March 26, 2026
By Dr. Mohamed Chtatou
A war that began with an assassination is reshaping energy markets, security architectures, and global geopolitics in ways that will not simply reverse when the shooting stops.
On the morning of February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes against Iran in operations codenamed “Epic Fury” and “The Roaring Lion.” The war got bombastic names: “Operation Epic Fury” (United States) and “Operation The Roaring Lion” (Israel). The Times of Israel The opening salvo was spectacular and deliberate: the most dramatic aspect was the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, an event which elicited celebrations among some Iranians but dark and angry responses among regime loyalists. University of Oxford Within hours, Iran retaliated, launching missiles at American bases in Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Bahrain. Additional missiles landed in Abu Dhabi, Doha, Kuwait City, and Riyadh. Iran also fired missiles at Israel, though these were largely intercepted by US naval forces and local air defense systems. University of Oxford
Four weeks later, the war has not ended. A ceasefire remains elusive. But even before the guns fall silent, the Third Gulf War — the name has already stuck among analysts, distinct from both the 1991 liberation of Kuwait and the 2003 invasion of Iraq — has produced effects so vast and so structural that they are already irreversible in their outlines. Energy systems have been shattered. A regional security architecture built over decades has collapsed. A food crisis is threatening to tip into famine. And the geopolitical map of the Greater Middle East is being redrawn not in diplomatic chambers but in the rubble of refineries and the wreckage of missile interceptor magazines. What follows is an attempt to reckon, domain by domain, with what this war is already doing to the world.
By Dr. Mohamed Chtatou
A war that began with an assassination is reshaping energy markets, security architectures, and global geopolitics in ways that will not simply reverse when the shooting stops.
On the morning of February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes against Iran in operations codenamed “Epic Fury” and “The Roaring Lion.” The war got bombastic names: “Operation Epic Fury” (United States) and “Operation The Roaring Lion” (Israel). The Times of Israel The opening salvo was spectacular and deliberate: the most dramatic aspect was the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, an event which elicited celebrations among some Iranians but dark and angry responses among regime loyalists. University of Oxford Within hours, Iran retaliated, launching missiles at American bases in Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Bahrain. Additional missiles landed in Abu Dhabi, Doha, Kuwait City, and Riyadh. Iran also fired missiles at Israel, though these were largely intercepted by US naval forces and local air defense systems. University of Oxford
Four weeks later, the war has not ended. A ceasefire remains elusive. But even before the guns fall silent, the Third Gulf War — the name has already stuck among analysts, distinct from both the 1991 liberation of Kuwait and the 2003 invasion of Iraq — has produced effects so vast and so structural that they are already irreversible in their outlines. Energy systems have been shattered. A regional security architecture built over decades has collapsed. A food crisis is threatening to tip into famine. And the geopolitical map of the Greater Middle East is being redrawn not in diplomatic chambers but in the rubble of refineries and the wreckage of missile interceptor magazines. What follows is an attempt to reckon, domain by domain, with what this war is already doing to the world.
The Energy Shock That Broke All the Models
The most immediate, quantifiable, and globally consequential aftereffect of the Third Gulf War is energy. The US-Israeli war on Iran has already sent the price of benchmark Brent crude soaring to nearly $120 per barrel, close to its highest point of $147 recorded in July 2008. Al Jazeera But price alone understates the severity of what has happened. The 2026 US–Iran war has resulted in a physical chokepoint, taking offline part of the supply of oil and gas due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Tanker traffic disruptions have forced Gulf producers to curtail output as they have run out of storage capacity. Al Jazeera
The Strait of Hormuz — that narrow seam of water between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, barely 33 kilometers wide at its narrowest — carries roughly 20 percent of global oil and gas daily. The war has effectively erased the 20 million barrels of petroleum that used to traverse the waterway each day, according to a report released by the International Energy Agency. Now, only “a trickle” is passing through, the IEA said, and the implications for global oil markets are historic. Fortune
The human geography of this disruption is staggering. The oil production of Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates collectively dropped by a reported 6.7 million barrels per day by March 10, and by at least 10 million barrels per day as of March 12. It is the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Wikipedia The IEA’s executive director Fatih Birol put it in historical context at the National Press Club in Canberra: the fallout from the Iran war is equivalent to the two major oil crises of the 1970s and the 2022 gas crisis combined. CNBC That is not hyperbole from a bureaucrat seeking attention. It is a sober accounting of what physics and geography have conspired to produce.
