THE current Middle East war — brewing for several months and finally erupting with the United States and Israel bombarding Iran with precision missiles, causing extensive damage to the oil-rich country, with Iran retaliating with its own arsenal of modern weapons targeting vital military installations of the US in the region, as well as important places in Israel — has thrown a monkey wrench on the economic structures of the warring countries, necessarily affecting the rest of the economies of the world reliant on oil and gasoline.
The nearly five-year war of aggression launched by Russia against Ukraine, culminating in its actual invasion, not without Iran’s continuing fierce resistance, and the three-year ongoing war between Israel and Hamas have developed into a war itch that has infected no less than the US.
In a stunning, blistering assault in the second week of March, US forces unleashed major airstrikes on Kharg island, Iran’s main oil center in the Persian Gulf, destroying military structures and installations, but avoiding direct damage to oil-processing infrastructures.
Joining the US in its assault, Israel has carried a new wave of air strikes against Iran. The latter has retaliated with a wave of attacks across the region. As a consequence of this continuing exchange of deadly missiles, damage to Iran’s territories and the military installations of both the US and Israel has been extensive. The deadly violence between the combatants resulted in the cancellation of thousands of airline flights to avoid the airspace in the Middle East, disrupting worldwide business and personal itineraries and tourist travels.
Apart from the loss of lives and destruction of property, Iran lost its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The latter was killed in a joint US-Israel airstrike on Tehran on Feb. 28, 2026, causing turmoil in Iran’s significant leadership. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was subsequently appointed to succeed him. Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports say Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was killed following retaliatory air strikes by Iran on Israel.
Undoubtedly, the Middle East war in modern history has triggered unprecedented global disruptions. It threatens energy supply chains. It drove up fuel prices. It disrupted global aviation. It trapped migrant workers. It disturbed the world’s equilibrium.
Govt unprepared on war’s consequences
The regional chaotic condition has exposed the government’s unpreparedness to cope up and respond to the demands of the times. Given that in the past three years the tension in the Middle East has been heightening, and there were already ominous signs that the armed conflict between the warring countries would escalate into a full-blown war that would bring adverse consequences to our country, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his administration should have already laid out plans and programs to minimize the impact on the country’s economy by a long drawn regional war.
The overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) caught in the middle of this dreadful war have been left to their wilds. There is absolutely no relocation program for them for their safety, nor is there any evacuation program put in place for their immediate repatriation.
The government gives the stupid excuse about the absence of flights when other countries have already either relocated their people to safe places or flown their countrymen to the safety of their homelands. While it is true there are canceled commercial flights, the government could simply charter flights and bring the OFWs home. Moreover, it could have prepared for this eventuality by purchasing needed aircraft to ferry the OFWs away from the war-torn countries. The country has enough billions from taxpayers to buy those airplanes, but it instead allowed its corrupt officials to pocket them.
The government could have already pinpointed sanctuaries for the OFWs prior to the eruption of the present war.
It also could have already provided the country with sufficient reserved supply of oil and gas. The excuse that it could not do so because there is not enough oil and reservoirs shows how inept the government is. All it has to do is to construct these reservoirs!
It could have done a lot of other things to reduce the grave negative consequences on the economy and on the lives of our people that the war brings, but it is incompetent and uncreative that it has not risen to the challenges that the war imposed.
Retribution against the Dutertes
Instead, the current crop of politicians wielding political power have focused their time and energy on waging a war of retribution and annihilation against the Dutertes and their allies.
Stealing and using the people’s money, they have forced their colleagues to initiate the impeachment process against Vice President Sara Duterte for the sole purpose of disqualifying her from running and winning the 2028 presidential elections. They have continued their unrelenting smearing of her name and character. They have persecuted the Duterte supporters by filing baseless court actions.
Prior to this black propaganda on Inday Sara, they conspired with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in arresting, detaining, kidnapping and surrendering her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, to the ICC in blatant violation of the Constitution, and in utter and treasonous surrender of the country’s sovereignty. The former chief executive, beloved and admired by millions of Filipinos, who left enduring legacies that benefited a grateful Filipino nation, old and frail, in a state of cognitive imbalance, suffering from a host of ailments, now languishing in jail at the ICC custodial center, unjustly deprived of his freedom and forcibly exiled from the land of his birth.
Amid this horrific war and the government’s incompetence, the head of state opted to waste the people’s money on an unnecessary US trip that could have been done instead by the Philippine ambassador to the US or the foreign affairs secretary.
The legislators continue with their unproductive investigation of the massive flood control projects’ corruption, covering up for the culprits and letting them escape from accountability, enjoying their loot, focusing on their dastardly act of impeaching Vice President Duterte with patently absurd and groundless impeachable grounds.
Indeed, as the saying goes, whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
Their time of reckoning will come, and soon.