The Philippines could suffer a setback in its efforts to counter Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea if the United States shifts its attention from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East, observers have warned.
Iran on Tuesday retaliated against US strikes on its nuclear facilities by launching at least six missiles at an American base in Qatar, but Doha said the attack had been thwarted. The spectre of a closure of the vital Hormuz Strait shipping artery has also loomed over the conflict.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said he will ask Russian President Vladimir Putin for additional support.
Later on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump claimed that Israel and Iran had worked out a “complete and total ceasefire”. But Iran’s foreign minister said there would be no cessation of hostilities unless Israel stopped its attacks, while Israel said hours after Trump’s announcement that Iran had launched missiles towards it.
Though the US remains rhetorically committed to the Indo-Pacific as its “priority theatre”, experts caution that it is not immune to strategic overstretch.
“In a worst-case scenario, the US could become increasingly reactive to events in the Levant and Gulf, allowing China to exploit windows of inattention in the South China Sea,” Arnaud Leveau, an assistant professor of geopolitics at Paris Dauphine University, told This Week in Asia.
“This risk underscores the need for burden-sharing and long-term coordination with allies,” he said. “A distracted America may act as a stress test for regional deterrence architectures and accelerate calls for more strategic autonomy from their allies in Europe and Asia.”
While there had been similar concerns over the Ukraine-Russia war, US involvement in that conflict was largely indirect, noted Muhammad Faizal Abdul Rahman, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
But Faizal told This Week in Asia it might be a different scenario for the Middle East.
Previous US administrations, he pointed out, had attempted to shift focus away from the Middle East towards the Indo-Pacific. However, major developments in the region – along with the influence of a strong pro-Israel lobby on US foreign policy – have continued to draw Washington back.
“When the US launched Operation Midnight Hammer, it had the limited objective of obliterating Iran’s nuclear capabilities and compelling Iran to surrender,” Faizal said, referring to the American strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities at the weekend.
“What the US fails or refuses to see is that Iran considers the US as working in tandem to cause regime change, and that the Iranians are a proud people. If Iran’s pride and perception of existential crisis clash with Trump’s strongman ego and pro-Israel stance, the Middle East conflict would likely escalate or at least prolong.”