The damage to infrastructure compounds the chokepoint problem in ways that will outlast any ceasefire. On March 18, Israeli drone strikes targeted facilities at Iran’s Asaluyeh complex, damaging four plants that treat gas from the offshore South Pars field. Tehran vowed to retaliate by hitting five key energy targets in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. Hours later, Iranian missiles caused “extensive damage” to Ras Laffan, the heart of Qatar’s energy sector. Separate suspected Iranian aerial attacks caused damage to oil refineries in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and led to the closure of gas facilities in the UAE. The Conversation
Ras Laffan is not just Qatar’s gas hub; it is responsible for approximately one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas supply. Its damage is not merely a Gulf problem. Europe, which had turned to LNG imports instead of Russian pipeline gas after the invasion of Ukraine, has been left needing to replenish low gas stockpiles while major exporter Qatar is offline. World Economic Forum At the 2026 Nuclear Energy Summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the crisis as a reminder of the vulnerabilities created by relying on other regions for oil and gas, calling for more investment in nuclear energy alongside renewables.
Even beyond the physical destruction of facilities, the operational consequences of shut-ins will persist. “Shut-ins don’t just happen and then you turn a switch and everything’s back together. You have to get production back online, and that can be pretty time-consuming,” Richard Nephew of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy noted. Fortune Corrosion, structural wear, and the logistics of restart mean that even a prompt ceasefire and reopening of Hormuz would not immediately normalize supply. Unlike sanctions-driven disruptions, a sustained blocking of the Strait of Hormuz obstructs not only trade routes but the very ability of producers to export, pushing markets beyond adjustment mechanisms into forced demand destruction and structural reconfiguration. Al Jazeera
The tools that managed the 2022 Russia-Ukraine energy shock — rerouting, sanctions workarounds, diversification — simply do not apply here. There is no alternate route when the strait is mined and contested. The shock is physical, not financial.
Food, Water, and the Anatomy of a Humanitarian Crisis
Oil prices are legible to markets. Food and water shortages are legible to human bodies. The Third Gulf War has generated both in parallel.
The maritime blockade triggered a concurrent “grocery supply emergency” across GCC states, which rely on the Strait for over 80% of their caloric intake. By mid-March, 70% of the region’s food imports were disrupted, forcing retailers to airlift staples, resulting in a 40–120% spike in consumer prices. Wikipedia Gulf states have quietly built up strategic food reserves over recent years, but none were dimensioned for a siege of indefinite duration.
The water crisis is even more acute, because it has no easy international substitute. The crisis shifted toward fears about a humanitarian catastrophe following Iranian strikes on desalination plants — the source of 99% of drinking water in Kuwait and Qatar. Wikipedia These are not marginal utilities. In Kuwait and Qatar, there is no groundwater to fall back on, no river to tap. The desalination plant is the faucet. When it goes dark, people go thirsty within days, not weeks.
The global food system is implicated far beyond the Gulf’s borders. The Strait of Hormuz is not just a shipping lane for oil tankers; it is a critical artery of the global food system. Key food staples — including wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, sugar, and animal feed — travel through the Strait on their way to Gulf countries, and farmers around the world depend on the fertilizers and fuel that flow out of it. Project Syndicate The Fertilizer Institute stated that nearly 50% of global urea and sulfur exports, as well as 20% of global LNG — a key feedstock for nitrogen fertilizers — transit through the strait. Wikipedia When fertilizers stop flowing, the damage to next year’s harvests is not speculative. It is arithmetic.
A prolonged closure could disrupt agriculture worldwide and place more than 100 million people at risk of a humanitarian catastrophe, analysts warned. Project Syndicate Afghanistan is already bearing these costs disproportionately: much of Afghanistan’s limited trade with the world goes through Iran’s Chabahar port, and Iran is also a major conduit for humanitarian aid into Afghanistan. Crisis Group With the conflict disrupting Iranian transit infrastructure, one of the world’s most aid-dependent populations faces additional strangulation.
The Collapse of the Gulf Security Architecture
The Third Gulf War has not simply damaged the Gulf states. It has shattered the political logic on which their security rested for half a century.
