Politics
Trump failure in Iran forces South Korea’s hand
As the illegal US-Israeli war against Iran drags on, it seems clearer and clearer that Donald Trump either miscalculated or fell for the lies warhawk allies sold him. And it’s spreading the stocks of US forces and their allies thin. As a result, they’ve had to get backup from South Korea.
Trump has depleted military resources
Amid Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and rampage through the Middle East in 2025, the US army had already:
redeployed two MIM-104 Patriot systems and approximately 500 personnel from South Korea to the Middle East, which reinforced defences at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
The US also took “over 1,000 guided bomb kits” from facilities in South Korea in December 2025, along with “AH-64 Apache attack helicopters” in January 2026.
But now, there are signs that the unprovoked US-Israeli assault on Iran has been seriously depleting the aggressors’ resources in the Middle East. For example, after around a decade in South Korea, the US has apparently started to move out parts of:
the US-made terminal high-altitude area defense (THAAD) missile-defence system
There are also reportedly discussions about:
the possible redeployment of some US Patriot missile defence systems to the Middle East. South Korean media carried unconfirmed reports that some missile batteries were likely to be redeployed to US bases in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates [UAE].
The UAE’s increasing understanding that its alliance with the US puts a real target on its back, meanwhile, has made future planning more important. And South Korea will soon help the Gulf regime:
build computing power and energy infrastructure for the world’s largest set of AI data centres outside the United States… [as part of the] U.S.-backed Stargate project
South Korea has conducted an emergency airlift of surface-to-air missiles… from the Cheongung-II air defence system to the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
South Korea took about “30 interceptor missiles” from its own operational reserves to send to the UAE after an urgent request. As Military Watch Magazine highlighted:
This is critical not only to… sustaining the U.S. Armed Forces’ and French Armed Forces ability to continue to wage war on Iran using military bases in the country, most notably Al Dhafra Air Base.
It added that:
It is notable that South Korea is the only country that is able to [deliver] high performing NATO-compatible air defences on such short notice, with European states’ own systems having very limited capabilities, while U.S. systems have seen stockpiles severely depleted primarily due to operations in the Middle East, but also due to large scale donations to Ukraine in preceding years.
South Korea and its increasingly unreliable superpower ally
Under Donald Trump, the US has increasingly been showing its allies how much of an unreliable partner it is. And while South Korea still has one of the highest defence budgets in the world, the flailing commitment of the US – whose presence has been at the centre of South Korean military policy for decades – has sparked concern.
South Korea has tried to navigate Trump’s tariff threats carefully. But liberal president Lee Jae Myung has signalled the importance of a “more self-reliant South Korean defence posture” that doesn’t depend so much on a volatile US government and can help to avoid “entanglement in international disputes”.
South Korea’s government is also ramping up efforts to shield itself from the energy crisis that the US-Israeli war on Iran has created.
The US isn’t abandoning South Korea, though. Because it’s too strategically important in Washington’s efforts to ‘contain’ China. And US-South Korean forces are currently undertaking:
their annual 10-day joint military exercises on the Korean Peninsula… [involving] 18,000 South Korean and US military personnel.
There will, however, be “fewer than half” the number of field training drills (22) that took place last year.
That doesn’t make North Korea feel any better. The dark history of US war crimes during the Korean War (1950-1953) regularly reminds the North that the superpower “killed as much as 20%” of its population (some believe one million people), before backing numerous “right-wing dictatorships in the South in the decades afterward”.
North Korea, which developed nuclear weapons as a deterrent in the wake of the devastating war, still condemns the “clear confrontational nature” of US-South Korean drills, routinely responding with weapons tests of its own.
If less US involvement in the Korean Peninsula reduces the likelihood of conflict there, that will be a good thing. The bad thing, however, seems to be that arms are shifting to the Middle East instead, fuelling a devastating mess that the US seemingly doesn’t plan to end any time soon.
Featured image via the Canary