This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 6, 2026 - April 12, 2026

While media coverage of Iran’s restrictions on passage through the Strait of Hormuz focuses on fuel prices, partial closure is also disrupting crucial fertiliser and other supplies, risking catastrophe for billions worldwide.

Since the war began, only a few of the hundred or so vessels that previously passed through the narrow Strait of Hormuz daily still do so.

The strait is not only a chokepoint on a shipping lane for oil and gas, but also has strategic implications for fertiliser, helium and other energy-intensive exports as well as for food and other imports to the region. Higher energy costs affect most transport and farming requirements, such as tilling and harvesting, as well as fertiliser supplies.

Wars, especially protracted ones, have lasting effects, including for agrifood systems. Without earlier investments, output elsewhere cannot be easily increased.

Alternative fertiliser supply sources are not readily available, especially as agro-ecological options have rarely been seriously pursued despite their proven viability.

As with renewable energy generation to reduce the need for petroleum imports, it is unclear whether the looming food crisis will accelerate the needed and feasible agro-ecological transition for enhanced food security.

Shipping delays and port congestion disrupt food supplies, trade and availability.

The Persian Gulf’s populations, augmented by millions of migrant workers, have become reliant on imports of wheat, rice, soy, sugar, cooking oil, meat and animal feed, among others. Many states have recently tried to improve their food security, expanding strategic reserves and investing in food agriculture and alternative supply routes.

Such measures have improved resilience but cannot address a prolonged blockade of the Persian Gulf. About 70% of the food for Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Gulf emirates passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Replacing disrupted food imports for about 100 million people would require moving almost 100 million kilograms of food into the region daily by other means. Supplying food to the Gulf region under blockade would require an unprecedented operation, possibly through contested airspace.

In 2024, the UN World Food Programme delivered about seven million kilograms of food daily to 81 million people in 71 countries.

Weather-driven food shortages and price spikes triggered political instability in 2008 and 2010/11. With food systems worldwide increasingly vulnerable to climate shocks, food insecurity threatens regimes everywhere.

Farmers worldwide need stable supplies of fertilisers and fuel.

The Iran war threatens to disrupt these supplies, so crucial to agricultural production. Staple crops like wheat, rice and maize rely heavily on fertilisers.

Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain all ship petroleum products through the Strait of Hormuz, including a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas. As LNG is key to producing many fertilisers, Gulf exports have become more significant, especially after the war cut Ukraine’s exports, and China and Russia reduced theirs as well.

In 2024, the Middle East accounted for almost 30% of major fertiliser exports, including nitrogen, phosphate and potash. The Gulf alone exported 23% of the world’s ammonia and 34% of its urea, while 30% to 40% of the world’s nitrogen fertiliser exports pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

In mid-2025, Kpler estimated that a closure of the strait could reduce fertiliser supplies by 33%, with sulphur-based ones falling by 44% and urea by 30%.

Reduc,ed nitrogen-based fertiliser exports would hurt major food exporters such as Brazil, the US, Thailand and India, all heavily reliant on fertiliser imports. However, the impact of shortages may be delayed until imported stocks run out.

As the war drags on, farmers may cut fertiliser use by planting less or switching to crops requiring less. Poorer harvests would, in turn, adversely affect later investment, planting and fertiliser use.

The economic consequences of the unprovoked US-Israeli assault on Iran and Tehran’s responses are spreading fast and catastrophically, especially for the most vulnerable.

Iran’s new leadership mistrusts Washington and will keep the Strait of Hormuz closed — choking fuel, food and fertiliser flows through it — to secure the guarantees it needs to reduce its vulnerability.

As attacks on Iran continued, Tehran stepped up targeted attacks on infrastructure in the Gulf kingdoms hosting US military facilities. US-led efforts have provided little relief to its allies.

The worldwide impact is uneven, with the poorest taking the brunt. Asia and Africa have been hard hit by heavy reliance on oil, gas and fertiliser imports.

Rich nations’ aid cuts to increase military spending have worsened poverty and hunger for millions, many of whom are also victims of war and aggression.

Unlike the rich, many migrant workers in the Gulf who cannot leave will struggle to make ends meet and send money home to their families.

And as the world’s attention has turned to the Gulf, Israel has worsened conditions in Gaza while taking over southern Lebanon and increasing Yemen’s pain.

Concerned about retribution in November’s US midterm elections, the White House is keen on a ceasefire. But it has not offered terms acceptable to Iran, which remains suspicious of the US commitment to its own promises, let alone the rule of law. Hence, the Iranian leadership is unlikely to agree to a ceasefire without credible guarantees for its future security from renewed Israeli and US aggression.

The Iran war has highlighted, yet again, the collateral damage of war and the food system’s vulnerability. Meanwhile, the suffering of the more vulnerable is ignored by the greater powers, who pay little heed to their plight.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram is currently senior adviser at Khazanah Research Institute. A former economics professor, he was United Nations assistant secretary-general for economic development. He is a recipient of the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

Kuhaneetha Bai Kalaicelvan studied at Universiti Malaya and does policy research at Khazanah Research Institute.

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