Mired in a mess not of our making

Three weeks into one of the most consequential conflicts of the 21st century, the world is watching — and worrying.

The US-Israeli war on Iran began with joint strikes on 28 February and has since spiralled into a crisis that has closed vital shipping lanes, sent oil prices soaring, and fractured Western unity in ways that will take years to repair.

Three weeks have passed and no end to the Middle East crisis is in sight. Meanwhile, Iran continues to launch rockets and drones at its neighbors as well as at ships in the Gulf, and global energy prices are soaring.

President Donald Trump has called on China and US allies to deploy warships and escort oil-bearing merchant ships in and out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route blockaded by Iran. China — one of the biggest buyers of Iran oil and whose oil tankers are allowed through the Gulf safely — is understandably not too keen on acceding to Trump’s request.

No one, so far, has acceded to Trump’s request — seen as an attempt, too late, to build an international coalition against Iran. “This is not our war,” said Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius. “We did not start it.”

For his part, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s carefully calibrated position encapsulates the dilemma faced by countries that neither initiated nor endorsed the Mideast war: “Great Britain would not be drawn into a wider war.”

He said reopening the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman where about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes — is “not a simple task,” but he insisted that the UK is working with European partners and Gulf allies on a viable collective plan which has yet to be publicly disclosed.

Starmer is not alone in this stance. EU foreign ministers in Brussels have stressed that they, likewise, do not want to escalate the war.

In Asia, Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi too has suggested that operations in the Strait might not pass legal muster, even as Australia said it has not been asked to contribute and would not be sending ships.

France, for its part, rejected Trump’s urging to deploy offensive forces to the Strait, saying that it would maintain a “defensive” position.

An irate President Trump has threatened that the European countries’ refusal to comply with his request for warships and to secure vessels through the Strait of Hormuz would “be very bad for the future of NATO.”

The Western alliance, already strained by years of transactional diplomacy by Washington, is being pulled in directions it was never designed to go.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian toll is staggering. More than 1,200 Iranian civilians are estimated to have been killed and up to 3.2 million temporarily displaced. In Lebanon, over 800 people have lost their lives, and more than 800,000 were displaced.

The conflict has already caused the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market, with traffic through the Strait of Hormuz at a near-standstill since the fighting began. Oil prices have breached $105 a barrel, imposing a painful hidden tax on every economy on earth.

As for how long this crisis will last, no one can say for certain. Trump appears unable to convincingly explain to the world why he launched the war or how he plans to end it.

Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, elected on 8 March to replace his slain father, has received pledges of allegiance from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s top leadership, suggesting that Tehran, far from collapsing, is consolidating around a hardened resistance posture.

Interviewed on CBS on Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran “sees no reason” to negotiate with the US and will continue to fight for “as long as it takes.”

The saddest part is that nations bearing the most economic pain — from the Philippines to South Korea, India to the European Union — had no seat at the table when this war was decided.

Those refusing to jump into the fray and risk being swept into a wider conflict have not shown weakness but wisdom, a recognition that wars begun with no clear endgame leave everyone poorer, less safe, and more divided.

The challenge now is whether enough nations can summon the collective will to build the off-ramp that neither Washington nor Tehran, in their present postures, seem willing to construct.

And at this point, what that exit strategy should be is as nebulous as the reason why Trump — in the first place — had dragged the US, and most of the world, into a war in the Middle East.