the Maduro regime largely intact.

Khamenei was a hard-liner who brooked no dissent and clung to Iran’s declared right to enrich uranium despite the enormous hardship imposed on the Iranian people by the resulting sanctions. Even if the Islamic Republic does not topple, it is possible that his successor will be more accommodating – willing to allow somewhat more freedom, as the Venezuela regime minus Maduro has been. But Venezuela remains far from a democracy, and there is little reason to believe that a modified Iranian regime would be much better.

Will the Iranian people choose this moment to rise up again as part of their longstanding quest for a rights-respecting government? Will the regime respond with its customary and increasingly lethal brutality? And if so, will the ending be any different from past disappointments? It is too early to make predictions.

It would be wonderful if the Iranian people could taste democracy, if Iranian women could enjoy the spirit of their 2022 “Women, Life, Freedom” protests, free of the oppressive, misogynistic morality police. But there is also the cautionary lesson learned by the people of Iraq and Libya, where western military intervention yielded chaos that was arguably more deadly than dictatorial rule.

The global ramifications are also troubling. This latest example of Trump’s might-makes-right world view can only encourage other acts of aggression, whether China’s seizure of Taiwan, Ethiopia’s and Eritrea’s threats against Tigray, or the latest fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan. As Trump attacks Iran despite a lack of nuclear weapons while sparing North Korea, which has 60 or more nuclear warheads, it won’t be difficult for governments to figure out what they need to defend themselves from the bully in the White House.

It is an old military maxim that no war plan survives first contact with the enemy. But that is true off the battlefield as well. The world of diplomacy can be frustratingly slow and inadequate. Yet there are good reasons to respect sovereignty and to seek peaceful resolution of disputes. A world where matters of life and death – the fate of entire countries – rest on the self-serving whims of the likes of Trump and Netanyahu is one filled with peril. I would love to see an end to the ruthless Islamic Republic, but not at the expense of a world where our destiny is dictated by the men with the biggest guns.

• *Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments

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Words from Arang Keshavarzian, a professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies at New York University, to Equator

 

A new war in the Middle East On Saturday morning (28 Feb. 2026), Israel and the US launched air strikes on Iran as Donald Trump – wearing a baseball cap emblazoned “USA” – announced “major combat operations”. Iran retaliated with strikes on US assets in the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.  The violent suppression of recent protests in Iran has become a part of the rhetorical justification for this attack – but the question of American and Israeli support for the uprising has been a controversial one, as Arang Keshavarzian, a professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies at New York University, told Equator.  “It's evident that an Israel that continues to be unencumbered by international law and unconditionally backed by the United States seeks to stoke tensions and create a chaotic, falling-apart Iran,” Keshavarzian said. “We should be able to hold this reality alongside the fact that there is a grassroots political movement that is at the core of this uprising. Both things are true.” Through weeks of protest, the Iranian government cut off the internet, plunging its population into silence. When service was restored patchily, a young man in Tehran shared, on a frail WhatsApp connection, his sense of the situation.  “What unsettles many inside Iran is not only the regime or the repression, but the spectacle unfolding beyond the borders,” he wrote:  ­

­ The behaviour of the opposition abroad, and of the Iranian diaspora more broadly, has taken on an almost manic quality. There’s a sense of disconnection so severe that it borders on hallucination: maximalist rhetoric untethered from lived reality, feverish certainty detached from consequence. From inside the country, this external discourse often feels less like solidarity and more like noise. Or worse, like projection. A politics of fantasy, conducted at a safe distance, treating those still here as symbols rather than living breathing bodies. For many of us, this is perhaps the most alienating realisation of all: that the loudest voices claiming to speak for Iran often seem unable – or unwilling – to listen to it.  ­

­ The Iranian novelist Salar Abdoh, who was in Tehran and Bushehr during the most violent days of the protests, wrote a powerful piece about his experience for Equator.  No one knew how many people had been killed, how vast the bloodbath was. His friends seemed weary and spent. One wished out aloud that Donald Trump would “hurry up already and get here. Or at least send in the Israelis to finish the job.” “What was there to say to that?” Abdoh wondered. “While her stance was not pervasive, neither was it uncommon. I had heard variations of this wish for deliverance from a number of people, sometimes out of sheer frustration and sometimes with a blind single-mindedness and total disregard for what would happen on the day after.”

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