Does long-term peace have a chance in the Israeli-Iranian conflict?

AFTER nearly two weeks of exchanging airstrikes, Israel and Iran have agreed to the ceasefire that was brokered by Qatar and the US.

- ZAKHELE COLLISION NDLOVU

The US president, Donald Trump, confirmed early Tuesday that the ceasefire was now “in effect”, even though confusion remains over the precise details.

The war started when Israel launched airstrikes on Iran on June 13 in what the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was an operation geared towards preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons

The conflict between Israel and the post-1979 regime in Iran is as inevitable as day after night.

The decades-old tit-for-tat between the two countries has been getting out of control in recent months. Before the ceasefire, the war was threatening the stability of the entire Middle East, and its ripple effects were already felt across the globe.

Iran is the third-largest producer of oil within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec). What this means is that its involvement in the war against Israel and the US is highly likely to affect the price of oil.

The direct involvement of the US saw Iran target the US military base in Qatar on Monday in retaliation. Iran cannot rely on states such as Syria in the region to support it other than what is left of its proxies. However, Hezbollah in Lebanon has been severely weakened, and the Houthis in Yemen appear to have been neutralised.

With Russia busy fighting Ukraine and the Assad family no longer in control of Syria, Iran cannot count on countries to defend it from Israeli and American aggression.

The American political scientist, Samuel P Huntington, predicted in 1996 that the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world would no longer be ideologically based, but cultural, or what he termed the “Clash of Civilisations”. The conflict between Israel and Iran is the epitome of this clash.

The question now is: What is it going to take for lasting peace to prevail between these two sworn enemies?