A former Philippine ambassador to Saudi Arabia warned on Saturday that the ongoing US-Israeli military campaign against Iran risks becoming an open-ended conflict with no clear objective — and said the two million Filipinos working across the Middle East now face mounting uncertainty.
Adnan Alonto, who served as Manila’s envoy to Riyadh under the Duterte administration, said the war’s origins are what make it particularly difficult to interpret: Washington and Tehran were deep in nuclear negotiations when the strikes began.
“The attacks started in the middle of negotiations,” Alonto said, adding that the timing had left many observers baffled. Attacking a counterpart mid-diplomacy, he noted, defied conventional logic.
President Donald Trump has since framed the campaign in terms of regime change — seeking not merely to degrade Iran’s military capacity, but to reshape its government.
Alonto said that ambition significantly raises the conflict’s costs. “If the US insists on choosing the next Iranian rulers, the war could drag on indefinitely,” he said.
The stakes extend well beyond the battlefield.
Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes.
Alonto said prolonged fighting there would continue to pressure global energy markets — a concern already being felt in the Philippines, which imports nearly all of its fuel.
Even energy self-sufficient nations, he noted, are not insulated: oil is priced globally, and supply disruptions anywhere ripple everywhere.
For the Philippines, however, the calculus is more direct.
Remittances from overseas Filipino workers — roughly two million of whom are based across the Middle East — represent a substantial share of the country’s GDP.
Alonto called this both an economic and a national security concern.
Drawing on his time in Riyadh, where he served during the Saudi-Houthi conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic, Alonto said the diplomatic mission’s most critical function is protecting Filipinos abroad.
During the pandemic, he personally oversaw the chartering of five aircraft to repatriate the dead — a logistical feat he described as among the hardest of his tenure.
He was critical of a recent viral incident in which a Department of Migrant Workers employee was filmed treating distressed OFWs with visible contempt.
Alonto said he had a strict policy during his ambassadorship: no one was permitted to frown at a Filipino in need.
“Those who cannot smile should not be at the frontlines,” he said.
On repatriation, Alonto was direct: airspace closures are not an acceptable excuse for inaction.
The Philippine government, he said, has the diplomatic leverage and logistical capacity to bring workers home — if it chooses to exercise it.
The trajectory of the war, he said, may ultimately be decided not by firepower but by what remains when the fighting ends.
If Iran emerges structurally intact, he argued, it will have effectively won — regardless of the body count.
“Nothing will have been achieved,” he said. “And that is a victory for Iran.”