Middle East Crisis Reactions to Israel-Iran

UN warns other countries against getting involved in the conflict

UN Secretary-General António Guterres is warning the world against getting involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran. In a new statement on Wednesday, he said that “further military involvement” risks having enormous consequences.

“I strongly appeal to everyone to avoid further internationalization of the conflict,” he wrote.

AFP asked Guterres spokesman Stephane Dujarric to elaborate on the word “internationalization” and received a response that it refers to “other countries getting involved in the fighting.” Neither Guterres nor Dujarric specifically mentioned the United States, whose President Donald Trump has opened up for the second day in a row to attack Iranian targets.

Analysis: Iran could be the issue that cracks Maga

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to be a “peacemaker.” After recent statements about Iran, NBC News believes that the president is instead speaking in a more “combative tone”.

If Trump decides to attack targets in Iran, it risks alienating parts of the Maga movement and other supporters, the channel’s analytical text states.

The BBC’s Nomia Iqbal is on the same line and writes that American involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran is exactly the type of conflict that Trump has long opposed. The president’s promise to avoid war is “a big reason why his supporters like him”, she writes.

Gideon Rachman at the Financial Times has also searched the archives and found a statement that Donald Trump made in 2019. The president then expressed that involvement in the conflict in the Middle East “is the worst decision ever made”.

In his analysis, he writes that a decision to attack Iran would be seen as a betrayal by many of Trump’s supporters.

“Iran could be the issue that cracks the Maga movement”, he writes.

Analysis: Crisis in the Kremlin after Trump's Iran speech

The regime in Russia is starting to get nervous after Donald Trump opened up about attacking targets in Iran. Ivor Bennett writes in an analysis in Sky News. Russia has a close cooperation with Iran that has become stronger since the invasion of Ukraine.

From the beginning, the Kremlin saw the fighting in Iran as an opportunity, according to Bennett. If Putin had managed to convince Iran to lay down its weapons and instead negotiate with the US, he could have asked Trump for a reciprocal favor linked to the fighting in Ukraine at a later stage.

After Trump threatened to kill Iran's supreme leader, there is instead a "crisis" in the Kremlin.

Pjotr ​​Sauer at The Guardian writes about the same thing in his analysis. Iran has previously been able to supply Moscow with thousands of drones and other knowledge for the Ukraine war.

If Israel, with the help of the US, were to succeed in overthrowing the Iranian regime, Russia would lose a strategic partner. Iranian investments and investments in energy and infrastructure projects risk disappearing if the regime in Tehran falls.

It would be a blow that seriously undermines Russia's geopolitical ambitions, according to Sauer.