The Dean of Academic Affairs at the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College (GAFCSC), Dr Vladimir Antwi-Danso, is urging the world to call for calm as tensions between Iran and the United States of America continue to rise.

Dr Antwi-Danso said it was incumbent on the world to halt the growing tensions between the two countries before it degenerated.

“The whole world is at risk. No country is safe if Iran decides to attack American interest so the world system must be used to stop the tensions from escalating,” Dr Antwi-Danso told the Ghanaian Times in Accra yesterday.

The two countries have been issuing threats of attack following the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, on Friday near the international airport of Iraq’s capital, Baghdad by the US in an airstrike.

Iran, a military power house in the Middle East, has vowed to “harshly” avenge the death of Soleimani, 62, who was considered the second most powerful figure in Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The late Soleimani’s successor, General Esmail Ghaani told Iranian state TV on Monday that “God the Almighty has promised to take martyr Soleimani’s revenge. Certainly, actions will be taken.”

The US President, Donald Trump, meanwhile, has threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites if the gulf country tried to avenge the death of Soleimani by attacking Americans or US assets.

In a tweet, Donald Trump said Iran “is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets.”

He said the US had “targeted 52 Iranian sites” and that some were “at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, will be hit very fast and very hard”.

These utterances, Dr Antwi-Danso said does not bode well for the world especially the third world.

“The United Nations (UN) has called for calm but has anybody ever listened to the UN? That is why the African Union (AU) and the third world must continue to call for calm,” he said.

According to Dr Antwi-Danso, Iran could attack the US anywhere knowing very well that it would be difficult hurting US on America soil “and that is the danger we face as a third world.”

He said the US’ threat to hit Iran if it retaliated was real and that carrying out such threats depended on Iran’s reaction, though Dr Antwi-Danso wonders if Iran would budge on its threat to retaliate the killing of Soleimani.

In his view, the world was likely to experience more terror attacks because the late Soleimani had effectively defeated ISIS in the gulf area and with his demise, the group could return even more lethal in its attacks.