How Israel-Iran conflict will affect Nigeria – Experts

Israel and Iran traded heavy fire for a third straight day on Sunday, with mounting casualties and expanding targets marking a sharp escalation in hostilities between the longtime foes.

Strikes in both countries persisted throughout the day, as the death rose following Israel’s large-scale attacks on Friday aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure, sparking retaliation.

The intensity of the exchanges between the two adversaries has reached new heights, fueling concerns of a drawn-out conflict that could engulf the Middle East, even as world leaders call for restraint and a halt to the violence.

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Death tolls have mounted on both sides, with heavy fire also hitting residential areas.

Iran unleashed multiple waves of missiles at Israel from late Saturday throughout Sunday, killing 10 people, including children, and bringing the overall death toll since Tehran launched retaliatory strikes to 13, with 380 others wounded.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to make Iran pay “a very heavy price” for the civilian deaths.

Israeli attacks on Iran killed at least 128 people from Friday to Saturday, including children, Iranian media reported, citing the health ministry, with hundreds more wounded.

With no end to the fighting in sight, Iran opened mosques, metro stations and schools as shelters for citizens from Israeli attacks, as the Israeli military warned Iranians to leave areas near weapons facilities.

Attack on oil facilities

Israel has struck some of Iran’s most vital oil and gas facilities, the first such attacks despite decades of rivalry between the Middle Eastern nations, raising fears of a widening conflict and threatening turmoil for the markets.

Late on Saturday, Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum said Israel struck a key fuel depot, while another oil refinery in the capital city of Tehran was also in flames, as emergency crews scrambled to douse the fires at separate sites.

Iran has also partially suspended production at the world’s biggest gasfield, the South Pars, which it shares with neighbour Qatar, after an Israeli strike caused a fire there on Saturday.

Israel’s unprecedented and sudden attacks on Iran’s energy facilities are poised to disrupt the oil supplies from the Middle East, and could shake up global fuel prices, even as both countries threaten each other with even more intense attacks.

Iran holds the world’s second-largest proven natural gas reserves and the third-largest crude oil reserves, according to the United States government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), and its energy infrastructure has long been a potential target for Israel.

Before the current spiral in their conflict, Israel had largely avoided targeting Iranian energy facilities, amid pressure from its allies, including the US, over the risks to global oil and gas prices from any such attack.

That has now changed

On Friday, Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, warned that if Iran retaliated to its attacks, “Tehran will burn”.

Late on Saturday, major fires broke out at two opposing ends of the Iranian capital — the Shahran fuel and gas depot, Northwest of Central Tehran, and one of Iran’s biggest oil refineries in Shahr Rey, to the city’s south.

While Iran’s Student News Network subsequently denied that the Shahr Rey refinery had been struck by Israel, and claimed it was still operating, it conceded that a fuel tank outside the refinery had caught fire. It did not explain what sparked the fire.

But Iran’s Petroleum Ministry confirmed that Israel had struck the Shahran depot, where firefighters were still trying to bring flames under control.

The Israeli aerial attacks also targeted the South Pars field, offshore Iran’s southern Bushehr province. The world’s largest gasfield is the source of two-thirds of Iran’s gas production, which is consumed nationally. Iran shares the South Pars with its neighbour Qatar, where it is called the North Field.

The strikes triggered significant damage and fire at the Phase 14 natural gas processing facility and halted an offshore production platform that generates 12 million cubic metres per day, reported the semiofficial Tasnim news agency.

In a separate Israeli attack, fire reportedly broke out at the Fajr Jam gas plant, one of Iran’s largest processing facilities, also in the Bushehr province, which processes fuel from South Pars. The Iranian Petroleum Ministry confirmed that the facility was hit.

Impact on global markets

Adding to the uncertainty in global markets, Iran has noted that it is considering closing the Strait of Hormuz amid the intensifying conflict with Israel – a move that would send oil prices soaring.

The Strait of Hormuz, which splits Iran on one side and Oman and the United Arab Emirates on the other, is the only marine entryway into the Gulf, with nearly 20 per cent of global oil consumption flowing through it. The EIA describes it as the “world’s most important oil transit chokepoint”.

The Israeli attacks on Friday, which spared Iran’s oil and gas facilities on the first day of the fighting, had already pushed oil prices up 9 per cent, before they calmed just a bit. Analysts expect prices to rise sharply when oil markets open again on Monday.

Alan Eyre, a distinguished diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Al Jazeera that Israel was trying to push the US into participating in its attacks on Iran.

“Ultimately, Israel’s best-case scenario is to encourage, if not regime change, then the toppling of this regime,” he said.

“Iran’s options are very limited; they have to respond militarily to save face domestically [but] it is very unlikely that Iran can cause enough damage to Israel internally or put enough pressure to stop bombing,” Eyre said.

“Iran does not have many allies in the international community – and even if it did, Israel has shown that it is spectacularly unwilling to listen to international opinion,” added Eyre.

How Nigeria is affected

Ambassador Bulus Lolo, a former Nigerian envoy to Ethiopia, said it is not in anybody’s interest, including Nigeria, for the conflict to continue.

“Sometimes when you have a conflict of this nature, it is good; other times it’s not the best. Nigeria is not in a direct firing line, but is lending a voice for the two sides to cease their attack and go back to the negotiating table,” he said.

He acknowledged that the market will naturally respond to the attack on Iran’s oil facility, saying, “But we are not looking for volatility in the oil market. We prefer it to be stable so that our projections will hold.

“There may be a spike in the immediate future whereby prices will go up, but for how long? So, it’s a conflict we do not know what the end will be,” Amb Lolo stressed.

However, Prof Sheriff Ghali Ibrahim, a professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the University of Abuja, thinks that the ongoing conflict will impact Nigeria in several areas.

The expert in Asia politics told Daily Trust in a telephone interview on Sunday that despite maintaining bilateral relations with both nations, Nigeria has condemned Israel’s military actions in Iran and joined global calls for calm and negotiation to end the violence.

According to him, the conflict is expected to disrupt global oil markets, potentially benefiting Nigeria as countries that rely on oil from Iran or Israel may shift towards Nigerian exports.

The university don said, historically, similar geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have led to an economic boom for Nigeria, such as during the 1970s Arab-Israeli war.

“Still on the economic repercussions, there are other products that sometimes come from Israel or Iran; these are going to be scarce in Africa or even in Nigeria now. So, the prices of these particular goods or services might skyrocket, not only in Nigeria, not also in Africa, and the entire world,” he said.

He also raised concerns about Nigerian students and expatriates in Israel and Iran, with calls for their evacuation due to safety risks.

“And if there is any social engagement, be it educational, be it sport, nobody from Nigeria or Africa or around the world will go to either Israel or Iran,” he added.

Ibrahim, who is also the Head of Department of the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the University of Abuja, said religious sites, including pilgrimage destinations in Israel and Iran, may see a decline in visitors due to ongoing instability.

“Even the Shiites who usually visit Iran can no longer visit because of these particular troubles on the ground,” he said.