By Cheta Nwanze
The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on 28 February 2026 was not an isolated strike. It was the culmination of a process that began years earlier, a process in which diplomacy quietly died, and military action became the only remaining language, a process that will have grave implications for all of us, not least for those of us in Africa, as SBM Intelligence noted this morning. Before the missiles flew over Tehran, before the explosions rocked Beirut, before the world held its breath over the Strait of Hormuz, there were three moments that should have served as warnings. Three moments when the “international community” chose silence over engagement, and in doing so, paved the way for the fire now consuming the Middle East.
The first was the killing of Hassan Nasrallah. When the Hezbollah secretary-general was eliminated in a strike that punctured Beirut’s southern suburbs, the world barely paused. There were statements, of course. Condemnations from some quarters, quiet approvals from others. But no serious attempt to address the underlying architecture that made Nasrallah a regional power broker. No recognition that removing a man does not remove the system he built, and that the system would seek vengeance in its own time. Diplomacy had nothing to say, so the conversation moved to the battlefield.
The second was the attack on the Hamas meeting in Doha. Qatar had hosted these talks under the implicit understanding that dialogue, even with those the West designates as terrorists, was preferable to bloodshed. When the meeting was struck, that understanding evaporated. The message was unmistakable: there is no safe space for negotiation. There is no table where your enemies will not find you. The Qatari mediators, who had spent years building channels between irreconcilable positions, watched their work go up in smoke. And the world, again, said little.
The third, and most significant, was the killing of Khamenei himself. This was not merely the assassination of a leader. It was the assassination of the very idea that Iran could be engaged, contained, or deterred through anything other than overwhelming force. For decades, the Islamic Republic had maintained a paradoxical relationship with the West, one defined by hostility but managed through intermediaries, back channels, and the occasional negotiation. The nuclear deal, however imperfect, was a product of this managed hostility. With Khamenei’s death, even that minimal framework collapses. There is no one left in Tehran who can credibly negotiate with Washington. There is no one in Washington who would try.
What these three incidents share is not merely the use of targeted killing as a tool of statecraft. It is the complete absence of any diplomatic corollary. No peace process followed Nasrallah’s death. No renewed negotiations emerged from the Doha attack. No back channels have been reported reopened after Khamenei, the surviving Iranian leadership has explicitly refused to negotiate, rightly fearing that it could be a trap. Each strike was treated as an end in itself, a tactical victory requiring no strategic follow-through. The result is a region where the only remaining dialogue happens through missiles and drones, where the only language understood is the language of escalation.
For Nigeria, watching from a continent that has endured its own share of diplomatic failures, there are uncomfortable parallels. Our government has mastered the art of looking busy while fundamental problems fester. We announce security partnerships, welcome foreign advisors, and issue press releases. But when villagers in Zamfara warn of approaching bandits, no one listens. When families in Kaduna beg for rescue, no one comes. The same pattern that unfolded in the Middle East, the prioritisation of military response over diplomatic engagement, the belief that killing solves what talking cannot, operates daily in our own security management.
The Kuriga ransom, the St Mary’s payment, the billions delivered by helicopter to men who will use the money to buy more rifles, these are our own version of drone strikes. They address the immediate crisis while ensuring the next one arrives with greater force. They treat symptoms while the disease metastasises.
The lesson of the past three years, from Beirut to Doha to Tehran, is that violence without diplomacy is not strategy. It is addiction. Each strike demands another. Each death requires the next. There is no end state, no peace to be declared, no victory to be claimed. There is only the endless escalation, the permanent emergency, the war without conclusion.
Nigeria stands at a similar precipice. We can continue the cycle of reaction and payment, watching as each ransom funds the next abduction, each military operation provokes the next attack. Or we can begin the hard work of building the diplomatic infrastructure we have so long neglected, the early warning systems that actually warn, the community engagement that actually engages, the political solutions that actually solve.
The Middle East shows us where the current path leads. It is a path of burning cities and broken states, of leaders killed and systems unmade, of entire nations reduced to battlefields. We would be wise not to follow.
Nwanze is a partner at SBM Intelligence
