ANC solidarity with Iran a diplomatic dilemma for SA

SOUTH Africa’s solidarity with a rag-bag of international terror organisations and rogue states in the Middle East is not returning the benefits that the ANC hoped for.

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Instead of this anti-Western 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’s Operation Rising Lion has reduced Iran’s feared military, terror and repressive apparatus to ruins. The Jewish state has absolute 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 an odds-on death sentence.

The regime holds a single negotiating card. Its most important nuclear enrichment plant, at the mountain redoubt of Fordow, remains thus far untouched. But that's a powerful card. Only the United States has the bunker-busting bombs required to take out Fordow and while President Donald Trump has never seen a bandwagon that he doesn't yearn to take charge of, he'll be carefully weighing the potential fallout from any US intervention.

Whatever Trump’s decision, the latest Middle East developments will worsen South Africas already fraught diplomatic relationship with the US.