• Super Admin
• 06 Mar, 2026

On Saturday, February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel, the Zionist entity, started a joint attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has already cost the lives of at least 165 little girls in one strike alone on an elementary school in southern Iran. The attacks have already cost the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, as well as Iran's political and military leadership, and the country's spiritual leader Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (and his family members). The Zionist entity has already shown its utter contempt for human life in its genocidal war in Palestine. With the U.S. regime's recent unlawful attacks on innocent people in boats in the Caribbean region, there should be no equivocation that we are witnessing not only a declining empire and its appendage, but white supremacy in its rawest form. The alliance of Zionists and fascists in the U.S. is not only an attempt to resurrect a dying imperialism, but an attempt to reconfigure the world in a manner that reestablishes it as a playing ground for rich white men. For now, this aggression is an attack on the self-determination of one of the oldest civilizations in our world. In the long run, the war on Iran is a war on African peoples, and we must understand that its rippling effects are already apparent in some regions. The relations of Africa, and particularly the eastern Africa region, with West Asia go beyond the mere 500 years of Western capitalist domination and brokerage. Tanzania's links with Oman, Ethiopia and Eritrea's history with Yemen, these are histories though no longer emphasized are evident in the historical process of these countries. One can make it up to Northern Ethiopia, the Tigray region, and find Sabaean inscriptions and tales of an underground road that leads to the Red Sea. One can also look at how the Eritrean independence struggle found support among Yemeni liberation fighters and were in communication with the Palestinian liberation movement (Hagos and Weldemichael, 2023). These realities are important in imaging a world beyond Western domination, but in today's geopolitical landscape, must be contextualized according to the imperial chain. The attack on Iran, and the possibility of full-blown regional war, has already sharpened contradictions and brought forth a moment where brute force must be used to attain a favorable position in the imperial chain of weak and strong powers. These contradictions have also once again brought forth the question of the global majority, and their active role in the historical process. The ultimate objective of the U.S. is to support Israel's stabilization and expansion so as to ensure proxy regional domination [of peoples and their lands] in its attempt to reverse its hegemonic decline. As the Monroe Doctrine is resuscitated in attempts to dominate the Americas, the Zionist's war on Iran is treated as an opportunity to dominate Western Asia. The U.S.'s scramble has also been more observable in its actions across Global Africa: the mineral deals against Congolese people necessary for technological advances; the extractive and exploitative health policies in Africa amidst the growing accumulation of data necessary for modern war; the attack on Venezuela and Cuba, and the Caribbean region as a whole, to secure oil and crush cooperation; these must all be treated as emerging from the need of American hegemony and Zionism to outlive their decline and objective limitations. The U.S.'s war on Iran will have its own consequences for the internal dynamics of the rift among the U.S. ruling classes as well as the people of America, who must now choose if they are willing to be dragged into the Zionist Entity's war. For Africa some consequences have already materialized, and progressive Africans must be alert how the war has already begun on the continent. We must bear two things as we actively engage in what unfolds from the military attack on a sovereign world power. The first will be the response of regional states, and most importantly, the response of the people in those states: the masses of Muslims observing Ramadan, Christians observing Lent, and the large immigrant labor force of all religions, all oppressed under the current regimes in Western Asia. The regimes run primarily by those that not only have an anti-Black ideological alliance with the U.S.-Zionist fascist coupling, but benefit from their subordinated position in the imperial chain that had once dominated the world. The interdependence in the region, however, will not make it so easy for these regimes to continue their blind and self-harming support to the U.S.-Zionist alliance. As three U.S. Airforce fighter jets were "mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses" we must wait to see how Gulf countries will respond. The question for the regimes in Western Asia, and the Egyptian state, will be whether they are willing to risk the lives of their own people to protect an alliance that ultimately sees and treats them as sub-human. The increased repression of Egyptians, and especially Sudanese and Eritrean peoples forced to seek refuge in Egypt, over the recent weeks and months may have already signaled the Egyptian state's concerns and preparation. The second is to understand how far the implications of this war have already matured to observable states across Africa. For the Zionist entity, going against Iran's advanced military with not only a rivaling capacity but with a country of more than 90 million people, has not only reinforced its dependence on U.S. hegemony, but increases its need to exploit and attempt to dominate Africa. The weakness of the Zionist occupation forces was proven by Palestinian liberation fighters that ensured there could be no complete victory in Gaza through land invasion. Africans must understand how some African states like Ethiopia are complicit in the