标签： Asia

Colombia heads to the polls this Sunday for a high-stakes presidential runoff that will not only shape the country’s domestic future but also reverberate across global geopolitics, particularly when it comes to the ongoing crisis in Gaza. The race pits two candidates with starkly opposing visions against one another: left-wing senator and lifelong human rights advocate Ivan Cepeda, who is tasked with carrying forward the progressive agenda of incumbent President Gustavo Petro, and right-wing populist lawyer and businessman Abelardo de la Espriella, a Trump-endorsed candidate who campaigned on a hardline platform to “rebuild the miracle homeland.”

De la Espriella claimed a narrow lead in the first round of voting held on May 31, securing 43.7 percent of the vote compared to Cepeda’s 40.9 percent, setting the stage for one of the most consequential elections in modern Colombian history. Core domestic issues driving voter turnout include the country’s decades-long unresolved internal armed conflict, entrenched systemic political corruption, and mounting economic and environmental challenges. But unlike many previous elections, the future of Colombia’s relationship with Israel has also emerged as a defining dividing line between the two candidates.

Since October 2023, Latin America’s left-leaning “pink wave” has sparked a region-wide groundswell of pro-Palestine solidarity, and no country has taken a harder public stance against Israel’s actions in Gaza than Colombia. Under Petro’s leadership, Bogota has recalled its ambassador to Israel, suspended arms sales, halted coal exports, severed full diplomatic ties, and co-founded the Hague Group, a multilateral coalition advancing international legal action against Israel over its conduct in Gaza.

“It is difficult to overstate the significance of Colombia’s stance internationally,” noted Francesca Emanuele, senior international policy associate at the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), speaking to Middle East Eye. “Colombia helped create political space for other governments to take stronger positions on Gaza and contributed to the growing international isolation of the Netanyahu government.”

Yet the future of this bold pro-Palestine policy remains far from guaranteed. Recent election shifts in Chile, Bolivia and Honduras have shown that pro-solidarity stances can be reversed if right-wing candidates take power, making Colombia’s runoff a critical test of the region’s commitment to Palestinian rights. To help voters understand where each candidate stands on the issue, BDS Colombia has developed a digital monitoring tool called the Sionistometro, which tracks formal and informal ties between candidates and Israeli-affiliated groups and institutions.

The tool’s analysis found Cepeda has no documented economic or political connections to Zionist-aligned companies, organizations, or the Israeli state itself. The candidate has publicly pledged to “decisively oppose the genocide” in Gaza and has voiced full support for Petro’s landmark policy shifts. Still, BDS Colombia notes that Cepeda has not yet released any new independent policy proposals of his own to advance the current government’s stance, a silence that the group calls concerning, particularly as Colombia retains some residual arms, trade, and cultural ties with Israel. Adopting a more low-profile approach, with his campaign centered on ending Colombia’s long-running internal conflict, political analysts do not expect Cepeda to match Petro’s level of global activism on the issue.

“I don’t think he is likely to be as active on the global stage as Petro,” said Alexander Main, CEPR’s director of international policy, speaking to Middle East Eye. “He is in the shadow of Petro, and that makes it hard for him to distinguish himself.”

De la Espriella, by contrast, has positioned his pro-Israel stance as a core pillar of his national security agenda. During a December 2024 meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, de la Espriella emphasized “the urgent need for Colombia to strengthen its ties of friendship and cooperation with Israel.” According to BDS Colombia’s analysis, the candidate maintains formal political and social ties to the Confederation of Jewish Communities of Colombia, a prominent Zionist organization in the country.

Most recently, de la Espriella outlined a plan to “renew” a “strategic alliance” with both the United States and Israel, including expanded exchange of counterterrorism technology, advanced weapons, drones and artificial intelligence to target domestic criminal groups in Colombia. “A collaboration with Israel would allow these resources to be applied directly to combating criminal structures within the national territory,” his plan reads.

Like other right-wing candidates across Latin America in recent elections, de la Espriella’s pro-Israel stance is heavily shaped by efforts to court the country’s fast-growing conservative evangelical voter base, where Christian Zionist theology, advanced by groups like the Israel Allies Foundation and Philos Latino, has become increasingly influential. His pledge to relocate the Colombian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem mirrors a move first made by Trump for evangelical voters in 2018, a clear signal of his ideological alignment with U.S. conservative politics.

