Conflict in the Gulf fast turning into a war against world economy

Audio By Vocalize

The United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran on February 28, codenamed Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion. The fury, it turns out, has been anything but contained to its intended targets.

The conflict has spread across at least a dozen countries and closed the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s major oil artery, killing more than 2,300 people in the region. That narrow ribbon of water between Oman and Iran, facilitates the transit of around 20 million barrels of oil per day, representing roughly 20 per cent of global seaborne oil trade from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the factories, kitchens and fuel pumps of Asia and Europe. Iran has now effectively slammed that door shut, and the world is standing outside in the cold.

The economic consequences are grave. Brent crude oil prices surpassed $100 per barrel on March 8, for the first time in four years, rising to $126 per barrel. A drone strike ignited a fuel tank fire near Dubai International Airport, one of the busiest transit hubs on earth.  

The Gulf’s cosmopolitan expatriate workforce, which keeps those gleaming economies running, is quietly packing its bags. The tranquillity that made the Gulf a magnet for global business has evaporated.

Iran’s retaliatory attacks have targeted oil refineries, US military bases, airports and commercial shipping in all six Gulf states. Bahrain’s Juffair district, home to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, has been struck repeatedly.

Strait of Hormuz

After Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas field, Tehran hit energy targets in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Ras Laffan, Qatar’s LNG export nerve centre, supplying 12 to 14 per cent of Europe’s gas, has been in the crosshairs.

Roughly one-third of global fertiliser trade transits through the Strait of Hormuz, and fertiliser prices have already surged, threatening food production globally. The war in the Gulf is also, quietly, a war on the world’s dinner table.

For developing economies, every dollar added to a barrel of crude oil is a tax levied on Kenyan matatu passengers, Nigerian market traders, Pakistani factory workers and Bangladeshi garment makers — people who had no vote on whether Operation Epic Fury should be launched and no say in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in Geneva.

For countries already drowning in debt and inflation, this energy shock is a catastrophe. Washington should understand that the right to self-defence does not include the right to set the global economy on fire.

Peace was reportedly within reach on February 27, when Oman’s Foreign Minister said Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium and accepted full International Atomic Energy Agency verification, only for the bombs to start falling the next morning.

That is an indictment on the United States. End this war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The world is already paying the bill.

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