World attention remains fixed on events in the Middle East, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning that the war against Iran “may take some time”, though adding, “But it’s not going to take years.”
US President Donald Trump initially foresaw a war of four to five weeks, but has since indicated a longer campaign may be justified.
While the US state department yesterday ordered non-emergency personnel and their families to leave Bahrain and Jordan, and confirmed having ordered staff in Iraq to leave a day earlier, critical attention from Trump’s opponents in Washington has focused on what they perceive to be the lack of detail or a clear plan beyond the air campaign.
Most Republicans have publicly thrown their support behind Trump, but Democrats have said that the President doesn’t have a defined strategy, warning that the US could get pulled into a long conflict.
Representative Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said: “The Trump administration still has not given any detail on where Iran’s nuclear programme was at.”
Smith added: “We have not seen any specific intelligence, so I don’t think there’s any credible claim that there was an imminent threat coming from Iran, which is not to say Iran isn’t a problem.”
However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that there was an imminent threat to the United States because the US knew that Israel planned to attack Iran and expected Iran to retaliate by attacking US forces.
Republican lawmakers said that led to the “imminent threat” that forced the U.S. to respond.
House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters: “Because Israel was determined to act with or without the US, our commander in chief and the administration … had a very difficult decision to make.”
He said: “In my view, right now … our military and the commander in chief, he is presiding over the completion of an operation that was limited in scope, limited in its objective, and absolutely necessary for our defence. I think that operation will be wound up quickly.”
In Iran, Ayatollah Ali Moallemi, one of the clerics who will be helping to choose who replaces Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is quoted as saying the process “won’t take long”.
Iran’s ISNA news agency quotes Moallemi as saying: “As in the past the Assembly of Experts will choose a personality similar to the martyred Leader… based on religious standards.”
In an interview with the BBC, General David Petraeus, a former director of the CIA, described the killing of Iran’s supreme leader as a “historic achievement”, but warned that urging the Iranian people to rise up was risky.
He said: “Unfortunately, in most cases like this it is the guys who have the most guns and the most thugs and who are willing to be most brutal who prevail.”
In South Africa, it is feared the conflict in the Middle East could lead to a petrol price rise, but that surging gold prices could bring in higher export earnings.
Investec chief economist Annabel Bishop is quoted as saying that the war on Iran had translated into a rise of about 12% in the rand oil price, to about R1,294 a barrel on Monday.
Air travel in parts of the world remains in turmoil, though Indian airlines IndiGo and Air India Express have said they will be resuming limited commercial services to the Middle East in hopes of helping thousands of stranded passengers. However, services to and from Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates remain suspended, the airlines said.
Sources: Reuters, The Guardian, BBC, News24, Agence France-Presse