On Feb­ru­ary 28, 2026, the US, along­side Is­rael, launched a mas­sive air and sea at­tack on Iran dubbed “Op­er­a­tion Epic Fury.” In re­tal­i­a­tion, Iran struck en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture across the Mid­dle East and plant­ed mines in the Strait of Hor­muz, clos­ing off the wa­ter­way for­mer­ly used to trans­port 20 per cent of the world’s oil and 30 per cent of glob­al ni­tro­gen fer­tilis­er.

Drones and mis­siles have land­ed in Sau­di Ara­bia and the Emi­rate of Dubai. Pak­istan, which has signed a de­fence pact with Sau­di Ara­bia in the past, has sent fight­er jets and troops to Sau­di Ara­bia in or­der to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty to its al­ly.

Dur­ing “Op­er­a­tion Epic Fury,” the world held its breath as the Strait of Hor­muz was closed to ship­ping, cut­ting off most of Asia from crit­i­cal oil sup­plies. Asia pro­duces most of the world’s man­u­fac­tured goods, with Tai­wan and South Ko­rea lead­ing in com­put­er chip fabs. In­dia’s au­to­mo­bile in­dus­try is the world’s third-largest by pro­duc­tion size and In­done­sia’s is the world’s 14th-largest au­to­mo­bile man­u­fac­tur­er, with the in­dus­try con­tribut­ing 10 per cent of GDP.

T&T im­ports ve­hi­cles from Chi­na, In­dia and In­done­sia, as well as a host of oth­er man­u­fac­tured goods. The oil short­age threat­ened to di­rect­ly im­pact the price and avail­abil­i­ty of goods in the fu­ture if fac­to­ries had to shut down. The re­duc­tion in glob­al fer­tilis­er sup­ply will in­crease glob­al food prices, caus­ing more hard­ship on the un­der­priv­i­leged.

Af­ter a shock­ing promise by Pres­i­dent Trump that “a whole civil­i­sa­tion will die tonight” on April 7, a sur­prise cease­fire was an­nounced, bro­kered by Pak­istan. One of the terms of the pro­posed tem­po­rary truce is the re­open­ing of the Strait of Hor­muz, which may ease glob­al oil prices.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions are slat­ed to con­tin­ue in Is­lam­abad, Pak­istan; how­ev­er, both sides have al­ready been ac­cused of vi­o­lat­ing the cease­fire, which seems to be hang­ing by a thread.

Even if a peace treaty is agreed to, his­to­ry has shown that peace treaties have been the pre­lude to wider and more dev­as­tat­ing con­flicts.

Neville Cham­ber­lain, the for­mer UK Prime Min­is­ter, fa­mous­ly gave a “Peace for our time” speech in 1938 fol­low­ing the Mu­nich agree­ment, where Nazi Ger­many was al­lowed to an­nex Czecho­slo­va­kia’s Sude­ten­land with­out a reprisal by the UK mil­i­tary. This back­fired spec­tac­u­lar­ly in 1939 when Hitler in­vad­ed Czecho­slo­va­kia in March and then Poland in Sep­tem­ber, lead­ing to the UK and France de­clar­ing war on Nazi Ger­many.

This failed pol­i­cy of ap­pease­ment led to Cham­ber­lain’s res­ig­na­tion and the ap­point­ment of Win­ston Churchill as prime min­is­ter.

The 1938 “peace” pro­vid­ed by the Mu­nich agree­ment gave Hitler ac­cess to ma­jor fac­to­ries in Czecho­slo­va­kia that helped boost Nazi Ger­many’s mil­i­tary. The Sko­da Works fac­to­ry in the Sude­ten­land pro­duced tanks, ar­tillery and ve­hi­cles that were all used by Nazi Ger­many lat­er on to take over most of Eu­rope.

Cham­ber­lain’s “peace for our time” speech has gone down in his­to­ry as a text­book ex­am­ple of strate­gic fail­ure and po­lit­i­cal naivete. While the Mu­nich agree­ment and the cease­fire be­tween Iran and the US are dif­fer­ent in con­text, I be­lieve there will be a sim­i­lar out­come.

Both Iran and the US are at­tempt­ing to use the two-week cease­fire to pre­pare for an­oth­er round of bat­tle. Iran is re­port­ed­ly dig­ging deep­er in its tun­nels for more mis­siles and drones.

Ac­cord­ing to open source in­tel­li­gence an­a­lysts on­line, the US is con­tin­u­ing to build up more troops in the Mid­dle East to pre­pare for a pos­si­ble ground in­va­sion to se­cure the Strait of Hor­muz.

A news re­port dat­ed March 26, 2026, in­di­cat­ed that Sau­di Crown Prince Mo­hammed bin Salman has been urg­ing Trump to in­ten­si­fy the war against Iran. This Sau­di agen­da, com­bined with Is­rael’s vendet­ta against Iran for arm­ing Hezbol­lah and Hamas, will like­ly lead to more pres­sure on the US to wipe out the Iran­ian regime.

His­to­ry cau­tions against op­ti­mism, es­pe­cial­ly when the eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal fu­ture of the world may be on the line. If the US can de­stroy the Iran­ian regime quick­ly, it may even be able to lay claim to con­trol of the Strait of Hor­muz as a spoil of war and use it to threat­en Chi­na’s econ­o­my.

How­ev­er, if the US mil­i­tary be­comes tied down for years, Chi­na may have a free hand to take Tai­wan and be­come the dom­i­nant pow­er in Asia, paving the way for Chi­na to be the glob­al hege­mon, de­thron­ing the US.

In the midst of these ru­mours of wars and false promis­es of peace, I am sur­prised that most Tri­nis do not seem to be tak­ing more mea­sures to hedge against un­cer­tain­ty.

I would per­son­al­ly like to see a ma­jor gov­ern­ment move for home gar­dens and agri­cul­ture to help off­set the in­evitable rise in food prices. A na­tion­al move to­wards main­stream­ing cas­sa­va bread and cas­sa­va-based prod­ucts could help with im­port sub­sti­tu­tion when prices be­gin to rise.

While we should pray against the out­break of WWI­II, we should be prag­mat­ic and un­der­stand that we are not in peace­ful times. I urge every cit­i­zen to pre­pare and hedge against the im­pact of con­tin­ued con­flict.