EDITORIAL: Israel and Iran at war leaves the world on the edge

As has been stated and restated by many leaders, we live in uncertain and dangerous times.

The war in Ukraine continues without any sense it is nearing an end. The Gaza crisis seems intractable. China continues to flex its military muscle. US President Donald Trump has declared a trade war on the world.

It is against this backdrop that the Group of Seven summit in Canada is to start this weekend.

The Group of Seven is an informal grouping of the world’s advanced economies — United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom, along with the European Union and other invited nations.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been under pressure for some time to go in to bat for Australia’s interests on tariffs and trade at a hoped-for meeting with Mr Trump on the sidelines of the summit.

He was also under more recent pressure to justify Australia’s level of defence spending in the face of a US push that we lift the rate.

Then news broke that the US was to review the AUKUS agreement — the pact between the US, UK and Australia — and its alignment with Mr Trump’s “America First” agenda.

Under AUKUS, Australia plans to build five SSN-AUKUS submarines and is due to buy between three and five Virginia Class nuclear-powered subs from the US.

It is plain that should the deal fall over it would be a massive blow for this nation’s defence capabilities.

Today the news broke about a serious escalation of the Middle East crisis as Israel launched a barrage of strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was at a “decisive point” in its history and was forced to act to stop Iran from producing a nuclear weapon “in a very short time”.

Warning that Iran “has significant capabilities to harm us”, he added, “we’re prepared for that”.

Iran said Israel would pay a heavy price and launched a wave of attack drones. Iran also accused the US of enabling Israel’s strikes, saying Washington bore direct responsibility.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US wasn’t involved in the attacks. But Mr Trump has acknowledged he knew strikes were coming.

On Wednesday it was reported the US was preparing a partial evacuation of its Iraqi embassy and would allow military dependents to leave locations around the Middle East due to heightened security risks in the region.

Also telling was that the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog on Thursday declared Iran in breach of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years.

Mr Trump had previously vowed that the US would never allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.

In Australia we see the issues Mr Albanese was set to tackle at the G7 as important.

But we now have a reminder that on the world stage we are down the pecking order.

The summit suddenly has much bigger issues to deal with. A world on the edge.