Japan is one of the few countries that manufactures Patriot missiles under US license - and the sudden visit of the UAE's foreign minister to Tokyo suggests Middle Eastern states are already lining up for Japanese defense products as the Iran crisis deepens, former Ukrainian Ambassador Serhiy Korsunsky said.

The diplomat shared his analysis of Asia's reaction to the Middle East escalation during a March 5 broadcast with Yuriy Romanenko, as "Hvylya" reported.

"Today I saw a report that the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates is in Japan. I thought to myself: now why would he come so urgently?" Korsunsky said. "I suspect they're interested in certain products that the Japanese can manufacture." Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries can scale up Patriot production without technical difficulty - the bottleneck has always been political, not industrial.

Until recently, Japan could not export weapons at all, producing Patriots "exclusively for the needs of the Self-Defense Forces - only enough to replace those fired during exercises or replace expired systems." But export restrictions have been loosening, and with Prime Minister Takaichi's visit to Washington scheduled for around March 19-20, Korsunsky expects the Patriot licensing issue to be on the agenda.

Japan's energy vulnerability adds urgency. The country has 254 days' worth of oil reserves - among the largest in the region - but liquefied natural gas cannot be stockpiled the same way. "Storing one billion cubic meters of gas costs one billion dollars," Korsunsky said. With Qatar halting LNG processing after drone strikes, Japan faces a potential electricity price surge that has already energized the population.

The diplomat also highlighted Japan's continued dependence on Russian LNG from Sakhalin, which supplies 9 percent of its needs. Tokyo received special US permission to maintain this import after sanctions were imposed, precisely because "the Middle Eastern LNG contracts that could have replaced Russian gas were given to Europe." The current crisis, Korsunsky said, demonstrates why Japan's diversified energy portfolio - a policy he called one "we could only dream of" in Ukraine - is now being tested to its limits.

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