Department of National Defense (DND) Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. on Tuesday, March 3, dismissed fears that the Philippines could be pulled into a burgeoning conflict between the United States, a treaty ally of Manila, and Iran.

In an interview, Teodoro labeled such concerns as “unfounded” and based on a “false premise,” clarifying that the country’s security landscape is fundamentally different from the volatile situation in the Middle East.

“That is unfounded because we cannot compare the situation in the Middle East to that of the Philippines and our bilateral and multilateral alliances are solely for defensive and deterrent purposes,” he said.

Teodoro took a swipe at past administrations for “paurong-sulong” or back-and-forth policies on strengthening the country’s defenses.

He insisted that the current trajectory of building strong international alliances is a delayed but necessary move for national stability.

“Our alliances [with other countries] should have been long established. This is long overdue and an effect of the back-and-forth policies in the past. So, raising this issue and comparing the situation in the Middle East to that in the Indo-Pacific is based on a false premise,” he said.

The assurance came amid escalating hostilities in the Middle East after the US and Israel conducted a joint military operation in Iran over the weekend, which reportedly killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In response, Tehran fired volleys of ballistic missiles and deployed attack drones across the Middle East and toward Israel, hitting and threatening US military bases and allied sites in several neighboring states such as Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Local sectors expressed concern that Manila’s close ties with Washington might make the country a target or a participant in a wider war, especially with the presence of nine Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites in the country.

Teodoro, however, argued that these anxieties should not hinder the country’s defense modernization.

“Despite these concerns, we should even further strengthen our bilateral and multilateral alliances to reinforce the Philippines’ defensive posture,” he said.

He maintained that the geopolitical dynamics of the Indo-Pacific do not mirror the religious and territorial complexities of the US-Israel and Iran standoff.

He said that the efforts by Washington to contain Iranian influence involve a different set of treaties and strategic goals than those applied to the South China Sea.

“These concerns, I repeat, have no basis. For now, I reiterate what the Armed Forces has said: there is no direct threat to the security of the Republic of the Philippines, in a military sense, arising from what is happening in the Middle East at present,” he stressed.

Despite the lack of a direct military threat, Teodoro noted that the DND remains on high alert regarding the safety of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the Middle East.

The conflict has put thousands of Filipinos in the Gulf region at risk of displacement or injury if the shadow war between Israel and Iran escalates into a full-scale regional conflagration, he said.

Teodoro, acting as the chairperson of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), confirmed he is working with the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to assess the safety of citizens in the Gulf and seeking ways on how they can be repatriated,

“This will be done collectively and as soon as possible,” the defense chief said.