War so far

Bad luck and trouble, as the common superstition goes, come in threes. It feels that way after three distinct shockwaves from the three-week old Persian Gulf war came crashing on our shores.

The first shockwave undoubtedly is the sky-high fuel prices and depleting fuel stocks. On the horizon, looms the second shockwave of inflation. Farther out is the third shockwave of uncertainty for the safety of the Middle East OFWs and seafarers and their life-saving remittances.

Each shockwave, by all accounts, is a crisis and needs serious and practical responses.

In the meantime, what we don’t need are panic and ignorance over the progress of the US/Israel war on Iran.

Keeping abreast of the war is the best thing we can do even before praying that our troubles will go away.

So, three weeks in, global strategy and military experts agree the Persian Gulf war has become an asymmetric contest, pitting the conventional military might of the US and Israel against a humbled but still tenacious Iranian government astutely threatening to sink world economies in the Strait of Hormuz.

While the Americans and Israelis firebombed to oblivion Iran’s leadership and armed forces, Iran with its vast arsenal of cheap drones, short-range rockets, and sea mines took strategic control of the strait, stranding over 1,000 oil tankers and cargo vessels.

Shipping lines, mariners and insurance brokers have largely decided not to risk deaths or financial losses by running the Hormuz gauntlet.

But Iran choking energy supplies and commercial shipping through the vital waterway practically dragged the US into a war of economic attrition and inflicted immense pain around the world, particularly in Asia and Europe.

Most strategists say Iran is currently in the driver’s seat insofar as where the war is headed and is still able to maintain its ability to target energy infrastructure in the Persian Gulf.

Whether US forces can protect global commerce and whether President Donald Trump can take other steps to cushion the blows to the global economy are vital questions that keep people awake these days.

After lighting the powder keg on one of the most strategically sensitive waterways on earth, Trump amazingly called on the “abused” US allies to deploy their warships as escorts for commercial vessels.

Trump’s comical “bail out my ass” call led CNN to sardonically ask: “If Trump has already won the Iran war, why does he need foreign ships to help him end it?”

None of the US allies Trump begged for help was especially eager to play a supporting role to his Israeli-induced, regime-change adventurism in the Middle East.

In refusing to help, the countries basically alluded to the “Pottery Barn rule” — you break it, you own it. A furious Trump soon took back his request.

The US military, meanwhile, expressed wariness about sending its warships into the strait, “with Navy officials warning that Iranian drones and antiship missiles could turn the area into a ‘kill box’ for US sailors,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

But the US said it was keeping all options open, including the use of ground troops. At week’s end, Trump ordered a Marine expeditionary force to the region, even as Iran’s 190,000-strong Islamic Revolutionary Guard and its Quds force remain largely intact.

Worried strategists warned that American “boots on the ground” would replicate the Vietnam-war era “escalation trap” and quagmire as well as impede comprehensive negotiations and diplomatic off-ramps, the only viable way to prevent Armageddon.