exploitation of Africans through facilitating not only the movement of our young girls as domestic workers to the region, but also the movement of African Jews to Zionist war fronts against Palestinians. Zionist settlers of Ethiopian descent, though only 1.7% of the population, have suffered a disproportionate 4.5% of military deaths in the current genocidal war. Their disproportionate death is a reflection of a pipeline, clothed in ancestral dogma, that leads to their exceptionally high "enlistment" and combat participation rates as nearly 90% of Ethiopian-Israeli young men serve in the military (with half in combat roles), while Ethiopian-Israeli women enlist at around 70%, well above the national female average of 58%. Therefore, there should be no contradiction as to why an entity that accepts African Jews to live on land that it has stolen and occupied would also sterilize those that make the journey - Africans are not valued for their religious affiliations that are exploited by the U.S. and the Zionist Entity, but for their expendable bodies on which racial capitalism continues to depend on. As the assassination of the Spiritual leader of Iran has demonstrated the alliance has no respect or value for the faiths and cultures of peoples beyond their base, which should come as a warning for those endowed with different religions and ethnicities, including in Nigeria where the U.S. supposedly seeks to "support" Christians, and with the Zionists historically supporting the secessionist Biafra movement. One should ask why the Boers of South Africa were given the opportunity to migrate to the U.S., if the conditions of Christians in Nigeria was of utmost importance - the only connective tissue here is white supremacy. Through its struggle for complete domination and extermination over the Palestinians, the Zionist entity has been forced to take even more observable and aggressive steps on its attempt to influence Africa. As the Strait of Hormuz, a chokehold for access to the Persian Gulf, is destabilized and becomes leverage for war and global supply of natural gas and oil, the influence over African countries around the Red Sea becomes increasingly relevant for Egypt, the Gulf, and Zionist Entity's commerce and wars. The recent unilateral recognition of Somaliland by the Zionist Entity must be taken under these accounts. Recognition, which is based on three pillars, is a reflection of the Zionist Entity's preparation for this war and the need for port access to infiltrate Africa and transport commodities and military supplies through the Red Sea. With the increasing sabotage from Ansar Allah (Houthis) and their impact on the Port of Haifa, one of Palestine's largest ports, Zionists will need physical presence in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait - another chokehold for access to Suez Canal, Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. When the war draws out and expands environmental destruction, the Red Sea and Africa's relevance is not only a matter of access to land, labor, and commerce (ala ports and market), but also a matter of food and water for Gulf countries. The Zionist Entity must face the Egyptian people. The recent security summit announced by Kigali to host the U.S.-Zionist alliance, in which Rwanda is listed as "a gateway partner," also depicts not only one of the weakest links in Africa but yet another observable front the Zionist entity is attempting to consolidate for its access to Africa. As we witness imperial support for separatist elites who are themselves manipulating the grievances of working peoples from Somalia to Sudan and Ethiopia, we must bear the weight of Walter Rodney's analysis on why imperialism in Africa took the form of political partitioning, and ensure we stand together at a time when falling powers heighten their instigations of division and war on our continent. The Role of the UAE Before the Zionist Entity, Ethiopia had brought up the idea of recognizing Somaliland triggering massive condemnation and reactions from regional powers. Although Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi in 2024, neither the agreement to lease Ethiopia access to coastline for a naval base and commercial purposes, nor formal recognition of Somaliland by Ethiopia materialized. The facilitator behind both the Zionist Entity's recognition and Ethiopia's efforts seems to have been the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which for the Ethiopian state has been instrumental for the war on Tigray and other regions. Just last week, the President of the Zionist Entity visited Ethiopia, who was followed a few days later by the President of Türkiye Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's, signaling lobbying efforts in necessary regions are underway. Africans should remember how a similar revolving door of meddling preceded the explosion of the war in Sudan (see image below). The UAE-Zionist Entity relationship is built on converging strategic interests, particularly shared concerns over regional threats from Iran and Turkey (Al-Eshaq and Bakir, 2025), as well as a mutual desire to maintain their position in the imperial chain amid declining U.S. hegemony. According to Al-Eshaq and Bakir (2025), cybersecurity cooperation has been a cornerstone of this partnership: the UAE gained access to Zionist surveillance tools including NSO Group's Pegasus spyware before normalization in September 2020, and in 2023, the two launched "Crystal Ball," a joint threat intelligence platform to combat cyberattacks. Zionist Entity firms with deep ties to Unit 8200b (an intelligence unit of the Zionist occupation forces) have forged partnerships with Emirati counterparts, including Cyber Together's agreement with EliteCISOs and Cyberint Technologies' collaboration with telecom giant Etisalat. On the defense front, the UAE participated in its first joint naval exercise with the Zionist Entity in the Red Sea as far back as 2021. The UAE has also become the sixth-largest customer of the Zionist Entity's arms exports, accounting for 4.2% of the entity's weapons sales from 2020 to 2024 (SIPRI, 2024). Defense giants have also established permanent footholds in the Emirates, with Elbit Systems forming Elbit Systems Emirates in 2021 and securing a $2.3 billion contract with the UAE in 2025, while RAFAEL - the state owned weapons and war technologies manufacturer responsible for the Zionist's Iron Dome - opened facilities in Abu Dhabi offering missile defense and drone warfare capabilities. For states like the UAE, which signed one of the deals (the Abraham Accords) that exemplifies the U.S.