For several decades, the region’s security architecture has rested essentially upon the guarantee provided by the United States to protect the monarchies of the Arab Peninsula. Today this strategy has largely failed and seems already called into question by these countries’ ruling elites. The Gulf rulers, who had linked their security to the promise of Western protection by welcoming on their soil many military bases, discover today that those installations mainly served to support Israel’s military operations. Orient XXI
The resentment is concrete and documented. In the UAE, an open letter to President Trump from businessman Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor questioned Washington about the reasons that led it to transforming the whole region into a battlefield when the Gulf States had warned of the chaotic consequences of such a war. Orient XXI The Gulf rulers see the stocks of munitions required for their own anti-missile defense gradually diminishing, while Israel’s needs seem to be given priority. Orient XXI In effect, the Gulf states’ own air defense systems are being depleted in a war they did not choose, against an adversary who now targets them precisely because of the American bases they host.
The security guarantee, it turns out, was a trap. The bases that were supposed to deter aggression became the targeting coordinates for Iranian missiles. The weapons that were supposed to protect Gulf populations were being quietly redirected to protect Israeli military operations. The monarchies are reckoning with this reality in real time, and the calculations they are making — about future basing arrangements, about the reliability of American security umbrellas, about the wisdom of strategic autonomy — will define Gulf foreign policy for a generation.
The logic of an “Arab NATO” — a formalized GCC collective defense structure — has gained currency in several Gulf capitals as a hedge against American unpredictability. The Gulf Kingdoms, with the possible exception of the UAE, might consolidate their military forces under the GCC, placing their regional integration group on the path to becoming an “Arab NATO” over time. South24 Center This is not merely a theoretical exercise. The war has created the political conditions for a structural reform that peacetime diplomacy never could.
Iran’s Internal Crisis and the Regime Question
No analysis of the Third Gulf War’s lasting consequences can avoid the question of what happens to Iran itself. The Islamic Republic entered the conflict already structurally weakened. Thousands of Iranians poured onto the streets in protest against collapsing public services, corruption, and years of oppression University of Oxford in the period following earlier 2025 strikes. Now, with the Supreme Leader killed and the regime’s military architecture systematically dismantled, the internal dynamics are volatile and unpredictable.
The 2026 Iran War has effected the effective dismantling of Iran’s Axis of Resistance — the network of non-state armed actors that Tehran had cultivated across the Levant, the Persian Gulf littoral, and South Asia to project power and raise the costs of any strike on Iranian territory. Eurasia Review By late 2024, Hezbollah’s leadership had been decapitated. Hamas was functionally dismantled militarily. Syria’s Assad had fallen in December 2024, severing the land corridor through which Iran supplied arms to Lebanon. The Houthis remained operational but supply-constrained. Iran entered this war with its strategic depth already excavated.
Three broad scenarios for Iran’s post-conflict trajectory circulate among analysts. In the first, the Islamic Republic survives in attenuated form: militarily degraded, territorially intact, economically ruined, but politically still in the hands of regime loyalists. In the second, a US-facilitated transition — a “Venezuelan scenario” — yields a compliant successor government. In the third, the country fractures along ethnic and regional lines: Kurdish, Azeri, Arab, and Baloch pressures, exploited by neighboring powers, produce something closer to a Balkanization. Any significant Kurdish uprising could prompt a Turkish military intervention, while a significant Azeri uprising in the north could prompt the same by Azerbaijan. Pakistan could intervene in Sistan and Balochistan on the pretext of fighting cross-border Baloch separatists. South24 Center
The nuclear question remains unresolved and constitutes perhaps the most dangerous long-term legacy of the conflict. The IAEA said that it did not have the access it needed to ensure that the Iranian nuclear program was exclusively peaceful, but that there was no evidence of a structured nuclear weapons program at the time of the strikes. Wikipedia The US and Israel launched a war, in part, to prevent Iranian nuclear proliferation. Whether they have succeeded, stalled, or paradoxically accelerated the proliferation logic — by demonstrating to every regional power the strategic value of a nuclear deterrent — is a question history will answer, but perhaps not soon.
Geopolitical Realignment: The Multipolar Moment
The Third Gulf War did not create the multipolar world, but it has dramatically accelerated its crystallization. The United States has demonstrated overwhelming kinetic superiority — its ability to destroy Iranian military infrastructure is not in question. What the war has simultaneously revealed is the cost of that superiority: in munitions, in alliance credibility, in the economic damage inflicted on partners and adversaries alike.
