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The war on Iran continues to expand into a wider contest over escalation dominance, regional order, and the resilience of the global economy.

The U.S. and Israel still hold the operational initiative. Israel has shown deep intelligence penetration and considerable strike reach inside Iran, while the U.S. has widened its campaign against missile infrastructure near the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran, however, retains enough capacity to keep the war strategically costly through missile and drone attacks, maritime coercion, and pressure exerted through Iraq and Lebanon. The result is a conflict in which military advantage and strategic leverage are no longer the same thing.

Over the night of 17-18 March, U.S. strikes used 5,000-pound GBU-72 penetrators against fortified sites reportedly housing anti-ship cruise missiles and underground launch infrastructure near the Hormuz coast. The significance lies less in the bomb itself than in what it implies: Washington judged that Iran’s dispersed coastal missile network, rather than only mines, drones, or patrol craft, had become a central threat to commercial shipping and any future effort to reopen the waterway. In military terms, this is an attempt to break Iran’s ability to hold the Strait at risk from buried, survivable positions.

In strategic terms, it shows that Hormuz is no longer a secondary theater of the war, but now its main front.

The central geopolitical fact is that Hormuz has become one of the war’s principal theaters, not merely one of its consequences. Iran has effectively blocked almost all maritime traffic through the strait, forcing Saudi Arabia and the UAE to maximize bypass routes. Saudi exports through the East-West pipeline have risen from 1.7m barrels a day in 2025 to 5.9m by 9 March, against a nominal capacity of 7m. The UAE is pushing more crude through the Habshan-Fujairah line. These are large volumes, but they do not replace normal Hormuz flows, which usually carry around one-fifth of global oil and gas shipments.

That is why the war is now being transmitted into the world economy through circulation rather than production alone. Physical oil markets in Asia have tightened far more severely than headline benchmarks suggest. Oman crude has risen above $150 a barrel as buyers scramble for non-Hormuz supply; diesel is trading at roughly $150 a barrel and jet fuel at $163 in Asia. China has compounded the squeeze by banning fuel exports through at least the end of March, tightening regional supply further. Asia is already adjusting, with utilities and governments turning back toward coal, lifting coal-generation limits, and revising emergency energy policies.

This exposes a sharp asymmetry in global vulnerability. The United States remains better cushioned because of domestic production. Asian importers, by contrast, are more exposed to prolonged disruption in Hormuz and to shortages of refined products. That makes the war globally significant not merely because of oil prices, but because it is testing whether the world can absorb the prolonged coercion of a maritime chokepoint without broader industrial and political disruption.

At the level of direct force, the balance still favors the U.S. and Israel. Israel appears able to penetrate Iran’s leadership circle and strike in politically sensitive areas. The U.S. has widened its role from supporting operations to hitting hardened missile positions linked to the Hormuz threat. Israeli officials argue openly that Iran has been badly weakened, and there is evidence to support the narrower operational claim that Tehran’s conventional air and missile posture has been seriously damaged.

Another important feature has been the continued focus toward leadership decapitation and retaliatory counter-pressure. Iranian and other reporting indicate that Ali Larijani, one of the most powerful figures in the Iranian system, has been killed, alongside Gholamreza Soleimani, the Basij commander. Iran’s response has been to widen retaliation geographically rather than narrow it: missile and drone attacks struck Israel and several Gulf states overnight, while pro-Iran actors sustained pressure on U.S. sites in Iraq.

But Iran’s leverage does not depend on matching the U.S. and Israel symmetrically. It depends on converting vulnerability into disruption. Even after losing senior leaders, Iran has shown that it can still launch advanced missile attacks on central Israel, kill civilians near Tel Aviv, strike Gulf infrastructure and bases, and keep the strait largely restricted. It also appears to retain the capacity to escalate selectively against Gulf energy assets, a more serious development than generalized harassment because it threatens prolonged supply loss rather than a brief episode of market alarm.

In Iraq, fresh drone and rocket attacks on the U.S. embassy and another diplomatic site near Baghdad airport underline that American exposure cannot be neatly contained.

In Lebanon, the war continues to inflict grave civilian harm and mass displacement, with the U.N. and Lebanese authorities reporting more than 900 deaths and well over 1 million displaced, while some outlets now place displacement above one million.