De la Espriella also has deep established ties to the South Florida Republican political establishment, with confirmed connections to pro-Israel Congressmembers Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos A Gimenez, both of whom have publicly supported Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and received campaign funding from major pro-Israel lobbying groups, according to data from TrackAIPAC.

Main argues that de la Espriella’s platform embodies the shared ideological core of the new Latin American right: “a hyper pro-US vision, extreme security policy, a common war on narco-terror, and common adoration for Israel, or what it represents. De La Espriella is adopting that whole mantle.”

The ties between Israel and Colombian politics run far deeper than this election cycle, and are deeply intertwined with the darkest chapters of the country’s recent history. During the peak of Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict between successive governments and left-wing guerrilla groups including the FARC and the ELN, Israeli weapons, military training, and security cooperation were deeply embedded within Colombian state security forces during a period marked by widespread extrajudicial killings and human rights abuses, Emanuele explained.

The human cost of that history is personal for Cepeda: his father was murdered by state-sponsored paramilitaries in August 1994, as part of a systematic extermination campaign against the Patriotic Union, a left-wing political party co-founded by the FARC and the Colombian Communist Party. Nearly 6,000 Patriotic Union members were killed in the campaign carried out by state actors and allied paramilitary groups, a atrocity that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights formally ruled Colombia responsible for in a landmark 2023 decision. For decades after his father’s death, Cepeda has dedicated his political career to documenting these crimes, supporting victims, and demanding accountability, and has served as a lead facilitator for peace talks between the Colombian government, the FARC, and the ELN.

By contrast, de la Espriella has a well-documented history of providing legal defense for political figures accused of collaborating with right-wing paramilitary groups. In 2005, he founded the Foundation for Peace Initiatives, which provided a public platform for former paramilitary commanders at university events and lobbied to block extradition requests for accused paramilitary leaders. Most recently, on June 11, 2026, Cepeda filed a formal criminal complaint against de la Espriella over his alleged ties to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a far-right paramilitary coalition that has been linked to retired Israeli colonel and mercenary Yair Klein, who trained AUC fighters in the 1980s.

“One day, the army and government of Israel will ask forgiveness from us for what their men did on our land,” Petro wrote in October 2023. “We do not support genocides.”

Under Petro’s leadership, Colombia’s stance on Gaza extended far beyond symbolic condemnation, with concrete policy changes that have directly impacted Israel’s economy and military. In August 2024, Petro signed a decree banning all coal exports to Israel, and a year later he signed an even stricter order banning all thermal coal exports without exception, including honoring existing contracts. The policy shift has already had a dramatic impact: between October 2023 and August 2024, Colombia supplied 51 percent of Israel’s total thermal coal imports, which Israel relies on to power illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and fuel its military operations in Gaza. That share dropped to 34 percent in July 2025, and fell to just 6 percent by March 2026. South Africa, another lead critic of Israel’s actions at the International Court of Justice and co-founder of the Hague Group, has since replaced Colombia as Israel’s top thermal coal supplier.

Two of the largest mining companies operating in Colombia, U.S.-based Drummond and Anglo-Swiss multinational Glencore, were the primary suppliers of Colombian coal to Israel. Glencore, which operates the massive El Cerrejon mine in La Guajira, has recently been embroiled in controversy after an investigation by Raya Revista found that union representatives at the mine allege company leadership pressured workers to attend campaign events and vote for de la Espriella to protect their mining jobs. Even after Colombia halted coal exports to Israel, Glencore’s ongoing mining operations in La Guajira and Cesar continue to displace and harm Indigenous communities including the Yukpa and Wayuu peoples, sparking a wave of international solidarity protests that have spread from Bogota to London and Johannesburg.

For many Colombians, the connection between the struggle for Palestinian rights and their own fight for justice against state violence and displacement is not a new one. “From Guajira to Gaza, territory is the material and spiritual base of the people,” explained Javier Marin, a sociologist with Colombian human rights advocacy group Asociacion Minga. Pointing to overlapping patterns of territorial dispossession and systematic human rights violations, Marin noted “we share the same historical condition as the Palestinian people.”

