US SHOULD MAKE PEACE IN MIDDLE EAST NOT WAR

With John Bolton as the new National Security Advisor to US President Donald Trump, strategists are now talking of a massive preemptive military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. Bolton wants a new regime in Iran in 2019. Any military action will ignite a military inferno. Any attack on Iran will have global consequences. At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima is the world closer to the unthinkable. A nuclear holocaust, which could potentially spread in terms of radioactive fallout over a large part of the Middle East. An operational plan to wage aerial attacks on Iran “has been in a state of readiness” since 2005. Massive cyber attacks could be used, prior to a burst of electronic magnetic weapons.

Should the conflict go nuclear, it is capable of triggering larger ozone losses globally than the ones previously predicted for a full-scale nuclear war. The entire Middle East could be enveloped in deadly radioactive fallout. It could result in thousands of immediate deaths and unprecedented global climate disruption. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets. Many of the targets are deep underground and cannot be targeted by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. This option could trigger a global catastrophe, a devastated environment, and a traumatised global economy. Iran’s military response will be total war that will set the entire Middle East ablaze. — Farouk Araie, Johannesburg