That is why the war is becoming one of unequal leverage. The U.S. and Israel dominate the exchange of precision and initiative. Iran still exerts disproportionate influence over how widely the cost of that success is distributed. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Tehran-backed militias in Iraq remain central to that wider architecture. They do not reverse Iranian losses, but they make the exploitation of those losses more expensive and politically riskier.

The main near-term risk is maritime expansion. If Iran moves from selective restriction and selective passage to a broader campaign against commercial shipping, offshore infrastructure, or any coalition effort to restore traffic, the war will become more internationalized very quickly. Gulf producers are already scrambling to compensate, while Iran has kept the strait largely restricted without sealing it completely to all traffic. That combination, coercive closure combined with selective passage, is inherently unstable.

The second risk is political hardening inside Iran. Leadership decapitation may weaken coordination, but it can also compress decision-making into narrower and more radical hands. Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi is already arguing for a new postwar Hormuz protocol aligned with Iranian interests and ruling out a change in nuclear doctrine. That suggests Tehran is not indicating capitulation. It is trying to convert wartime coercion into postwar bargaining power.

The third risk is wider economic contagion. Airline cancellations, higher jet-fuel costs, tighter Asian supply, and renewed coal use suggest that the conflict’s biggest global danger is no longer a brief oil spike. It is a prolonged systems shock across shipping, aviation, manufacturing, and food-linked supply chains.

Today’s picture is clearer than yesterday’s. The war is moving deeper into a pattern of military asymmetry and strategic disruption. 

The U.S. and Israel are winning more of the direct exchanges.

Iran is still losing in conventional terms, but it has not lost the ability to widen the war’s cost across the region and the global economy.

Our assessment is that the most likely near-term trajectory remains a prolonged coercive war: continued strikes, continued retaliation, continued pressure on Hormuz, and steadily rising economic and diplomatic strain, without tipping into full regional conventional collapse.

We should not forget the possibility that the Houthis might close the Bab al-Mandab strait, leading to the Red Sea and Suez Canal. Should that occur, the global economic impact would be devastating. 

UAE hardens its tone as Iranian attacks continue

The UAE has markedly hardened its public stance toward Iran after 18 days of missile and drone attacks, with Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, condemning what he called Tehran’s “treacherous” and “terrorist” strikes in unusually forceful terms. He offered condolences to the families of six victims from Palestine, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, and said the attacks had now exceeded 2,000 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones aimed at airports, residential areas, civilian sites, and other vital facilities.

More strikingly, Sheikh Abdullah said the UAE reserved the full right to take all necessary measures to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national security under international law. He framed the attacks not as isolated incidents but as a sustained assault on the state, backed by broad international condemnation and support from more than 130 countries. The message suggests a firmer Emirati posture: the UAE is presenting itself not only as a target of repeated Iranian escalation, but as a state prepared to justify stronger retaliatory or protective measures if the campaign continues.

The ultimate complex system

How the Hormuz blockade is pricing food out of reach

One of the gravest consequences of the Hormuz blockade is the growing threat to global food production.

This is not just an oil shock. It is also a fertilizer shock, and fertilizer lies far closer to the base of modern agriculture than many policymakers seem to grasp.

Roughly one-third of global fertilizer trade passes through the Gulf, while Hormuz handles about 35% of world urea exports and 45% of global sulfur exports, both critical inputs for nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers.

Because natural gas is the main feedstock for nitrogen fertilizer, disruption to Gulf gas supplies and shipping strikes from two directions at once: factories struggle to keep operating, and finished product struggles to reach market.

Producers in places such as Qatar, India, Bangladesh, and Egypt have already faced stoppages or disruptions, while prices have risen sharply. Middle Eastern urea prices are up by about 40%, U.S. prices have risen by more than 30%, and some analysts warn that nitrogen prices could double if the disruption persists.

The Trump administration is now scrambling for alternatives. Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, told Al Jazeera that President Donald Trump is “working very closely” with countries including Venezuela and Morocco to shore up production of certain fertilizer inputs, an indication that Washington sees the risk not as a distant market problem but as an immediate economic and political concern.