“Palestine has been at the centre of popular movements in Colombia for a long time,” Marin told Middle East Eye. For the past three years, that grassroots solidarity has been reflected in official Colombian government policy—but after Sunday’s election, that policy’s future hangs in the balance.

Global financial markets have breathed a collective sigh of relief following the announcement of a new tentative agreement between the United States and Iran. Oil prices have pulled back from elevated levels, maritime insurers have loosened restrictive pricing policies, and political leaders across the globe have quickly lauded the development as a landmark diplomatic breakthrough. The memorandum of understanding, set to be formally signed in Switzerland on June 19, has already been labeled by some observers as a peace deal that will formally end the long-running standoff between the two nations. But this framing risks drastically overstating the actual progress that has been secured.

According to details of the agreement that have emerged, what both sides have signed off on is nothing more than a guiding diplomatic framework for future negotiations, not a binding peace treaty or a comprehensive resolution of the deep-rooted disputes that pushed the two countries to the edge of a wider regional conflict. All of the most contentious sticking points – from Iran’s controversial nuclear program and the future of US-led economic sanctions to broader regional security questions, including Israel’s ongoing military campaign and occupation in Lebanon – remain completely unresolved, with all discussions deferred to future negotiating rounds.

This distinction is not merely a semantic technicality. International diplomacy operates along a clear spectrum: a ceasefire pauses active hostilities, while a full peace agreement addresses and resolves the underlying disputes that sparked conflict in the first place. The new US-Iran arrangement falls somewhere in the middle of these two endpoints. Core disagreements have been set aside for later talks, and the long-running pattern of so-called “gray-zone” confrontation – including proxy operations, economic coercion, and limited military escalation that stops short of full-scale open war – remains largely unchanged.

There is a second critical reason to approach claims of a “peace deal” with caution. The recent open hostilities only interrupted diplomatic talks that were already ongoing before escalation. This agreement largely just restores the negotiating process that existed prior to the recent conflict, rather than building a new, permanent political settlement. If the central disputes that sparked escalation remain unaddressed, it is fair to question what meaningful “peace” has actually been achieved.

A clear indication of the agreement’s inherent limitations can be found in statements from Washington itself. Even while announcing the tentative “peace deal,” US President Donald Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out future military action against Iran. That is not the rhetoric that typically accompanies a definitive, final peace settlement.

Nor does the framework address the full scope of regional dimensions of the US-Iran standoff. Israel, one of the main actors in the confrontation with Iran, is not a signatory or participant in the arrangement. The deal also fails to resolve ongoing simmering tensions along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, which remains one of the most unstable flashpoints in the Middle East. With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintaining a hardline stance on Lebanon and retaining the right to take unilateral military action, the agreement reads less as a broad regional peace settlement and more as a narrow, bilateral de-escalation mechanism limited to US-Iran relations.

Perhaps the clearest proof that the scope of the deal is being exaggerated is found in what it actually delivers. Strip away the diplomatic fanfare and limited economic concessions offered to Iran, and the agreement primarily just restores the status quo that existed before the most recent conflict escalated – most notably, the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical oil chokepoint.

This context helps explain the overwhelmingly positive market reaction to the announcement. While markets are often said to rally on the prospect of peace, in reality they respond most strongly to the return of stability. Oil traders, shipping firms, and maritime insurers do not prioritize whether decades-long political disputes have been permanently resolved. What matters to them is the free flow of oil through strategic chokepoints, affordable coverage for tanker voyages, and the uninterrupted operation of global supply chains.

The risk of prolonged disruption to the Strait of Hormuz – which carries roughly one-fifth of all globally traded oil – was never trivial. A extended closure would have triggered catastrophic ripple effects across the entire global economy. While oil prices never spiked to the $200 per barrel peak some analysts warned of, that does not mean markets were unbothered by the instability. A large part of why prices remained contained was that governments and private businesses drew down emergency buffer stockpiles that had been built specifically for this kind of crisis. Strategic petroleum reserves were released, existing commercial stockpiles were tapped, and many nations cut back on new imports to rely on stored supplies.

