SA needs to forsake revolutionary affiliations and reset its relations with the Western democracies.
South Africa’s solidarity with a ragbag of international terror organisations and rogue states in the Middle East is not returning the benefits the ANC hoped for.
Instead of this alliance of outlaws being the next big thing in geopolitics, it’s imploding.
Over the past 20 months, the Iranian orchestrated “axis of resistance” – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime in Syria and the Houthi in Yemen – that for decades kept the region ablaze in pursuit of wiping Israel from the face of the earth, has been virtually obliterated.
Now it is Iran’s turn. Over the course of just a week, Israel has reduced Iran’s feared military, terror and repressive apparatus to ruins. The Jewish state has control of Iranian skies, has subverted the banking system and has been so successful at assassinating Iran’s military and nuclear leadership elite that cadre promotion, rather than being coveted, is now a death sentence.
The regime held a single negotiating card. Its most important nuclear enrichment plant, at the mountain redoubt of Fordow, appeared untouchable. That was literally trumped when the US president on Saturday dropped bunker-busting bombs on three Iranian nuclear installations.
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It’s a dangerous escalation. But, then again, Trump has never seen a bandwagon that he doesn’t yearn to take charge of. Following Trump’s decision, the latest Middle East developments will worsen SA’s already fraught diplomatic relationship with the US.
When President Cyril Ramaphosa attended the G7 summit in Canada, the meeting he had announced with Trump did not materialise. Whether this was a calculated snub by Trump or, as the SA delegation insists, simply because of his early departure to deal with the conflict in Iran, remains to be seen.
It is nevertheless curious that not a word was exchanged between the two men, especially given the expectations raised by what Ramaphosa had hailed as a triumphant visit to the White House.
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The G7 summit shows how fringe our Middle East foreign policy has become. In spite of waning support by some member countries for Israel’s actions in Gaza, especially from some EU countries, the summit’s position on the Israel-Iran conflict was remarkably unambiguous.
“Israel,” the G7 statement read, “has the right to defend itself and we reiterate our support for the security of Israel. Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror and it must never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.”
This is at odds with SA’s stance.
It is with Iran itself that SA has developed the warmest relationship. SA facilitated Iran’s entry into Brics. There have been inter-ministerial engagements to strengthen political, economic and cultural cooperation. They worked together on SA’s International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of genocide and there are claims, as yet unproven, that Iran rewarded the ANC by bailing it out with a few hundred million rands when the party almost went bankrupt last year.
All this put SA on a conflict course with the US.
SA’s response to Trump’s order cutting off aid has been to fixate on concerns regarding land seizures and race-based discrimination. It has ignored US displeasure over “egregious actions” in the international arena.
As the order puts it, “South Africa has taken aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide.”
The ANC has been unwilling to address these issues. Serendipitously for SA’s long-term interests, the linchpin around which the “axis of resistance” turned is on course to being neutralised by Israel.
This will reshape the Middle East and afford SA an opportunity the ANC must seize – forsake revolutionary affiliations and reset relations with the Western democracies.
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