By Azu Ishiekwene
These are sad times. Who could have believed that after the US and its allies destroyed Iraq in search of “weapons of mass destruction” and found none, history would repeat itself as a farce?
In neighbouring Iran, 35 years after Operation Desert Storm, the U.S. has launched a consequential war, only this time without even the formality of UN resolutions.
How brazen could it possibly get in the Middle East, especially after a fragile ceasefire since October 2025 failed to stop the killing of around 600 Palestinians by Israeli forces, further stalling the region’s return to normalcy.
The devastation in Gaza has devolved into a low-intensity conflict with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians squatting in refugee camps, as Israel expands its acreage in the occupied territories.
Unfinished business
And while Gaza remains unfinished business, the attacks on Iran and simultaneous strikes on Lebanon have triggered a region-wide conflict, with Iran targeting U.S assets in the region. The reduction of civilian lives in this whirlpool of madness to mere collateral damage is a new low. Discerning world leaders must not let this pass without holding the perpetrators to account.
Only the refusal of several traditional allies to join the US-Israeli offensive against Iran gives a little glimmer of hope that the entire world has not been infected by the insanity of President Donald Trump and his accomplice-in-chief, Benjamin Netanyahu.
In hindsight, it would appear that the ceasefire in Gaza was a façade to buy time while Israel opened up new frontiers of bloody adventures across the Middle East, in cahoots with the U.S.
Still racing for a Nobel?
What is the point of the Board of Peace, cobbled together and led by President Trump, if the world is being plunged into another war – a wider, more potentially devastating one – even before the Board has fully taken off?
Trump corralled or co-opted the oil-rich Sheikhs of the Arabian Gulf into his multi-billion-dollar board and tactically isolated Iran, pretending that the Iranian leadership was sleepwalking through negotiations to stop the country from becoming a nuclear power.
While the U.S. president was pointing an accusing finger at Iranian leaders and also condemning the brutal crackdown on protesters in Tehran, four fingers were pointing back at Israel’s unconscionable expansion in the occupied territories, and the deadly crackdown on immigrants across many U.S. states. Yet, when might is right, such blatant hypocrisy is obviously irrelevant.
Trump and Netanyahu have dragged the world into a conflict whose objectives are no more precise than what a “victory” might look like. The man who castigated President Joe Biden for letting the Russia-Ukraine war happen on his watch, and has coveted the Nobel Peace Prize for “ending eight wars” in one year, has targeted seven countries in one year, and is still counting.
What this means for Africa
While Africa is out of earshot of the ongoing bombings and explosions in America’s war on behalf of Israel, the long-term effects of the conflict on the continent are not far-fetched. Like the escalation in food prices due to the Russia-Ukraine war, the vagaries of the ongoing Gulf Crisis will come home to roost, too. History is a witness!
I was a reporter during Operation Desert Storm – the blistering war in which the US, leading a coalition of 42-nation allied forces, ravaged Iraq, a monster the U.S. under Ronald Regan had created as a proxy to contain Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Hungry for war with a formidable military force he had built up from the eight-year tussle with Iran, Iraqi strongman, Saddam Hussein, tested his territorial ambitions by overrunning and annexing oil-rich Kuwait.
Oil-hungry America would have none of it and rallied other countries under a United Nations Resolution 678 to use “all necessary means” against Iraq after the deadline to withdraw from Kuwait expired on January 15, 1991.
A Nigerian story
The war caused a sharp rise in global oil prices due to supply disruptions in the Gulf. This benefited oil-exporting nations like Nigeria while challenging importers across Africa, and causing massive disruptions.
As Africa’s top oil producer at the time, Nigeria saw crude prices rise from around $17 per barrel before the invasion to nearly $40 by late 1990, generating an estimated $12-12.5 billion, which became known as the oil windfall that the government of military president General Ibrahim Babangida could not account for.
Oil-importing African countries faced higher import bills and balance-of-payments strains amid average oil prices of $30 per barrel during the crisis from August 1990 to January 1991. Exporters such as Angola and Algeria benefited from higher prices, as did Nigeria, but paid even higher prices due to global disruptions caused by the war.
Overall, the shock slowed growth in import-dependent economies without long-term structural shifts. We’re back there again, only this time the disruptions might be more serious for a world still recovering from COVID-19 supply chain disruptions and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
Costs beyond oil
Like the previous Gulf Wars, the current one poses severe economic risks to Africa, particularly for oil producers like Nigeria, Angola, Algeria, and Libya. Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, which handles 20 percent of global oil shipping, could spike energy prices worldwide, benefiting producers in the short term with higher revenues but fuelling inflation and import costs on the continent.
Apart from oil, the current shift in focus by the U.S. can negatively impact the war against terror in the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa, especially the recent bilateral cooperation against insurgency in Nigeria. These are some realities of the global economy, where disruptions can create shocks at a distance.
What should worry Africa and the rest of the world, indeed, is how the U.S., which postures as the exemplar of the free world, is its chief purveyor of conflicts. Only in January, Trump kidnapped Venezuelan President Nikolas Maduro and his wife, and appropriated the oil wealth of that country for the U.S.
A new normal
In June 2025, he ordered missile attacks on Iran and boasted afterwards that the country’s alleged nuclear enrichment programme had been obliterated. Afterwards, he turned his gaze towards Greenland, only to have his European and NATO allies beat off his greedy hand with disdain and rebuff.
Then he launched a Board of Peace, part of whose agenda must be to execute the grand plan for Greater Israel, rather than the declared objective of rebuilding Gaza. Anyone who is fooled into believing that the U.S. and Israel collaborated to destroy Gaza only to rebuild it must be incurably naïve.
That Trump undermines the United Nations and is predisposed to committing global outrage in violation of international law is becoming the new normal.
Meanwhile, the bombs are going off in the Gulf, but the dust and shrapnel are travelling across the world, no thanks to the effective collaboration of the war mongers in Washington and Tel Aviv.
Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It.