These temporary measures bought critical time for diplomacy, but they could not have been sustained indefinitely. Global strategic oil reserves were already being depleted at a rapid pace amid the ongoing standoff. If Gulf instability had dragged on for just a few more months, governments around the world would have been forced to make increasingly unpalatable trade-offs between taming inflation, sustaining economic growth, and protecting national energy security. Viewed through this lens, the urgency behind reaching this preliminary agreement becomes much easier to understand.

For the United States, prolonged disruption to global energy markets risked reigniting inflationary pressures that remain a major political liability ahead of upcoming elections. For Europe and major Asian economies, higher shipping and energy costs threatened to derail already fragile post-crisis economic recoveries. For dozens of low-income developing nations, another major energy shock would have inflicted severe, widespread economic hardship. As a result, the agreement reflects not just diplomatic strategic calculation, but urgent global economic necessity.

In this context, the biggest winners from the deal may not be Washington or Tehran at all. Instead, they are ordinary consumers, businesses, and central banks across the globe that have narrowly avoided another potentially devastating energy market shock that could have destabilized the world economy.

None of this is to dismiss the real value of what has been achieved. Preventing further escalation into full-scale war is a meaningful accomplishment. Reopening critical global maritime trade routes delivers immediate, widespread benefits to the global economy. And replacing open military confrontation with renewed diplomatic dialogue is unquestionably a better outcome than continued conflict.

If the framework holds, Iran will enter the next round of negotiations in a strong position: it stands to gain near-term sanctions relief, has put diplomacy back on track, and can count on growing US reluctance to consider renewed military action as November’s US midterm elections approach. But accurate framing of the agreement is critical to avoid false expectations. Historically, durable peace agreements resolve core disputes, build shared governance institutions, and establish lasting frameworks for peaceful coexistence. This new arrangement does none of those things – at least not yet.

The underlying disagreements that sparked the recent conflict remain completely unresolved. Iran’s long-term nuclear future is still uncertain. The future of economic sanctions remains a heavily contested issue. Deep-seated regional rivalries between all major actors persist. The risk of renewed confrontation has not been eliminated.

What the two sides have achieved is not comprehensive, lasting peace. It is a tentative ceasefire framework, a short-term mechanism for economic stabilization, and a holding pattern to keep diplomatic talks moving forward. That may well prove to be an important first step toward a broader settlement down the line. But for now, it is not a full peace deal. The most accurate takeaway from the announcement is not that Washington and Tehran have resolved their decades-long differences. It is that both sides faced overwhelming, compelling incentives to step back from the brink of open war – for now.

On June 14, 2026, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who acted as the lead mediator between Washington and Tehran, announced that the two long-warring adversaries had reached a tentative agreement to end open hostilities, with a formal signing ceremony scheduled for June 19 in Switzerland. US President Donald Trump quickly hailed the deal as a major diplomatic and national security triumph on his Truth Social platform, highlighting that the Strait of Hormuz—one of the world’s most critical global oil chokepoints—would reopen to all commercial traffic, the crippling US blockade on Iranian oil exports would be lifted, and global energy markets would see a resumption of Iranian crude flows. What Trump omitted from his celebratory announcement was any mention of Iran’s nuclear program and the size of its enriched uranium stockpile—the core casus belli cited by the US to launch the war in the first place. All of these contentious issues, along with other longstanding points of contention including Iran’s ballistic missile program and its regional allied proxies, have been pushed to future negotiations scheduled to unfold over a 60-day window. As an expert in international and nuclear security, I argue that this agreement delivers no meaningful resolution to the issues that sparked the war, and has left the United States with significantly eroded credibility as a reliable negotiating partner on the global stage.

To understand why the nuclear dispute remains the most intractable barrier to a lasting peace, we can turn to James Fearon’s foundational 1995 rationalist theory of war, which outlines three core barriers that push nations to armed conflict even when both sides would prefer a negotiated settlement: incomplete information about each side’s willingness to commit force and absorb damage, the inability to deliver credible, binding commitments to uphold a deal, and the “indivisibility problem” — when the disputed issue cannot be split or compromised to create a mutually acceptable middle ground.