The economic architecture of the conflict exposes a fundamental contradiction. The US has imposed enormous costs on many of the same economies it relies on as trading and strategic partners. The damage to allied economies will complicate the coalition politics that will likely be needed for post-conflict stabilization, not to mention addressing future crises elsewhere. World Economic Forum
China’s position is particularly instructive. Beijing finds itself simultaneously threatened and potentially advantaged by the conflict. Beijing was unable to shield Tehran from either the 2025 or 2026 US-Israel attacks, exposing the limits of its cautious approach to regional security. While avoiding direct intervention, Beijing mobilized to protect its nationals by arranging the evacuation of more than 3,000 Chinese citizens from Iran. Middle East Council on Global Affairs The disruption of Gulf energy supplies, on which China depends for roughly half its crude imports, is economically painful. Yet the relocation of US military assets from East Asia to frontline service in West Asia temporarily alters the balance of power in China’s geopolitical perimeter Geopolitical Monitor — a strategic windfall that Beijing has noted without acknowledgment.
Russia’s calculus is similarly double-edged. In partial compliance with an emerging bilateral defense partnership, the Russians have apparently assisted the Iranians with intelligence on US targets, but Moscow does not support bellicosity toward Israel or the GCC states. Geopolitical Monitor Higher oil prices benefit Russia’s battered energy revenues. The diversion of US military attention from Europe and the Pacific relieves pressure on multiple fronts. Russia did not ignite this war, but it is not unhappy it burns.
Europe, meanwhile, has been reduced to something approaching irrelevance. Whatever posture they take, Washington’s European allies are consigned to a largely reactive role, with limited clout they can use to help bring the war to an end. Former French ambassador Pierre Vimont put it bluntly: “Brussels has slipped into a starkly paralyzed role as a mere commentator on the geopolitical upheaval on its southern flank.” Crisis Group
The Legal and Normative Rupture
Beyond the material consequences, the Third Gulf War carries a normative legacy that may prove equally durable. Critics of the war, including legal and international relations experts, have described the attacks as illegal under US law, an act of imperialism, and a violation of Iran’s sovereignty under international law. Wikipedia The assassination of a sitting head of state — Khamenei — raises questions under international humanitarian law about the lawful targeting of political leadership. Iran’s strikes on Gulf desalination plants and civilian airports raised equivalent questions from the other direction.
The UN Security Council’s response was revealing in its selectivity: the Council passed a resolution condemning Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Gulf states, a formulation that implicitly accepted the US-Israeli campaign as the legal baseline — a normative determination with significant long-term consequences for the permissibility of preemptive strikes against nuclear programs. Eurasia Review In other words, the Security Council, under American pressure, has effectively blessed the principle that a state may strike another’s nuclear facilities preemptively, without Security Council authorization. This precedent will not remain in the Gulf. It will travel.
The Structural Acceleration
Wars of this scale do not merely destroy; they accelerate. The 1973 oil embargo accelerated France’s nuclear energy program. The 1979 Iranian Revolution drove Japan’s push for energy efficiency. The current crisis, which simultaneously exposes Asia’s dependence on oil and LNG imports and the fragility of fertilizer supply chains, may prove to be a powerful accelerant for diversification, redundancy, and stockpiling. But structural adjustment takes years. In the interim, the damage is accruing. World Economic Forum
Asia’s energy-importing economies — Japan, South Korea, India, the countries of Southeast Asia — have received the starkest possible reminder that their industrial civilizations rest on a narrow maritime corridor that can be closed by a single belligerent. Japan relies on the region for about 95% of its crude oil and 11% of its LNG imports, roughly 70% and 6% respectively shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. World Economic Forum The political will to accelerate domestic energy transition, nuclear expansion, and strategic stockpiling that has been intermittently present in these capitals for decades will now be sharply concentrated.
The Gulf states themselves face a forced reckoning with the fragility of their economic models. Their sovereign wealth funds, their diversification programs, their tourism industries, the aviation hubs that connected the world through Dubai and Doha — all have been interrupted or degraded by a war they were told, by the ally hosting his forces on their soil, was not their concern. The reconstruction of credibility, not just infrastructure, will take years.
