IRRITATED by the Iran virus “threatening the US with its nuclear program,” President Donald Trump went on a sneeze spree in March 2026, spray-bombing over 1,000 targets in the opening day of the undeclared war on Iran predicting an easy, fast and complete victory.
Successive sneezes threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if Tehran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz “within 48 hours” and “death of a whole civilization if an agreement is not reached to end the conflict.”
All these after Trump:
– Said the US was “winding down” its military operations in Iran.
– Claimed that “the US ‘has blown Iran off of the map’” and insisted that he has “met my own goals... and weeks ahead of schedule!”
– Reiterated that Iran’s “leadership is gone, their navy and air force are dead, they have absolutely no defense, and they want to make a deal.”
On April 7, 2026. President Trump declared “total and complete victory. 100 percent.”
“No question about it,” he told Agence France-Presse.
To counter claims of reneging on his promise to “stop, not start foreign wars” and following Pope Leo XIV’s criticism of the Iran war as being inhumane, Mr. Trump posted an image of himself as a Jesus-like figure healing the sick, bedridden and anxious believers.
After avid and rabid supporters decry the posting as “unholy” even branding the president as an “anti-Christ” and “Blasphemer-in-Chief” Trump deleted his post claiming it “was meant to portray him as a doctor.”
But like a genie out of the bottle, the sneeze cannot simply be inhaled back.
Dr. Trump’s sneeze infected the world, upending trade and political alignments.
Within days after Iran retaliated by sending attack drones to Gulf state supporters, The New York Times reported on April 15 that “Dubai International Airport — one of the world’s busiest — with five-star hotels, restaurants and coffee shops in the terminal sit mostly empty.”
The Emirates has some 8.7 million migrant workers (including a million overseas Filipino workers) — more than 80 percent of the population — the world’s biggest host of a foreign labor force, according to the International Labor Organization.
Businessworld Online reported last week that 124,717 Filipinos had been repatriated — including 5,404 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and their dependents — by March 5 amid the Middle East conflict.
OFW remittances reflect the war’s effects.
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas posted a $2.79 billion total in February 2026, it was the lowest level recorded since the $2.658 billion in May 2025.
On a month-on-month basis, remittances contracted 7.6 percent from the $3.02 billion posted in January 2026.
A total of $516.512 million, or 17.1 percent, of the remittances came from the Middle East.
Global political realignment
Trump’s tantrums generated mini-political quakes that widened the chasm between traditional allies and historic enemies.
After getting away from the Trump umbrella when the president threatened to make Canada the 51st state of the United States, Prime Minister Mark Carney solidified his electoral footing, securing a parliamentary majority for his Liberal government.
Victor Orban, Trump’s authoritarian ally in Eastern Europe, was ousted in the Hungarian elections this month despite the two-day personal appearance of US Vice President JD Vance urging Hungarian voters to support a “great guy” with a Trump promise to give “the full economic might of the United States to strengthen Hungary’s economy.”
Orban lost by a landslide to Peter Magyar of the opposition party Tisza.
And 994 kilometers northeast of Hungary, “Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party has quietly told its senior politicians to stop making high-profile trips to Washington. The party that once celebrated JD Vance’s attack on European “firewalls” against the far right is now keeping a careful distance from the movement whose coattails it wants to ride toward respectability.
Down south, France’s Marine Le Pen was publicly questioning “whether anyone in the world actually understands what Donald Trump wants to achieve in Iran,” an intervention with “very little preparation done”... strikes being “carried out blindly” leading to the “catastrophic consequences of the war on fuel prices.”
“Sacre bleu!”
At the height of their power, Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni were bosom friends.
“You don’t mind being called beautiful, right?” Mr. Trump complimented Ms. Meloni at a summit in Egypt last October.
After suffering major political setbacks, including the recent defeat on judiciary reforms, Meloni seized on Trump’s pointed attack on the Pope Leo XIV “to extricate herself from a relationship that had grown domestically and internationally poisonous.”
Meloni rallied to the American pontiff’s defense, saying, “I find President Trump’s remarks about the Holy Father unacceptable.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was quick to denounce the attacks on Iran as “reckless and illegal, and brushed off threats from Trump to cut trade with Spain if it did not allow jointly operated bases to be used for the war.”
The much-vaunted 2025 National Security Strategy of building a transatlantic political block with Europe’s far-right suddenly has little left.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated the naked truth to an emperor without clothes: “This is not our war; we have not started it.”
Fever break?
On April 18, 2026, President Donald Trump declared that Iran has agreed to all his demands to end its nuclear program forever and said that talks to finalize the deal, “probably” held this weekend, “should go very quickly.”
Iran’s official statement, however, merely confirmed the “limited” reopening of the Strait of Hormuz while the two-week ceasefire is in effect unless a broader agreement is reached, and that travel was permitted only along the Iran-approved “coordinated route.”
A two-week congestion relief resulted in instant benefits to investors and corporate America as the stock markets extended an “astonishing” rally.
S&P 500 has climbed almost 10 percent, the best monthly gain since 2020” — according to New York Times — “when markets were rebounding from the pandemic-induced sell-off.”
The Nasdaq Composite index, laden with technology stocks, performed better, posting its 13th consecutive day of gains, its best run since 1992.
The rest of us though will have to wait for gas pump and food prices to come down, and remittances to climb back up.
OFWs will choose to remain in the Gulf states to resume reconstruction work instead of being repatriated waiting for “pantawid-buhay” dole outs while unemployed.
Hopefully, the sneezing stops.