This recent war has resolved only the first of these three barriers. Both sides have now seen the full scope of each other’s capabilities: how much military force the US was willing to deploy, and how much damage Iran could endure while remaining in active conflict. What even months of war could not fix is the long-running problem of broken commitments between the two nations, a rift that dates back decades.

Iran strictly abided by the terms of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the landmark international nuclear deal that placed strict limits on Tehran’s nuclear activities. The International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly verified that Iran held its uranium enrichment level to 3.67% — a purity suitable only for civilian power reactor use, far below the threshold required for a nuclear weapon — and kept its total enriched uranium stockpile below 300 kilograms, in full compliance with the agreement. Yet in 2018, the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, dismissing the pact as “the worst deal ever negotiated” over its sunset provisions and its failure to address Iran’s ballistic missile program from the start.

When Iran returned to the negotiating table in 2025, the US and Israel launched airstrikes against Iranian targets while talks were still ongoing. Then, in February 2026, as negotiators were closing in on a tentative agreement, another joint US-Israeli strike killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and lead nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani mid-negotiation. This pattern of reneging on diplomatic commitments and breaking off talks with military force is why Iran now demands concrete, enforceable guarantees and immediate sanctions relief before it will sign any final deal, rather than relying on unfulfilled promises of good faith. A nation that honored its nuclear commitments for years only to be attacked has little reason to trust future American promises of concessions. For that reason, the 60-day delay is best understood as a window for Tehran to observe whether the US and Israel will uphold the ceasefire across all regional fronts, including Lebanon.

The indivisibility problem is what makes the nuclear dispute fundamentally unresolvable in the short term. Most international diplomatic disputes can be split into incremental compromises: sanctions can be lifted in phases, for example. Even nuclear programs can be partially restricted, as the JCPOA proved: the deal counted operational centrifuges, capped enrichment levels, and strictly monitored stockpile sizes. What cannot be split is the core disagreement at hand: the US demands that Iran eliminate all uranium enrichment entirely, while Tehran insists uranium enrichment for civilian purposes is an inalienable sovereign right that it will not surrender.

The 2015 JCPOA centered entirely on the nuclear question, arranging for strict, verified limits in exchange for sanctions relief. But during 2025 and early 2026 talks, the US reversed its JCPOA position entirely. Instead of placing limits on an existing program, Washington demanded the full, permanent elimination of Iran’s entire nuclear enrichment infrastructure. US envoy Steve Witkoff insisted on zero enrichment and the permanent dismantling of Iran’s three core nuclear sites: Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan. Iran rejected the demand outright, reaffirming that enrichment is a non-negotiable sovereign right. Both rounds of talks ended in US-Israeli airstrikes.

The upcoming June 19 agreement does not place any cap on Iran’s enrichment activities, nor does it require the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program. It only ends active fighting, reopens the Strait of Hormuz, and pushes all core disputes including enrichment, stockpiles, ballistic missiles, and regional proxies to 60 days of follow-up talks. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Trump claimed he faced no rush to remove Iran’s near-weapons-grade fuel stockpiles stored in facilities damaged by bombing, and asserted that Iran would voluntarily suspend enrichment for 15 to 20 years and only enrich for civilian purposes. This stands in stark contrast to the JCPOA, negotiated under the Obama administration, which physically removed 97% of Iran’s existing enriched stockpile from the country and enforced verified, binding limits on enrichment. Because it fails to address any of the core nuclear issues that sparked the war, the Trump-brokered deal is nothing more than a ceasefire, not a lasting nuclear agreement.

Returning to the rationalist theory of war, we see that the conflict resolved only the information problem, revealing what each side was willing to endure. The commitment problem remains entirely unsolved. Neither side can yet deliver a promise that the other will trust, particularly Iran after its lead negotiators and top leadership were killed mid-negotiation. Worse, the indivisibility problem has only grown more intractable since the war began. The standoff between zero enrichment and Iranian sovereign rights remains as uncompromising as ever, and the 60-day delay is not a step toward resolution—it is just the same unsolved problem with a deadline attached.

