The world on edge

The world on edge | Daily Tribune

The world is on edge as US President Donald Trump — pressured by Israel to directly engage in its latest conflict with Iran — left a Group of 7 summit with world leaders in Alberta, Canada ahead of schedule.

This year’s summit — held annually by the US, the United Kingdom, West Germany, Canada, France, Japan, and Italy to find common ground on critical global issues — started on Sunday, 15 June, and was supposed to run until late Tuesday. But Trump abruptly left “because of what is going on in the Middle East,” according to the White House press office.

Whether he accedes or not to Israel’s urging to help the latter demolish once and for all Iran’s nuclear program is on everyone’s mind.

The latest Israel-Iran konfrontasi started Friday last week when Israel launched a large-scale aerial assault targeting Iran’s nuclear and missile facilities and military sites across cities, including Tehran and Natanz, the site of Iran’s central facility for uranium enrichment.

But after five days of bombing, Israel is far from hitting Iran’s Fordo nuclear site, believed to contain nearly 3,000 sophisticated centrifuges in two enrichment halls.

The Fordo facility is buried deep inside a mountain to protect it from attack and, apparently, the only weapon that could blast the facility — the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bunker buster designed to destroy well-buried weapons in highly protected facilities.

Only the US has it, along with the B-2 bomber that can carry it. Trump has long made clear that he is opposed to US involvement in other countries’ wars but he is, at the same time, very much against a nuclear-armed Iran.

If he reverses himself by providing Israel with both the bomb and the bomb carrier, he would drag the US into the conflict and ignite what everyone dreads — a global war, with Iran striking US targets across the Middle East, aiming missiles at countries in the Gulf hosting US air bases, and Israel mounting further attacks, binding the region to continuous strikes and counter strikes.

What would transpire in such a dire scenario? What would happen if Iran tries to close the Strait of Hormuz, restricting the movement of oil? What if the Houthis in Yemen — Iran’s proxy known for unpredictability and an appetite for high risks — redouble their efforts to attack ships in the Red Sea?

The world, as we know it, would go into economic shock. Soaring oil prices would add to inflation in a global economic system already groaning under the weight of Trump-imposed tariffs.

And in all this is the one man who will benefit from high oil prices — Vladimir Putin, who stands to gain billions more to continue his war against Ukraine and who knows where else next.

The Israel-Iran conflict might seem far removed from Southeast Asia, but in a hyper-connected world, distance does not insulate countries in the region from a crisis in the Middle East.

Southeast Asia will be caught in the crosswinds, considering that at least 20 percent of the world’s oil, the lifeblood of Asia’s major economies, passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s unleashing of attack boats and mines, and heightened risks to commercial vessels, will see a spike in global shipping rates, sending insurance premiums and energy prices skyrocketing.

A protracted disruption of the Middle East oil flow will have real inflationary consequences, and the most fearful outcome of the crisis would be America jumping into the fray if Iran attacks US bases, transforming a regional war into a global confrontation.

This will hit Southeast Asia as well, with the US expecting its friends to be its allies. ASEAN neutrality is ill-equipped for a world split not by ideology but by supply chains.

Already, Southeast Asian currencies, including the Philippines’, are under pressure from capital outflows, and fears of a global war will exacerbate this. Southeast Asian central banks will face difficult decisions of whether or not to raise interest rates to defend their currencies or to allow depreciation and risk inflation.

What would worsen things is if the US economy overheats due to wartime spending and the US Federal Reserve raises rates. As a consequence, emerging Asian economies could face a double blow: higher debt servicing costs and fewer foreign inflows.

The Israel-Iran quarrel isn’t just about uranium enrichment and missile strikes. This is all about the fiercest of power rivalries with the rest of the world, Southeast Asia included, caught in the crosswinds of it all.

We, in our own little corner of this troubled world need to brace ourselves, and pray, with all that our Roman Catholic faith can muster, that none of the dire scenarios being painted come to pass.