The Iran war is testing Southeast Asia’s faith in the US

The Iran war is testing Southeast Asia’s faith in the US The punishing impact of the Strait of Hormuz closure and worsening hostilities has Asian governments rethinking U.S. reliability. 07/23/2026 04:00 PM EDT Asian officials are seething about the regional impact of the ongoing U.S. war with Iran — dismay that lay just underneath the smiles and staged photo ops at meetings of South and East Asian officials this week. The ongoing paralysis of the Strait of Hormuz has been top of mind among foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations during the three days of meetings in Manila, Philippines. The region is suffering some of the most severe economic impacts from the blockade, which has strangled oil and gas shipments to their countries. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was met with smiles and sunny rhetoric at the ASEAN gathering, which concluded Thursday, but diplomats from those countries say they are angry the U.S. isn’t doing more on Iran and are losing patience. Four Washington-based Asian diplomats — including three who represent ASEAN nations — say their governments are aghast at what they see as Washington’s failure to anticipate the conflict’s regional economic knock-on effects. They blame the U.S. for starting what has become an open-ended conflict that is intensifying after Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen announced a blockade Tuesday of a key waterway for Saudi oil and gas traffic. “The Iran war just confirmed many Southeast Asian leaders’ broader worries about U.S. global leadership,” one of the ASEAN diplomats said. “No one in ASEAN wanted to wake up to another major Gulf conflict, but that’s what happened — and within weeks we were managing higher energy prices, disrupted shipping and renewed debates about how exposed we are to any shock in the Strait of Hormuz.” The four diplomats were not present at the ASEAN meeting but were in contact with delegations there. All were granted anonymity because of the political sensitivity of their comments. As a result, Asian countries are hedging their bets. ASEAN foreign ministers called Tuesday for a “complete and immediate cessation of hostilities” in a statement that carefully sidestepped direct criticism of either Tehran or Washington — a sign of the delicate balancing act these countries are performing. ASEAN has 11 members and includes countries with longstanding economic and defense ties to the U.S., such as the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore. The Iran war has heightened perceptions in the region that the U.S. is an increasingly unreliable partner, a sentiment that had already been growing as President Donald Trump pressed NATO allies on funding, made threats to the sovereignty of Greenland and even joked about making Canada the 51st state. The economic turmoil of the war has caused Asian governments to reassess the prudence of their longtime reliance on the U.S. as a guarantor of regional peace and economic stability — perhaps with even more urgency than their European counterparts. Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro noted the stresses the Iran war has imposed on the bloc by referencing “profound geopolitical and geoeconomic uncertainty” rippling across the region in remarks at the conference. The Philippines declared a national emergency in March in response to widespread gasoline shortages and petroleum price spikes from the Iran war. Thailand and Indonesia have grappled with shrinking supplies by urging government employees to work from home to reduce gasoline consumption. The knock-on effect of rising energy costs has fueled a regional surge in inflation that shows no sign of easing. Rubio offered little comfort of a return to pre-war energy supplies anytime soon. “The problem we’re having right now is that they’re not serious about talks,” Rubio said of Iran’s leadership in comments at the ASEAN summit Wednesday. That messaging fell flat among his Asian counterparts. “Rubio’s line was ‘We’re with ASEAN 100 percent,’ but he offered only vague pledges on investment and energy cooperation, but no concrete mechanism like a Strategic Petroleum Reserve release and nothing tied to Hormuz specifically,” the ASEAN diplomat said. The White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. These nations see an alternative partner if the U.S. isn’t reliable: China. In a Pew Research Center survey released last week, four ASEAN members — Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia — were among the countries where citizens said they strongly preferred China to the U.S. The Iran war’s impact “feeds an internal discussion that has been very hard to stamp out: Choose China, because although their upper echelons are arrogant people who don’t respect us, they’re more reliable, more predictable, have more real money, heft, and don’t demand unreasonable things like fickle, coddled, overly pampered America,” said another one of the diplomats, also a Washington-based envoy from an ASEAN country. Regional countries are now approaching U.S. ties with “skepticism and uncertainty” and less willingness “to take continued U.S. engagement for granted,” said the third Asian diplomat. The impacts of the ongoing conflict extend deeper than crippling energy shortages. “It’s not just the war itself, but the sanctions ecosystem that comes with it. Specifically: banks, insurers and trading houses in the region are asking: ‘Are we next? Are we inadvertently on the wrong side of a U.S. designation because a cargo passed through the wrong port or a transaction touched the wrong counterparty?’” the second diplomat said. So far, the dissatisfaction has stayed behind closed doors and hasn’t been followed up with actions that would distance these countries from the U.S. “It’s not ASEAN’s style to criticize,” said a fourth Washington-based diplomat from an ASEAN country. “The question now for ASEAN countries is whether it is worth paying a higher price to do more with the U.S. and risk overdependence, or seek alternatives.” A full pivot to Beijing is still unlikely. Southeast Asian nations continue to see U.S. engagement in the region as key to thwarting Beijing’s growing military footprint. China’s saber-rattling toward Taiwan, including a Chinese Coast Guard incursion into Philippine waters of the South China Sea that injured a Filipino sailor Monday and Beijing’s first-ever live fire naval exercise within Japan’s exclusive economic zone Sunday, is a reminder of the rising risks of Beijing’s challenge to U.S. dominance in the region. But Asian countries are looking for ways to reduce their exposure to economically harmful U.S. administration policies. “Many countries are getting more careful about depending too much on the U.S. or China, so they’re finding other partners and don’t want to put all their eggs in one basket,” the first diplomat said. “That is the real story behind the smiling photos this week.”