From more than 7,000 kilometers away, Filipino peace advocates expressed solidarity with the Iranian people and condemned the “illegal, unjust and unprovoked” US-Israeli attacks on their country.
On Thursday, April 23, Filipino activists, union leaders, health workers, academics, artists, Christian clergy and Muslim religious leaders formalized a movement called Stop the US-Israel War in Iran Campaign Network.
Dozens attended the launch of the Network during a forum at the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Social Work and Community Development on the Diliman campus.
Groups sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza—turned into rubble by Israeli bombardments reminiscent of the devastation of Manila at the end of World War II—are now also part of the Network.
“The illegal, unjust, and unprovoked attacks on Iran have sparked a wider regional conflict whose consequences could be catastrophic for humanity,” the organizers said in a unity statement printed on a large tarp which they later signed.
“The war may be far away, but we feel its dire consequences in the thousands of lost jobs for overseas Filipino workers, soaring fuel prices, rising transport, electricity and food costs, and deeper economic hardship for ordinary folk,” they said. “If the war rages longer, we will be seeing power outages and long lines for fuel, food, and other basic commodities.”
Since the statement was posted online early in the week, it has gathered more than 500 signatures, including those from Catholic bishops, national artists, lawmakers and former Cabinet members.
‘Act of aggression’
The Network called the war on Iran and Palestine an “act of aggression,” a violation of US law and international law, and the United Nations Charter. “They reflect a broader pattern of intervention and coercion by a United States of America desperately seeking to maintain its geopolitical dominance, this time under President Donald Trump,” it said.
It called for a stop to the war on Iran, the “occupation and genocide” in Palestine, and the invasion of Lebanon. “The same pattern is visible in its long-running economic blockade against Cuba, repeated intervention and destabilization of Venezuela, and the militarization of the South China Sea, where US-China rivalry threatens to turn our own region into another theater of conflict,” it said in the statement.
It demanded that Trump and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be held accountable for “war crimes” in the International Criminal Court for the attack on Iran.
Edca sites
Domestically, the Network called for the withdrawal of all US troops, weapons and facilities from various sites in the Philippines opened for American deployment under the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (Edca) between Manila and Washington. In all, there are nine Edca sites in Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.
Speaking at the forum, retired UP development studies professor Roland Simbulan, a strong advocate of a nuclear-free Philippines, warned that these Edca sites would be “magnets” for attacks by America’s enemies in case an armed conflict involving the US erupts in Asia.
Simbulan likened what would happen to the Philippines to what was experienced by several Gulf nations hosting US military bases. These nations didn’t fire any rockets at Iran during the US-Israeli bombardment, but the US military bases they host were targeted by Iran’s retaliatory strikes. The reason, according to Simbulan, is that these bases are used for 3CI (command, control, communications and intelligence) critical to the American military operation.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Department of National Defense (DND) have downplayed the “magnets” warning, emphasizing that the Edca sites are not American bases and that their purposes are for joint training, humanitarian assistance and disaster response, not for staging offensive US military operations.
Days after the Feb. 28 US-Israeli attack against Iran that triggered the war, DND spokesperson Arsenio Andolong tried to allay fears that Iran might also target Edca sites in the Philippines, saying that these are not being used in the Middle East conflict.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has repeatedly said Edca sites “will not be used for offensive action,” Andolong said, adding that these facilities contribute to “preparedness and self-defense, not to aggression.”
‘Indiscriminate killing’
Bomen Guillermo, a novelist, poet, translator and professor of Southeast Asian studies at UP and a member of the Coalition of Academics Against US Aggression, said the AFP and the Israel Defense Force (IDF) have a memorandum of agreement on counterterrorism training.
He said that the Israeli training is focused on rural and urban counterterrorism and that the IDF would allegedly be teaching “indiscriminate killing,” as it is accused of doing by human rights groups in Palestine and southern Lebanon.
Leaked Israeli military intelligence data reported in 2025 by three media outlets, including The Guardian, showed that only 8,900 out of over 53,000 Palestinians killed in May that year were combatants. That makes about 83% noncombatants dead, according to the London-based Action on Armed Violence, a nongovernment organization focused on reducing the global incidence and impact of armed violence.
‘Global crusade of resistance’
Richard Lobo, chargé d’affaires of Venezuela’s embassy in Manila, said in a statement he read to the gathering that his nation “joins the call of progressive countries to halt the aggressive and warmongering agenda of the United States and the Zionist entity” against Iran and other nations struggling for their sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.
Lobo said that despite setbacks experienced by Venezuela following the “cruel attack” by the United States last January that left 120 people dead and the “kidnapping” of its president and first lady, Venezuela will continue supporting Iran in this “global crusade of resistance and the fight for the freedom of all peoples.”
Responding to Trump’s threat to wipe out Iran’s civilization and return Iran and its people to the Stone Age, Atefeh Nouri Ghanbalani, the cultural counselor of Tehran’s embassy in Manila, said the US president’s remarks were deeply “illogical, inhumane and antihuman.”
Ghanbalani said Iran’s civilization was molded over more than 4,000 years, trail-blazing knowledge in engineering, medical science, chemistry, philosophy and literature. It crafted the first human rights charter—the Cyrus Charter, she said. In the modern era, Iran has one of the world’s biggest major oil and gas reserves, which are being coveted by both the United States and Israel, she said.
She rebuked Trump for failing to grasp the meaning of “civilization and national heritage” and said the United States, its president and his supporters have only a 250-year-old history compared to Iran’s. “The United States and the Zionist regime are nothing more than wanderers; they have nothing to take pride in from their past except killing and crime,” she said.
To “lighten the mood” of the occasion, Ghanbalani concluded: “Mr. Trump, the president of the so-called Epsteinian America—if we return to the Stone Age, it means we have returned to the glorious era of our empire. But if one day you, with your very short 250-year-old history, return to the Stone Age, you will return to the era of the massacre of Native Americans, the enslavement of Black people, and nomadic wandering.” CS