The only potential path forward relies on American restraint. If Washington can rein in Israeli strikes against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, it can slowly begin to rebuild the credibility it lost through two rounds of broken negotiations and unprovoked attacks. This is an enormous test for the second Trump administration. Even as the current ceasefire deal was being finalized, Israel launched a strike on Beirut, an attack that could easily derail the upcoming talks. In my view, the 60-day window is not a path to a lasting settlement, but just a temporary pause before the next round of negotiations fails. I argued back in April that this conflict would never end in a clean, final settlement, and would instead unfold as a series of fragile, contested pauses. The June 19 deal is just the first of these pauses.

Iran has emerged from the war with its nuclear enrichment expertise fully intact, its existing stockpile secured, and a strengthened belief that only a fully operational nuclear weapon would deter future US-Israeli attacks. At the same time, Iran proved it could hold its ground against a superior military force, successfully strike US bases and regional allies, and discovered new strategic leverage it did not fully appreciate before the war: control over the Strait of Hormuz has proven to be a far more effective deterrent than a nuclear program ever could be.

Today, the strait is open, oil is flowing, and the core question that the war was fought to resolve remains exactly where it started. Thousands of lives were lost only to bring both sides back to square one. No one has won a meaningful victory, even though both sides will inevitably claim triumph.

During an official state visit to the Philippines on Tuesday, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has publicly articulated Europe’s deep anxiety over rising frictions in the disputed South China Sea, warning that a major escalation in the critical waterway could threaten global freedom of navigation, echoing disruptive disruptions seen in the Strait of Hormuz.

Speaking alongside Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at a joint press briefing in Manila, Steinmeier drew a parallel between the South China Sea situation and past blockades of the Strait of Hormuz amid the Iran conflict, noting that European leaders are particularly focused on ongoing territorial standoffs between Manila and Beijing. He emphasized that the Indo-Pacific, and Southeast Asia in particular, stands as one of the most economically dynamic regions on the planet, making any instability here a pressing concern for European economies and security.

“If any disruptive incident occurs in that part of the world, it will trigger profound alarm across Europe,” Steinmeier stated, speaking through a professional interpreter. “Breaches of international maritime law endanger unimpeded navigation, a lesson the recent Hormuz blockade drove home to us in the most dramatic way possible.”

The closed-door bilateral meeting between the two leaders covered multiple topics of mutual concern, including the fallout of potential Strait of Hormuz disruptions, which have previously driven sharp global spikes in fuel and fertilizer prices.

While Steinmeier stopped short of directly naming any single party as responsible for the ongoing South China Sea tensions, Germany’s long-held position reaffirms that China’s activities in the disputed waters violate the sovereign and economic rights of coastal states including the Philippines, while jeopardizing open navigation for all countries. This stance aligns with comments made by then-German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her 2024 visit to Manila, when she highlighted that high-risk maneuvers by Chinese vessels that have led to minor collisions with Philippine craft threaten the economic development prospects of the Philippines and other regional coastal states. Baerbock also explicitly stated that China’s expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea have no basis under international law, and called for a peaceful negotiated resolution to the disputes. During that 2024 visit, Baerbock toured the Philippine Coast Guard headquarters and inspected a German-donated surveillance drone aboard a Philippine patrol vessel.

On his visit, Steinmeier doubled down on Germany’s commitment to supporting the Philippine Coast Guard, which has operated as Manila’s front-line agency safeguarding the country’s territorial claims and has been involved in multiple direct encounters with Chinese maritime forces in the disputed waters.

In his response, Marcos expressed his gratitude to Germany for its consistent public backing of the Philippines’ efforts to uphold the rule of law in the South China Sea, including its repeated calls for all parties to honor the 2016 binding South China Sea Arbitral Award. The 2016 ruling, issued under the framework of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, formally invalidated China’s sweeping historic claims to nearly the entire South China Sea. Beijing refused to participate in the arbitration process initiated by Manila, has rejected the ruling outright, and continues to disregard its provisions.

The South China Sea dispute involves multiple claimant parties beyond China and the Philippines: Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan also hold overlapping territorial and maritime claims in the region. The United States, which maintains no territorial claims of its own in the waterway, has repeatedly reaffirmed its mutual defense treaty obligation to the Philippines — its longest-standing Asian ally — stating it will come to the Philippines’ defense if Philippine forces, vessels, or aircraft come under armed attack. China has consistently issued warnings opposing any U.S. intervention in the regional disputes.