The effects extend far beyond fertilizer traders. Farmers cannot easily replace urea, ammonia, or sulfur-based inputs during planting seasons without damaging yields. That means the first effect is higher farm costs, but the second is lower application rates, weaker output, and eventually higher food prices.

The countries most exposed are not necessarily those at war, but those already living closest to the edge: import-dependent agricultural economies, poorer consumers, and governments with limited fiscal room to subsidize food or farm inputs.

That is why the phrase “fertilizer famine” is not hyperbole. The danger is not that the world suddenly runs out of food next week. It is that a maritime war in the Gulf quietly weakens the input base of global agriculture during crucial planting windows, then emerges months later in smaller harvests and food inflation.

The resulting squeeze is especially dangerous because it comes alongside higher freight and insurance costs, disrupted energy markets, and broader supply-chain strain.

In that sense, Hormuz is not only constricting oil flows. It is also constricting the chemical foundation of global food production.

Europe's center of gravity shifts east, politics moves right, hostility to migrants from the south rises, as ties with the U.S. fray, and fear of Russia increases

Europe’s reluctant bargaining

While most major allied countries, whether inside NATO or outside it, have refused to join the war on Iran, faint hints of a European bargain are beginning to emerge. The broad European instinct remains one of caution. Governments across the continent are reluctant to be drawn into a conflict they did not choose, especially one that could widen through the Strait of Hormuz and pull Europe into another Middle Eastern war. But beneath that caution, a more transactional logic is starting to surface.

The clearest expression of that idea has come from Alexander Stubb, Finland’s president. He has floated a distinctly hard-headed proposition for the West’s two biggest security crises. Europe, he suggested, could help President Donald Trump in the Gulf, especially over the Strait of Hormuz, if Washington in return strengthens its backing for Ukraine. The significance of the idea lies less in any immediate military commitment than in the strategic logic behind it.

Stubb’s argument is that Europe should not treat the two theaters as separate. Instead, it should turn Trump’s taste for bargaining into a strategic exchange: if Europe is asked to shoulder more risk in the Gulf, the United States should shoulder more responsibility in Eastern Europe. In effect, he is proposing a geopolitical trade between Hormuz and Ukraine. The idea is designed to appeal to Trump’s deal-making instincts while giving Europe a way to avoid seeming either passive in the Gulf or abandoned over Russia.

That approach also reveals a wider divide inside Europe.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, has emphasized diplomacy and warned against a military response in Hormuz, reflecting the broader reluctance to widen the war.

Stubb is not necessarily rejecting that caution. But he is taking a colder view of alliance politics. If Trump is linking the future value of NATO solidarity to help in the Gulf, then Europe, in Stubb’s view, should answer politically rather than sentimentally.

Estonia has gone further still. In Jerusalem, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said Estonia supports the U.S. and Israel in ensuring that Iran cannot threaten global security, and added that Tallinn was ready to discuss what kind of support Washington might require in the Strait of Hormuz. For a small country, the practical military value of such an offer may be limited. But politically, it matters.

Tsahkna’s remarks suggest three things. First, Estonia is aligning itself clearly with the most hawkish U.S. interpretation of the war: that Iran is not simply a regional problem, but a threat to the wider “free world”. Second, Tallinn appears to view the conflict through much the same lens it applies to Russia, namely that democracies should support one another early rather than wait for a threat to grow. That is consistent with Estonia’s broader foreign-policy tradition of firm alliance solidarity. Third, the statement is symbolically important because it cuts against the broader European mood. At a moment when larger powers are hedging, Estonia is offering solidarity.

In practical terms, “any kind of support” does not necessarily mean combat forces. For a country such as Estonia, it could mean political backing, intelligence cooperation, cyber support, staff work, logistics, or participation in a later maritime-security arrangement if the mission were multinational and politically defensible. The point is not that Estonia will transform the military balance. It is that some European states are beginning to think less in terms of staying out altogether and more in terms of what kind of conditional involvement might serve their wider interests.

Whether any such bargain is workable is another matter. Many European governments remain wary of joining a U.S.-led military effort against Iran, and Trump himself has alternated between demanding allied help and insisting that America does not need it.

That makes the emerging European position more useful as a strategic concept than as an imminent policy. Even so, the outlines are becoming visible. Europe may not be ready to join the war. But some of its leaders are beginning to think in transactional terms about how support in one theater might be exchanged for security in another.

