By Iqbal Jassat
The horrific images from Sirik, Iran, where a U.S. airstrike targeted and decimated a civilian wedding ceremony, must serve as a final, catastrophic wake-up call for the Global South.
The slaughter of innocent civilians—including a four-year-old child—is not merely “collateral damage”; it is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law that demands immediate, unyielding condemnation.
For the South African government, a state built on the foundational promise of human rights and anti-imperialism, remaining silent is not an option.
For the broader BRICS alliance, this latest exhibition of unilateral American violence represents a direct challenge to the very soul of the multipolar world order it claims to be building.
It is time for BRICS to move past comfortable economic rhetoric and take a principled, unified stand against Washington’s aggressive posture—an aggression driven not by global stability, but by an unwavering commitment to shield its regional proxy, Israel.
For decades, the United States has lectured the world on the sanctity of international law while selectively dismantling it whenever its geopolitical interests dictate.
The devastating strikes across southern Iran, justified by Washington as strategic deterrence, have instead exposed the moral bankruptcy of Western foreign policy.
This is a war of choice, waged in total disregard of state sovereignty and the United Nations Charter.
The stark double standard is clear to the global majority: while Washington provides diplomatic cover and an endless flow of weapons to Israel’s devastating campaigns, it simultaneously uses direct military force to crush any regional resistance to that hegemony.
By enabling and mimicking the lawless tactics of its closest ally, the U.S. has effectively shattered the illusion of the “rules-based international order.”
South Africa has rightfully earned global respect for its courageous stance at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. By launching and sustaining its landmark genocide case against Israel, Pretoria established itself as the moral compass of international law, proving that the Global South will no longer tolerate the impunity of Western-backed powers.
However, the legal victory at the ICJ is fundamentally undermined if the world’s primary military superpower can simply bypass international legal bodies to drop bombs on civilian infrastructure with total impunity.
The same legal principles South Africa defended at The Hague—the protection of civilian life, the prohibition of collective punishment, and the upholding of humanitarian conventions—must apply to Washington’s actions in Iran.
Pretoria cannot afford a passive stance when U.S. bombs strike families on Iranian soil. The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) must issue an unequivocal condemnation of the Sirik atrocity, explicitly linking the lawlessness in Palestine to the lawlessness in Iran.
BRICS was not formed merely to re-engineer global trade or bypass the U.S. dollar; it was created to democratise global governance. However, multilateralism is meaningless if the world’s most powerful military state can bomb sovereign nations at will.
While the diverse membership of BRICS—spanning from Pretoria and Brasilia to Beijing and Moscow—presents differing economic dependencies, the bloc shares a foundational opposition to unilateral intervention.
If BRICS leaders refuse to collectively challenge and defy Washington’s lawless interventions, they risk rendering their vision of a multipolar world entirely hollow.
BRICS must draw a firm red line by issuing a unified bloc-wide declaration condemning the weaponisation of unilateral strikes, in addition to demanding accountability at the UN.
A minimum expectation would be to spearhead resolutions within the UN General Assembly to investigate Western military overreach and civilian casualties in the region.
The tragedy in Sirik proves that the current global security architecture is fundamentally broken. It cannot protect the innocent because the primary arbiter of that system is also its most frequent violator.
South Africa and its BRICS partners stand at a historical crossroads. They can either remain passive observers to Washington’s unchecked military overreach, or they can step forward as the principled guardians of international law they claim to be.
The choice is no longer just geopolitical; it is a profound moral imperative.
Iqbal Jassat
Executive Member
Media Review Network
Johannesburg
South Africa