Iran practices sabotaging global oil trade, US girds Manila for war on Taiwan

(Originally published Feb. 19 in “What in the World“) As it holds talks in Geneva about whether it will give up its nuclear weapons program to avoid a threatened U.S. attack, Iran this week demonstrated the stakes by holding military exercises near the Strait of Hormuz.

The exercises were meant both as a show of power, which is unimpressive next to the mighty force of the two aircraft carrier strike groups Trump is positioning next to Iran to anchor a potential regime-changing assault by the U.S. military. But they were also meant to demonstrate how, however devastating such an attack might be, Tehran could block the 33km-wide strait and thus disrupt up to a quarter of the global oil trade.

Trump, meanwhile, continues to amass forces in the Middle East in preparation for what some are saying is 90% likely to be a sustained campaign of at least weeks against Iran. With the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group steaming across the Atlantic to the region from the Caribbean to join the USS Abraham Lincoln there, Trump has also been dispatching additional F-22 and F-35 fighters and command-and-control aircraft to bases in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as well as adding air defenses to the region. Once the two carrier strike groups are in place, moreover, the U.S. will have the 13 destroyers in the region.

While Trump is considering several military options, the plan seems to be to rain bombs on Iran’s leadership and military, but send in no troops and avoid targeting civilians, in the hope that doing so topples Iran’s government.

Trump’s buildup of military forces around Iran, however, has come at the cost of efforts to “contain” China, dispatching the USS Abraham Lincoln to the Arabian Sea and leaving the South China Sea free of a U.S. carrier group to deter China’s territorial aims there.

Trump hasn’t forgotten China, though. The U.S. State Dept. said Tuesday it would send more missile launchers to the Philippines to deter China. It didn’t say what kind. But it turns out that last April the U.S. Army brought a medium-range Typhon missile launcher to the Philippines during joint exercises in Luzon, then left it. In November, Manila said it was considering buying a Typhon. The Typhon can fire standard anti-ship missiles as well as Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of up to 1,600km, meaning it could conceivably hit targets over most of the South China Sea and even in Mainland China.

While the U.S. is using the Philippines as a forward base to defend Taiwan from what the Pentagon has for years warned is imminent Chinese invasion, it’s also now obligated to beef up its defense of the Philippines from China’s efforts to grab Philippine atolls in the South China Sea. In early 2023, Manila and Washington expanded the five Philippine military bases U.S. forces had access to under their 2014 Enhanced Defense Security Cooperation Agreement to nine bases.

Later that year, Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. won a commitment from the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden to modernize the Philippine military as part of an expanded the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty. That 1951 agreement commits the two nations to come to the other’s defense in the event of foreign attack. The updated agreement broadened that commitment so that an armed attack anywhere the Pacific Ocean, including anywhere in the South China Sea, would invoke their mutual defense commitment.