Global Impact · March 2026

No Butter Chicken, Shorter Showers, Pricier Homes: How the Iran War Is Hitting Everyone, Everywhere

A war in the Middle East sounds like someone else’s problem — until the cooking gas runs out, the airfare doubles, the cancer drug doesn’t arrive, and a gas line forms in Texas. Here is what the Iran-US-Israel conflict is actually doing to the rest of the world.

Wars have always had consequences beyond their borders. But in a world wired tightly by trade, shipping lanes, and supply chains, a conflict in one region doesn’t stay there. It travels — through fuel prices and freight routes, through cancelled flights and disrupted harvests, through the price of a tracksuit and the cost of a cancer drug — until it lands, quietly and uninvited, in the daily life of someone who had nothing to do with starting it.

The war between the United States, Israel, and Iran — now in its fourth week — is doing exactly this.

I. Food and the Kitchen

Butter chicken and dosa have disappeared from some Indian restaurant menus. These dishes depend on cooking gas. India imports most of its LPG from the Gulf, and the Strait of Hormuz closure has made supplies scarce enough that commercial kitchens have been rationed or shut.

Australian farmers are planting less wheat — and farmers in many other countries are watching their input costs climb. About a third of the world’s fertiliser is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. When that route closes, fertiliser prices rise, and planting decisions change. Smaller harvests could follow within a season or two.

Sugar from Brazil could get more expensive. Brazil is the world’s largest sugar producer. As energy prices spike globally, Brazilian sugar mills are finding it more profitable to convert their cane into biofuel rather than sugar. Less sugar on global markets means higher prices — everywhere.

II. Energy and the Household

South Koreans were asked to take shorter showers. Much of the energy South Korea uses to heat water comes from Middle Eastern gas imports. With supply disrupted and prices surging, the government has moved to public conservation appeals.

Thailand’s prime minister wore short-sleeved shirts to work and asked others to do the same. Government offices have been ordered to cap air-conditioning use.

The Philippines asked civil servants to take the stairs instead of elevators. Egypt cut shopping mall operating hours five days a week. Both countries are trying to reduce electricity demand as energy costs climb.

Sri Lanka declared Wednesdays a public holiday. The intention is to reduce daily commuting and conserve fuel. Laos adopted a three-day school week for the same reason.

Gas lines are back in Texas. In San Antonio, drivers queued for up to 30 minutes at a Costco fuel station, worried about a price spike. The irony of an American oil state experiencing fuel anxiety because of a war its government is fighting has not been lost on observers.

III. Travel and Transport

Tens of thousands of flights have been cancelled. With parts of Middle Eastern airspace closed, carriers have had to suspend routes, reroute around conflict zones, and absorb higher fuel costs — all of which are filtering through to ticket prices.

Airfares are rising globally. Airlines pay more for jet fuel. They pass the cost to passengers. There is no opt-out for anyone who needs to fly.

Formula 1 cancelled races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. With missiles targeting Gulf nations, competitions scheduled in both countries were scratched from the calendar.

Zara clothes piled up at airports in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is one of the world’s largest garment exporters. The cancelled and disrupted flights have blocked textile exports from leaving the country, with finished garments sitting in airport cargo holds with nowhere to go.

IV. Health and Medicine

Cancer drugs might not reach patients on time. Dubai and Doha are major cargo transit hubs for temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals — medicines that must be kept refrigerated at all times. Shutdowns in both cities have disrupted the cold-chain logistics that keep these drugs viable from manufacturer to patient.

This is, in purely clinical terms, a life-or-death supply chain failure. It receives far less attention than the price of petrol.

V. The Unexpected Ones

Party balloons may be harder to find. Qatar produces a third of the world’s helium — a byproduct of natural gas production. As Qatari production and export slow, balloon suppliers globally are running low. It is a small thing. It is also a precise illustration of how deep global supply chains go, and how far a disruption in one place travels.

Tracksuits could get more expensive. The polyester in athletic wear is made from petrochemicals — oil and gas derivatives. Rising energy prices increase the cost of the raw material, which increases the cost of the finished product.

Ceramics factories in India stopped firing their kilns. Kilns run on natural gas or propane. Both are now scarce. Ceramic tiles — used in construction, in kitchens, in bathrooms — have joined the list of things that cannot currently be made at the rate they are needed.

Gold has fallen. This is counterintuitive — gold is traditionally a safe-haven asset that rises in times of crisis. The fall is attributed partly to speculative investors cashing out gold positions to cover losses elsewhere, a sign that the financial stress of the conflict is spreading across asset classes in unpredictable directions.

A chess grandmaster withdrew from a major competition in Cyprus over safety concerns after a drone struck a British military base on the island early in the war. Even the chess calendar is not immune.

Shakira and Christina Aguilera postponed concerts in the region. Cultural events — the things that make cities feel alive and economies feel connected — are, like everything else, contingent on the war not spreading further.

VI. Winners and Odd Developments

Russia is getting a little richer. Surging energy prices are a direct revenue boost to an economy built on oil and gas exports. Every dollar added to the global oil price is a dollar more for Russia’s budget, which is currently funding an ongoing war in Ukraine.

Ukraine may run short on Patriot missiles. The conflict has depleted US stocks of the interceptors that Kyiv relies on to defend against Russian air attacks. The same war that is boosting Russia’s revenue is simultaneously straining the military supply chains that Ukraine depends on.

Venezuela has been allowed to export fertiliser again. The Trump administration loosened sanctions specifically to help American farmers access fertiliser supplies disrupted by the Hormuz closure. A country sanctioned for democratic backsliding is being unlocked as a fertiliser supplier because a war has made the alternative too expensive.

The full list, laid out this way, is both absurd and clarifying. A war between three countries is cancelling concerts and reducing shower lengths and delaying cancer drugs and making tracksuits cost more and forming gas lines in Texas and emptying butter chicken off Indian menus and pushing a chess grandmaster off his competition schedule. The connections are real. The supply chains are real. The consequences are real — and they are landing on people who had no vote in the decisions that started this.

That, perhaps, is the most useful thing a list like this can do: make visible the fact that in a genuinely interconnected world, the cost of war is not contained by national borders or military perimeters. It distributes itself — silently, through prices and shortages and small inconveniences and large medical emergencies — across the entire human network. The war is not over there. It is in the price of the fuel, the absence of the drug, the cancelled flight, and the empty balloon aisle at the party supplies store. It is already here.