by B. R. GOWANI
Talking to Margaret Brennan on CBS News on February 27, 2026, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said that a “peace deal is within our reach.” He also said Iran agreed to “never, ever have … nuclear material that will create a bomb.”
There was no nuclear threat from Iran. But the Western news media with a global reach never shy away from a good fabricating war inciting story went along with the Trump and Netanyahu government lies. (See here, here, and here.)
In midst of US/Iran negotiations, two nuclear powers, US and Israel, began an illegal, criminal, and deadly war against Iran by assassinating leaders, bombing cities, and killing people — 1,444 killed and 18,551 injured, so far.
“Could US/Israel attack trigger World War Three?”
In 2017, during the first term of President Donald Trump (2017 – 2021), a girl in a department store informed me about the imminent world war. I inquired about her source of such dangerous news. “WhatsApp” was the reply. I responded with a “no” and further clarified that current situation, though nasty under Trump’s obnoxious racist actions against various communities including immigrants and Muslims, is in no way so dire, that it could end up in a world war.
Now it’s March 2026. Since January 2025, the ship called US is once again under our Dear Leader Donald Trump’s swaying leadership. More than people’s love for our Dear Leader, it was the top Democratic Party leadership’s ignoring of the people’s problems and instead supporting Israel’s genocidal war, that forced broken and hopeless people to vote for our Dear Leader. The Dear Leader is now under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spell — which may end his rule in great disaster.
The ferocity of the US/Israel war begun February 28, and still on after twenty days, had some people inquiring whether this could lead to the Third World War. This time the question is relevant due to the intensity with which the two violent states attacked Iran, and the Iranian retaliation on US targets in the Gulf countries.
Prelude to war
For a war to engulf many nations, groups equal in strength are needed. Currently, in the US/Israel war against Iran, the two sides have vastly unequal arsenal.
There is only one alliance in the world, and that is of NATO countries under the US. NATO has 22 major non-NATO allies, including Israel. One could safely say that Israel and Australia (non-NATO ally) are the only ones that will be protected.
Also, the countries involved usually have a defense pact where attack on one country, is considered an attack on the entire group. Iran and most of the Global South countries have no defense pact.
We have seen how Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia –“non-NATO allies” — are left on their own to face Iran’s missiles. In 2024, President Joe Biden appointed UAE as a defense partner. Another defense partner is India. These are all circumstantial designations assigned by the US when it is in need of help from other countries. It doesn’t carry any security guarantee at all.
WWI had two sides, the Allies and the Central Powers. The two sides in WWII were Allied Powers and the Axis Powers. Many of the countries, we now call the “Global South” were under colonial rule. They suffered due to their colonial rulers fighting the wars.
M. K. Gandhi, also known as Mahatma or great soul, was encouraging peasants in India to fight for the British in WWI! (The Indian subcontinent — now Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan — lost 60,000 lives in WWI and more than 87,000 soldiers and 3 million civilians in WWII fighting for their colonial master.
Then there are occurrences that could expand the world war theater and enhance the violence. One such incident was purposefully created by the US government of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His government froze all Japanese assets in the US, which was followed by an oil embargo in July 1941. Japanese frustration resulted in its attack on Pearl Harbor, a US naval base in the state of Hawaii, on December 7.
US casualties amounted to 2,403 killed and 1,178 wounded. Roosevelt was aware of the approaching Japanese attack but let it happen so those in the US who were opposing US participation in the Second World War, (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) would be swayed.
Thus, US entered WWII and used atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 in-spite of the fact that Japan had accepted defeat and wanted to end the war. The US, by using nuclear weapons, the first and only country to do so, created terror around the world. The monopoly didn’t last long. The Soviet Union became the second nuclear power in August 1949.
No WWIII
It is understandable that, given the intensity of the violence and the widespread destruction over a great stretch of geographical area, that people would naturally think this conflict could spread and engulf other countries.
However, no one has come to Iran’s rescue, and so the war is restricted to the Middle East only, with Iran left to suffer the most. Thus, at this point, it does not seem that there is going to be World War III.
BRICS has proved hopeless, too. There was some hope from BRICS, but on February 28, 2026, the day the war began, no BRICS statement was heard. India is hosting this year’s meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is this year’s host. The same Modi who couldn’t condole assassinations and bombings in a member country due to fear of Israel/US. But Modi’s India could ban “The Voice of Hind Rajab” film to avoid angering Israel! <1>
Iran’s counter attacks and strategy which let her survive the violence the last three weeks deserves some thought. The war, the bombing of gas and oil facilities, and Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz have raised the gas and oil prices, and along with the prices of other commodities, too. This has forced Trump to let countries buy Russian oil for a month. Surprisingly, Trump is also letting nations buy Iranian oil for one month!
Trump is not doing this out of any humanitarian instinct; it is just that he’s thinking of the mid term elections in November, as runaway inflation will further reduce chances of expanding the GOP footprint.
Report card
That Iran survived, is great.
Netanyahu, as Reuters’ report points out, is the winner.
Trump, according to the same report, is a loser.
Palestine Chronicle editor Ramzy Baroud:
Netanyahu sought to dominate the Middle East. Washington sought to reaffirm its position as the world’s unrivaled superpower.
Neither objective appears within reach.
Instead, the war may accelerate the very transformations it was meant to prevent: a declining US strategic role, a weakened Israeli deterrent posture, and a Middle East increasingly shaped by regional actors rather than external powers.
There are reports that Trump is sending 2,500 Marines and more warships to escalate this war and create more brutality, death, and destruction.
Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, says it will be better for Trump to accept the losses and exit now rather than to wait, as then it will be too late and too costly for him and the US:
And he may still decide, say, in July or August to pull back or cut a deal with Iran in some way, but that then may well be his presidency. He can’t recover. He will be in Lyndon Johnson territory, to use a Vietnam analogy, and Lyndon Johnson was never able to recover once it was clear that escalation could not defeat the North Vietnamese.
Capitalist world: you’re on your own
Almost all of the countries have become more or less capitalist. In capitalism the thinking is self-centered rather than thinking of others, too. Each country is on its own.
Many BRICS nations, without any qualms, are doing business with Israel, a genocidal state, as Patrick Bond points out. Some Middle East countries do business with Israel, too.
Many small countries will have a hard time to survive against the US onslaught if they decide to take a different route. Many people are worried about Cuba.
In an “Open Letter to President Lula,” Boaventura de Sousa Santos, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, has urged Lula to “disobey” Trump and help Cuba:
“It is a matter of saving Cuba from the clutches of a political monster democratically generated in the world’s largest democracy. It is no less monstrous for having been democratically generated. Hitler was too. It merely speaks volumes about the (lack of) quality of the democracy that generated it.”
Note
<1> Fear of upsetting Israel is the reason the India Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has blocked the release of Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated feature “The Voice of Hind Rajab.” The reason given by the distributor Manoj Nandwana to Variety magazine, was “if it gets released it would break up the India-Israel relationship,” as per one CBFC member.
Nadwana further added:
“I told them: the India-Israel relationship is so strong that it’s idiotic to think this movie will break it.” “The Voice of Hind Rajab” has been released “in the U.S., U.K., Italy, France and many other countries that have a relationship with Israel.”
“But they want to censor it anyway,”
The film is about a five-year-old girl Hind Rajab who is in a car in Gaza with dead relatives, victims of Israeli shooting, waiting for help from Red Cross volunteers whom she had called. She was murdered too, along with the two paramedics who came to assist her.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com