Beyond the material consequences, the Third Gulf War carries a normative legacy that may prove equally durable. Critics of the war, including legal and international relations experts, have described the attacks as illegal under US law, an act of imperialism, and a violation of Iran’s sovereignty under international law. Wikipedia The assassination of a sitting head of state — Khamenei — raises questions under international humanitarian law about the lawful targeting of political leadership. Iran’s strikes on Gulf desalination plants and civilian airports raised equivalent questions from the other direction.
The UN Security Council’s response was revealing in its selectivity: the Council passed a resolution condemning Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Gulf states, a formulation that implicitly accepted the US-Israeli campaign as the legal baseline — a normative determination with significant long-term consequences for the permissibility of preemptive strikes against nuclear programs. Eurasia Review In other words, the Security Council, under American pressure, has effectively blessed the principle that a state may strike another’s nuclear facilities preemptively, without Security Council authorization. This precedent will not remain in the Gulf. It will travel.
The Structural Acceleration
Wars of this scale do not merely destroy; they accelerate. The 1973 oil embargo accelerated France’s nuclear energy program. The 1979 Iranian Revolution drove Japan’s push for energy efficiency. The current crisis, which simultaneously exposes Asia’s dependence on oil and LNG imports and the fragility of fertilizer supply chains, may prove to be a powerful accelerant for diversification, redundancy, and stockpiling. But structural adjustment takes years. In the interim, the damage is accruing. World Economic Forum
Asia’s energy-importing economies — Japan, South Korea, India, the countries of Southeast Asia — have received the starkest possible reminder that their industrial civilizations rest on a narrow maritime corridor that can be closed by a single belligerent. Japan relies on the region for about 95% of its crude oil and 11% of its LNG imports, roughly 70% and 6% respectively shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. World Economic Forum The political will to accelerate domestic energy transition, nuclear expansion, and strategic stockpiling that has been intermittently present in these capitals for decades will now be sharply concentrated.
The Gulf states themselves face a forced reckoning with the fragility of their economic models. Their sovereign wealth funds, their diversification programs, their tourism industries, the aviation hubs that connected the world through Dubai and Doha — all have been interrupted or degraded by a war they were told, by the ally hosting his forces on their soil, was not their concern. The reconstruction of credibility, not just infrastructure, will take years.
Conclusion: An Unfinished Reckoning
The Third Gulf War is not over. As of today, the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. Energy infrastructure across nine countries is damaged. Desalination plants have been struck. A regional security architecture built over fifty years has been discredited in four weeks. The Islamic Republic of Iran, its Supreme Leader dead and its military materiel systematically destroyed, faces an uncertain political future whose contours no one can reliably predict. And the global economy — already stressed by tariffs, inflation, and the lingering derangements of the pandemic years — has absorbed an oil shock that the IEA’s own director calls the worst in history.
As the aftermath of the First Gulf War brought about an international peace conference in Madrid in October 1991, which put in motion the peace processes of the 1990s, the aftermath of the Third Gulf War should bring about the convening of another international peace conference — this time, perhaps, in Riyadh. The Times of Israel Whether the political will for such a gathering exists, whether Washington is interested in the architecture of peace rather than merely the achievement of military objectives, remains to be seen.
What is already certain is that the world of February 27, 2026 — the world before “Epic Fury” — will not return. The energy systems are cracked. The security guarantees are discredited. The normative architecture governing when states may attack other states has been rewritten by force. The Gulf’s decades-long transformation from petrostate backwater to global hub has been interrupted, perhaps permanently redirected. And a Middle East in which Iran’s Axis of Resistance structured conflict across the Levant, the Gulf, and South Asia for forty years has been dismantled — not replaced by stability, but replaced by a vacancy whose filling will be bloody and contested.
Wars have aftereffects. This one is still making them.
You can follow Professor Mohamed Chtatouon X : @Ayurinu
Dr. Mohamed Chtatou
Dr. Mohamed Chtatou is a Professor of education science at the university in Rabat. He is currently a political analyst with Moroccan, Gulf, French, Italian and British media on politics and culture in the Middle East, Islam and Islamism as well as terrorism. He is, also, a specialist on political Islam in the MENA region with interest in the roots of terrorism and religious extremism.
Dr. Mohamed Chtatou
Dr. Mohamed Chtatou is a Professor of education science at the university in Rabat. He is currently a political analyst with Moroccan, Gulf, French, Italian and British media on politics and culture in the Middle East, Islam and Islamism as well as terrorism. He is, also, a specialist on political Islam in the MENA region with interest in the roots of terrorism and religious extremism.
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