MOJTABA Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, has given three conditions for Tehran’s war with the United States and Israel to end: first, the dismantlement of all US military bases in the Gulf; second, the assurance that there will be no more US aggression against Iran; and third, a payment of $500 billion by the US to Iran as war reparations.
There appears to be no way the US would agree to any of these conditions. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly asserted that the war will end on America’s terms.
As Trump has repeatedly said, Khamenei’s regime must give way to a leadership at America’s beck and call; the Strait of Hormuz must stay open for international navigation (translation: Gulf oil remains in American control); and US military bases in the Gulf stay untouched (as though they have not been substantially damaged already).
The US and Iran are diametrically opposed in their positions of ending the war — no way to reconcile.
And that’s where the Philippines finds itself at.
The longer the war lasts, the more likely it would drag the Philippines into the vortex of the conflict. Like the Gulf countries, the Philippines hosts US military bases, the ones provided for under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). With China not quite covert in its support of Iran (intelligence feed here, hypersonic missiles there, of late the introduction to the warfare of the splitable modular drones capable of splitting into eight before hitting targets — whose technology is China’s monopoly to date — all these add up to China’s eventual opening-up in support of Iran), it is highly likely that Beijing would eventually openly take up Tehran’s side in the hostilities.
When that happens, God forbid, the Philippines will be instantly transformed into a blasting field for China’s unimaginable prowess at advanced war weaponry.
It is a very basic question of self-defense for China. What would it do but respond in like measure when missiles are fired against it from American military bases in the Philippines?
The nine so-called EDCA sites are Camp Melchor de la Cruz in Gamu, Isabela, and Lalo Airport and the Camilo Osias Naval Base in Cagayan, with all three being less than 200 kilometers away from mainland China; Balabac Island in Palawan, which is face to face with forward Chinese military bases in the South China Sea; and the five originally chosen — Lumbia Airbase in Cagayan de Oro, Cesar Basa Airbase in Pampanga, Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base in Cebu, and Antonio Bautista Air Base in Palawan.
The latest we heard, all these bases are now equipped with the much-touted Typhon medium-range missile launch system capable of firing nuclear warheads at China.
China raised hell over the Typhons. What do you expect? You see somebody digging your grave, you keep your hands akimbo?
Judging by the way China has been providing Iran with every kind of support, it certainly must have already devised means for neutralizing the US’ war capability in the event the Middle East war spreads to the Asia-Pacific.
It’s just too bad that by protecting itself, China must hurt the Philippines.
In any event, self-preservation is the primordial instinct. There is nothing you can do about it.
Initially, Typhons in the Philippines were just the ones used in war exercises in Ilocos Norte two years ago. Despite China’s protests, the US proceeded to equip all the EDCA bases with the feared missile launchers.
As things stand, nobody is sure where else in the Philippines has America installed the Typhons. If the strategic intent was to finish China, then it must be all over the archipelago.
At any rate, with the war capability it has displayed in assisting Iran in its fight with the US, China is several steps ahead in the conduct of war.
Might not China, then, use this superiority to good advantage?
Let go of any sense of goodwill on the part of America. The lesson of the 1945 atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki clearly depicts an America incapable of having any qualm about resorting to utter atrocities to achieve its evil aims.
America blasted its own USS Maine in 1898 to blame it on Spain, with which it warred and consequently embarked on world colonization. An early victim was the Philippines, which it occupied at a cost of hundreds of thousands of Filipino lives.
America invented the myth of the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 to justify its intervention in the Vietnam War.
America allegedly crashed its own Twin Towers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, to drum up public support for its war on terror against al-Qaeda — when at that very hour then-president George W. Bush was hobnobbing in Florida with a cousin of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s leader.
Told about the Twin Tower crash, Bush shrugged.
America is terribly capable of doing all those atrocities and more, if given the slightest chance.
Failing in his one-week timetable to defeat Iran, what Trump must have in mind now is a long war. This is evident from his request to the US Congress for an additional $50 billion (the weeklong skirmishes have already cost America $5 billion) to fund the war.
If a long siege is what Trump is preparing for, then he must see that a short-term skirmish is not winnable for him.
Meaning, therefore, if the idea is to beat America once and for all, beat it now.
China, you have the capacity to do it. Do it now.
By that alone can the Iran conflagration be kept from spreading into the Asia-Pacific, therefore saving the Philippines.