Editorial

The war in West Asia has started taking a direct toll on ordinary citizens—the fuel quotas last week and, beginning this week, a steep increase in their electricity and gas bills. The knock-on effect is higher food prices and the resultant increase in the cost of living. The Government has a convenient excuse—the war. Its critics say the Government has taken advantage of the war to cover up its dismal handling of a coal tender that has aggravated the domestic fuel crisis. And to cap it all, a water shortage has already been announced.

There is a double whammy for the Government in the crisis. The Energy Minister is indicted in court for corruption in his previous avatar as an ‘official’, while allegations of corruption surface over the botched coal tender under his present position as ‘minister’. The ruling JVP-NPP combine that rode to power on the platform of fighting corruption of past governments is defending its minister, standing exposed to public scrutiny on its doublespeak.

Countries throughout the world have been hard hit by the war started by the US-Israel axis, with Iran retaliating, both holding the world to ransom as they fight it out in what is now becoming a battle of wits and a matter of pride for the warring parties. Different nations have adopted different strategies to meet the challenges; some have reduced taxes to give relief to their citizens due to the higher oil prices, while others are raising prices and rationing to curtail usage. Sri Lanka is also resurrecting ‘old friends’ like Russia for help.

The Foreign Minister is, however, confident supplies from China, Russia, and India will come to the aid of Sri Lanka in due course and responded to the US President’s invitation to ‘those countries that can’t get fuel to buy from the USA’.

The news from the ‘war front’ is hardly encouraging. While Iran has been bombed incessantly, resulting in heavy civilian deaths and infrastructure loss, including to its military, and seen its political and military leadership assassinated in the hope of ‘regime change’, the USA faces the prospect of a quagmire and unanticipated intensity of missile and drone attacks on the battlefront, as well as the domestic impact on consumers at the gas station.

The US was unable to provide security to its Gulf allies and has seemingly lost the support of its European allies. With Iran’s strike on Amazon’s Cloud operation in Bahrain, the war enters a new tech-security domain beyond physical borders. As for its partner-in-war, Israel, the one-time aspiration of living in peace and security appears even more distant.

US President Donald Trump addressed the nation on Wednesday, and deciphering his message was a challenge. On the one hand, he was preparing to use the military to “decimate” Iran “to the Stone Age where they belong” because that was necessary for the safety of America and the security of the free world. Nevertheless, buried in his speech was a desire for an exit route. “Discussions are ongoing,” he said. “Regime change was not our goal. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable.” He then went on to describe the devastation that he would impose on Iran if no deal was made. No sooner had he spoken than a missing US fighter pilot might well be the first American hostage in Iran in 45 years.

With Iran’s weaponisation of the Strait of Hormuz, the world at large is bracing for shortages not just of oil, gas and fertiliser, but also of vital petrochemicals and compounds such as sulphur, helium, methanol and ethylene—all essential for multiple civilian applications in Artificial Intelligence (AI), data centres, transport, household appliances, medicines, medical equipment, computer microchips and batteries.

President Trump has declared that he has no interest in opening the Strait and has challenged the countries needing supplies through the passage to “go get your own oil”. Meanwhile, ‘regime change’ has occurred in Hormuz, with Iran implementing a selective tollgate regime based on ‘geopolitical vetting’, with the toll paid reportedly in Chinese yuan. Vessels of ‘friendly nations’—China, Russia, Pakistan, India, France, etc.—have been allowed to go through. Vessels “belonging to the aggressor parties, namely the United States and the Zionist regime, as well as other participants in this aggression, do not qualify“, according to Iran.

Telephone lines to Tehran from world capitals are busier than ever these days, not to Washington. It will be interesting to see what happens to any voting if and when yet another UN resolution is introduced condemning Iran for its military strikes on Gulf states housing US bases.`

In the multilateral domain, Bahrain, as president of the UN Security Council for April, tries to garner Council support backed by Gulf Arab states and Washington for a resolution authorising the use of force for the opening of the Straits. The effort was opposed by China, Russia and France. In parallel, China, the world’s largest importer of oil through the Gulf, has drawn attention to the 5-point Initiative put forward together with Pakistan. It includes the security of shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz.

Looming on the multilateral horizon later this month is another happening that is relevant to the genesis of the joint US/Israel aggression on Iran—the 11th review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The review of this treaty, which was drawn up to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, arrives at a time of increasing nuclear danger and two theatres of active war involving a nuclear weapons state and a non-nuclear state—the Russian Federation and Ukraine—and the attacks against Iran by two nuclear-armed states—NPT non-member Israel and the USA.

On the diplomatic front, the upcoming Trump-Xi summit, now rescheduled for May, could augur well if both are agreed to work through trusted back channels for an off-ramp to the current conflict in West Asia, in the best interest of the new world order in the making. Pakistan has already made some initial moves in this direction.

In the meantime, the world economy is held hostage, enduring continuing conflict, supply chain dislocation, financial market turmoil, energy crises, shortages and price hikes all round due to a foolhardy miscalculation of what was to be a 4-day ‘excursion’ by the US President and his cowboys, now to its second month. The hapless UN chief put it metaphorically—when the Straits are “strangled”, the world’s poorest and most vulnerable cannot breathe, he said, citing rising food and energy costs in the Philippines, Mozambique, and Sri Lanka.