Micheal Nelson Byaruhanga on the cost to African states of the illegal US-Israel war against Iran
On February 28, 2026, a US-Israeli bomber flew in the skies above Minan in Iran and dropped death in a primary school, killing more than one hundred innocent children. In an effort to defend its sovereignty and push for a diplomatic solution to the war, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a small waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman that transports 20% of the world’s oil and other goods.
In Uganda, Evelyn Adyero, a 49-year-old smallholder farmer in the rural district of Amuru in the north, was unaware of this war a week later. She was impacted by the fallout of American bombs on March 10th. Evelyn had gone to a local agricultural imports shop in Gulu City, where she learned that the price of urea, a nitrogen-based fertiliser imported to the Landlocked East African country from the Gulf region, had risen by 20% due to the Iran war.
Around the world, the cost of the Trump-Netanyahu war is hitting the poorest of the world hardest, especially in the global north. Prices of essential food items have nearly doubled due to skyrocketing fuel prices, with diesel and petrol almost surpassing two US dollars per litre at the pump in Kampala. The combination of higher transport and production costs, along with lower agricultural input usage, is expected to result in lower yields this year. This could worsen food insecurity and cause food price inflation in already impoverished communities even after the war ends.
The 2026 US-Israel war on Iran arose from failed diplomacy, deep distrust and diverging strategic miscalculations fueled by Trump’s obsession with America’s unilateralism and hegemonic illusion. America, the supposed father of constitutional democracy, waged war in a manner indistinguishable from the very crimes it condemns.
For a man like Trump, whose “America first” agenda promised voters an end to senseless foreign wars, his personal choice to involve the United States in a war without Congressional approval, as established in the American Constitution (Article I, Section 8) is not just domestically illegal but also morally intolerable.
Trump has threatened to annihilate Iran’s civilisation back to the Stone Age, which constitutes a war crime under International Law. One wonders at what point deterrence ceases to be strategic and becomes terrorism in form and effect? The US-Israel war against Iran has already destroyed over 3,600 civilian sites, including bridges, schools, hospitals, residential areas, and critical utilities, as reported by Al Jazeera. International Law decisively rejects utilitarian excess. Both Washington and Tel Aviv are bound by the 1949 conventions, which cover the protection of civilians.
From Lebanon to Tehran, the bombing is evident, military advantage has proved speculative and civilian harm is immediate, concrete, and irreversible. Trump and Netanyahu continue to signal a willingness to devastate the civilian population. The international community must act now or remain toothless forever!
But beyond the devastating pain of civilian destruction, this war has also become a significant error for America. It has provided evidence of the decline of the United States superiority since World War II, and portrays Trump as the perfect symptom of this degradation.
Iran has shown that it can use asymmetric war tactics like the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the expansion of the war to US military bases and infrastructure in the Gulf to make America vulnerable and desperate in negotiations.
Gulf countries pay hefty sums to fund US military bases as a ‘security for protection’ trade-off, but Tehran has turned these assets into liabilities. This proves that America can no longer offer protection to its key allies in the Middle East. Trump is incapable of creating solutions to this, and that’s how Iran has won the war by forcing Washington to seek a deal to end the conflict, which could have been prevented by the diplomacy they abandoned in the first place.
Trump and those like him should learn from history that hegemonic power has never achieved total control, but dialogue has created lasting solutions to world conflicts throughout human existence. Britain learned this lesson the hard way from the Suez Canal in 1956.