Farmers now face a severe crisis: unable to sell the harvest, many lack the cash to finish harvesting, let alone plant the next winter crop. Grain is being left in the fields.
This is a catastrophic failure in the global food supply.
The campaign involves alternative oil production and transport routes and a renewed focus on nuclear energy to achieve energy independence. The Gulf states' expanding oil production beyond OPEC quotas, U.S. engagement in Venezuelan oil production, and new pipelines bypassing the strait together, signal a deliberate effort to decentralize and secure energy flows. It also enhances the sovereignty of Gulf producers. This regionalism contrasts sharply with past external impositions rooted in the Cold War era of a steady flow of Middle East conflicts, Kokinda highlights.
Iran has lost significant control over the Strait of Hormuz, writes CNN. Over 80% of liquids that have passed the strait over the past two weeks have done so via the Omani route, the remaining liquids have been "dark" transits, passing in the dark without transponders. In addition, over 6 million barrels are diverted via existing pipelines, and more are being built.Combined oil transits now total around 15 million barrels per day, before the war it was around 20 million barrels.
According to Bloomberg, Iran is facing mounting fuel shortages as the US squeezes its access to imports, stretching supplies of a commodity that previously sparked bouts of unrest in the country.
The state-run Hamshahri newspaper on Sunday reported long queues at petrol stations in Tehran because of fears of price hikes, with many drivers filling up tanks before they’re even half empty.
A top official in charge of domestic energy supply said the gasoline market had a daily deficit of 14-15 million liters due to record demand, damage incurred in the war and “changes in the national budget’s priorities.”
“We have to do something to bring consumption down to domestic production levels,” Esmaeil Saqab Esfahani, head of the Energy Optimization and Strategic Management Organization, said last week, according to the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency.
Needless to say, growing fuel shortages - and mounting popular unrest - will test Iran’s ability to keep the economy moving as the US launches what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described on Monday as “the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary.”
Past efforts to raise prices have led to deadly protests, most notably in 2019, when hundreds of Iranians were killed by security forces. Throw in rampant inflation and a worsening currency crisis now crushing millions of ordinary households in Iran, and a spike in gasoline prices could be the lit match that sparks a new explosion in public anger, similar to the deadly protests in January.
For their part, Iranian officials have been warning the public for months that price hikes may be inevitable because Israeli and US strikes on fuel storage sites and other energy facilities have compounded a longstanding supply-demand imbalance. Trump's blockade on Iranian ports has only made the situation worse by preventing imports that Iran normally relies on to offset shortages.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, who has become an impotent figurehead, appealed to the public for support as far back as May, as he mooted the possibility of rationing and urged people to use public transport where possible. But the warnings don’t appear to have worked.
And speaking of surging prices, Iran’s currency plummeted to new lows on Monday as the US announced further sanctions on the Islamic republic, whose citizens are now rushing to exchange lines to save their cash.
The rial dropped to 2.02 million to one US dollar when the currency markets opened on Monday, meaning the currency is now worth about half of what it was at the start of the year.
The continued plunge during nearly six months of war has led Iranians in Tehran to sprint for the exchange markets in hopes of getting US bills before their rial falls even further.
“There is no hope for a deal and peace,” Sadegh Mahmoudi, 73, told the Associated Press as he waited at an exchange line in downtown Tehran.
Iran’s rial has been in a free fall since last November due to years of Western sanctions and persistently high inflation, factors that have only gotten worse during the war.
New British Prime Minister Andy Burnham made his first foreign visit as leader on Monday, visiting Ukraine where he spoke of a “100 year partnership” with Kyiv and handed over blueprints to an advanced Anglo-French missile, so Ukraine can build their own.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham laid flowers, gave speeches, and handed over the blueprints to a long-range bunker buster missile on Monday as he visited Kyiv to help mark Ukraine’s 35th annual independence day, marking the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. The news Britain’s Labour leader was handing over potent missile technology to Ukraine so Kyiv can produce the sophisticated deep strike weapons in their own factories triggered a protest from Moscow, which complained the UK is a full participant in the war and one that works to prevent peace.
Burnham arrived in Kyiv on Monday morning in the typical fashion for world leaders, by executive train from Poland given the danger of flying directly into the country, and met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The British leader will later chair a meeting of the so-called Coalition of the Willing — a group of European nations contributing to the defence of Ukraine — from Kyiv. Leaders including France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz will join in person or by teleconference.
In a speech affirming British support for Ukraine’s war aims and to mark the 35th anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union in Ukraine, PM Burnham made reference to Britain holding Nazi Germany at bay in 1940 and 1941, and said Ukraine was now doing the same to Putinist Russia. He said: “My nation, our nation kept the flame of European freedom alive in the 20th century Great Britain. You hold that flame in the 21st”, reports The Guardian.
The PM said “we all know” that Russia cannot win in Ukraine and promised “the UK is behind you today and for as long as it takes… I want the Ukrainian people to hear it directly from me that our support will not waver”. He went on: “Russia should be in no doubt of our resolve. We will not back down until there is a just and lasting peace.”
Ukraine is supplying Europe with security by acting as a bulwark on its eastern border, Burnham said, and added: “That’s why I believe the Ukrainian people deserve not just our continued support, but our gratitude and our respect… We will continue to build the 100 year partnership between our two countries… And despite Russia’s outrageous threats to my country, we will continue our support for Ukraine’s defence”.
The visit of Burnham on Monday marked the latest step in an apparently ongoing effort not just to buttress Ukraine’s defence by giving it the freedom to build its own advanced weaponry to freely provided Western designs, but — presuming Ukraine survives the war — to become an arsenal for Europe in the future. A spokesman for the Prime Minister said “the Government has agreed that defence firm MBDA can release classified information on UK components for the long-range missile, SCALP”.
The SCALP or Storm Shadow is an Anglo-French bunker buster cruise missile. France has already said it would be permitting Ukraine to build the missile domestically, but it has many British components, and the British government surrendering its classified intellectual property will allow the project to go ahead. Ukraine has already been given complete Storm Shadow missiles and the weapon gained international attention in 2023 when the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol was destroyed in a spectacular airstrike, with footage of the weapons plunging into the headquarters building and the hardened bunkers below captured by shocked onlookers.
As is customary when a European state offers Ukraine a new military capability, the Kremlin responded with a statement warning Ukraine’s allies off. In comments that come just days after dark allusions to nuclear war and “consequences” after it was revealed Ukraine was using long-range British drones to strike deep inside Russia, President Vladimir Putin’s official spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday morning of the missle blueprints that “Britain is participating in this war. It is participating in this war on the side of the Kiev regime.”
He said at the Kremlin: “Britain methodically and regularly adds fuel to the fire [of the war]. And it methodically and regularly plots in order to prevent any development of the peaceful settlement process. This is exactly what the UK is doing.”