-Zionist Entity alliance's earliest attacks on the Gulf countries and the Republic of Iran, their increased interdependency leaves them with the most uncertainties, which are already playing out in Africa against the interests of our people. With similar objective limitations to the Zionist Entity (the UAE's population of more than 10 million might mislead that Emirati's actually make up about 11% of the population, with 88.1% being immigrants), the UAE has been attempting to compensate for its weakness through violently plundering Africa. The gold rush of the last decades fueled by gold from Niger to Sudan, the counterrevolutionary war in Sudan (whose size is 22 times larger than the UAE, and was coerced to normalize relations with the Zionist Entity in 2021), the duplicitous and warmongering role in the eastern Africa region, all are tied to the incapacity of the UAE to face the current moment it has played a role to ushering in. When the Sudan Armed Forces were necessary for the UAE and Saudi Arabia to be supplied with Sudanese working peoples as ground troops for their war in Yemen war, which for the UAE is itself a part of the attempt to become Singapore of the region, it cannot be divorced from all the attempts to control ports across Africa. The UAE's DP World and Abu Dhabi Ports Group collectively operate 12 port concessions across the continent since 2006 with a footprint that has accelerated sharply over 10 countries since 2016. The port concessions extend beyond commerce and infrastructure necessary to sustain the looting of African raw materials, to bundled agreements with military ties and defense cooperation in the same host countries, which have now become infinitely more important as Iran's retaliation has targeted the Jebel Ali port of the UAE. Africans in those countries where the UAE has made deals with their elite must ensure their land and labor is not used for fascist ends against the Iranian peoples. Now that the Saudi-Emirati alliance is no longer as stable and separatists of the UAE's choosing have lost major control in Yemen, the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan (and similar mercenary tendencies across Africa) will become even more necessary for the UAE's survival. Like the support for forces destabilizing Libya and Chad, the support of the UAE for the brutal regime currently in control of the Ethiopian state - itself attempting to survive as it oppresses its own people engaged in armed rebellion in at least three regions - also comes as a necessity. As Somalia - which once looked the other way as the UAE used its land to resupply the RSF - announced a cessation of relations with the UAE, Ethiopia will not only be supplied with weapons and IMF funding, but also now hosts a military base training RSF forces alongside Ethiopian soldiers. The continuation of the current war launched by the U.S.-Zionist alliance is likely to heighten these contradictions in Africa and increase the suffering of African peoples, which once again must choose Pan-Africanism over capitalist war and imperial partitioning. The peoples of western Africa seem to have chosen Pan-Africanism, and so far, the leaders of Senegal, and the Alliance of Sahel States (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger) are following suit. The war of France in Africa itself has heightened as it is facing maturing opponents in the region and a declining Europe that has already begun its own subtle war with the U.S. The recent developments of troops in Nigeria, the assassination of the son of Muammar Qaddafi (Saif Al-Islam Qaddafi see Pambazuka news), and the military posturing in the eastern region of Africa (including South Sudan, Sudan, Eritrea-Ethiopia, Sudan/SAF-Ethiopia), are all military expressions related to the increasing need of foreign powers to have control over Africa now more than ever. Global Africans must once again meet the moment and continue a sustained Pan-African self-organization, beginning with our solidarity with the Iranian peoples who are currently mourning their martyrs as they continue to face the collective wrath of declining powers. For those in the eastern region, let us not let the lack of vision and the internalization of white supremacy by our elites and leaders define our future. The U.S.-Zionist alliance has persistently demonstrated its lack of care for the lives of children and women, and in an era where information warfare is decisive, let us not think there is any profound care about Christians, Sunni Muslims, or any of our affiliations which they have already started manipulating. Iran is already making clear that their defensive war is not on Africa, whereas intermediaries and comprador African elites that have captured our states and institutions have shown their lack of principled responses. The peoples and progressive social forces of Global Africa must reclaim their institutions, their voices, and act decisively in our solidarity with Iran and on the unity of Africa. Like we were inspired by Sudanese women who were at the forefront of the revolution, let us take seriously the initiatives of Global Africana women whose work allows us to not only to survive this moment, but to overcome it. Source: https://www.pambazuka.org/PanAfrican-Perspective-Iran-War