It’s now the U.S. vs China, everyone needs to pick a side

Ukraine shows it can still move

Ukraine has achieved a rare advance on the southeastern front, offering a reminder that the war remains fluid even after months in which the battlefield seemed dominated by attrition.

The gains, reported in parts of Zaporizhzhia and near the Dnipropetrovsk axis, are disputed in scale. Ukrainian officials have suggested a larger figure, while independent analysts have put the reclaimed area lower. But the precise number matters less than the fact of the advance itself.

That is because the southeastern front has become one of the war’s harshest drone-and-artillery kill zones, where even small movements can be costly and large breakthroughs are difficult. For Ukraine to make ground there suggests that Russia’s grip is less secure than it appeared and that Kyiv still retains some offensive capacity under punishing conditions.

This does not amount to a strategic reversal. Russia continues to press elsewhere, while strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure continue. Still, the operation complicates any simple narrative of inevitable Russian momentum. It also carries a political message: as attention shifts toward the Middle East, Ukraine is showing that the war with Russia remains active, contested, and far from settled.

Sweden becomes first EU state to sign Pax Silica declaration

Sweden on 18 March became the first European Union member to sign the Pax Silica Declaration, a political and industrial initiative framed around reducing strategic dependence on vulnerable global chokepoints and critical technology supply chains.

The timing is significant. The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz has reinforced a wider concern among Western governments and firms: that narrow transit routes and concentrated infrastructure can be turned into instruments of coercion. Iran’s attempt to disrupt traffic through Hormuz has highlighted how a relatively small stretch of water can place pressure not only on oil markets, but also on inflation, shipping, insurance and broader economic confidence.

That wider lesson is central to Pax Silica’s argument. The initiative is built on the view that modern power rests not only on military force, but also on control over the infrastructure that underpins economic life, including ports, shipping lanes, cables, energy corridors, mineral processing and digital networks. In that reading, resilience is no longer simply a matter of stockpiles or armed forces. It also depends on whether states and their partners can diversify supply, protect critical systems and reduce exposure to strategic bottlenecks.

Sweden’s entry gives the declaration greater industrial credibility.

The country is one of Europe’s most technologically capable economies and home to Ericsson, one of the few firms outside China and the U.S. with the capacity to provide 5G infrastructure at global scale. That makes Sweden more than a symbolic addition. It gives the initiative a stronger link to the contest over trusted telecommunications networks and the wider effort to build secure technology ecosystems among allied states.

Supporters of Pax Silica argue that this requires more than diplomatic alignment. It requires investment in logistics, refining, manufacturing redundancy and mineral supply chains, particularly in sectors where a handful of producers or transit routes still dominate. The underlying aim is to make it harder for hostile powers (implying China) to extract leverage from concentration and dependency.

Sweden’s move does not by itself transform that landscape. But it suggests that some European states are beginning to treat supply-chain security, industrial capacity and trusted infrastructure as matters of grand strategy rather than merely commercial policy.

Move fast and break things

Senate advances SAVE America Act

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday voted 51-48 to advance the SAVE America Act, giving President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans a procedural victory on one of the party’s leading election measures.

The vote does not amount to final passage. It allows the bill to proceed to debate, but the legislation still faces a far more difficult path in the chamber, where most major bills require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. In political terms, the outcome matters even if the bill’s ultimate prospects remain unclear.

The SAVE America Act is designed to tighten federal election rules. Supporters say it would bolster confidence in elections by requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for voter registration, mandating photo identification at the polls, and expanding the means to remove non-citizens from voter rolls. Critics argue that such provisions would create new obstacles for lawful voters, especially those without easy access to passports, birth certificates, or other qualifying documents.

The wider importance of the vote lies in what it suggests about the Senate Republican conference and President Trump’s continued influence over it. Even before any final vote, the measure has become a test of loyalty to the president’s election agenda and a means of deepening partisan divisions ahead of the 2026 midterm campaign.

For Republicans, the bill offers a chance to present themselves as defenders of electoral integrity. For Democrats, it offers an opening to argue that the party is using concerns about fraud to justify tighter voting restrictions. The result is likely to intensify an already bitter dispute over election law, federal authority, and the rules of democratic participation in the U.S.

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