Trump’s war on Iran is starving the world

Western imperialism has trapped the global South in poverty. Now, US and Israeli aggression has pushed millions into food insecurity – and the worst may be yet to come

We’re in the midst of a global hunger crisis. Food prices are rising across the world, at the same time as climate breakdown reduces crop yields, and governments in the rich world are cutting aid. Millions are going hungry as a result.

A report from the World Food Programme, released in March, found that 45 million additional people would face ‘critical’ levels of food insecurity if Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war continued into the middle of the year. A deal may now have been reached, but the crisis isn’t over – and millions are facing acute hunger as a result.

The report found that 13 countries risked becoming “hunger hotspots” for years to come. Most of these countries – from Sudan, to Yemen, to Palestine – are already facing devastating conflicts waged or funded by imperialist powers. For these countries, the latest round of imperialist violence unleashed on Iran is turning a bad situation into a truly desperate one.

From oil shock to food crisis

A quarter of global oil supplies pass through the Strait of Hormuz – along with roughly a third of the world’s fertiliser. Since the war began in February, oil has been fluctuating in and around $100 per barrel, well above the $69 per barrel average recorded last year. Higher oil prices raise energy and transportation costs, which makes it harder to produce food and get it to where it needs to be.

Fossil fuels are also used to produce some of the world’s most important fertilisers, many of which are also shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. The price of nitrogen fertiliser has risen by more than 30% since the start of the war. Unlike oil, the world holds no strategic reserve of fertiliser to manage the shortfall. Farmers are having to reduce their use of fertiliser, which experts predict could reduce yields by 50% next harvest.

As I argued in a piece a few weeks ago, these price increases are transmitted very quickly to consumers thanks to the financialisation of commodity markets. You’ll likely have already noticed that food and petrol prices have risen since the start of the Iran war. But the shocks we’ve experienced in the rich world are nothing compared to the chaos that has been unleashed on some of the world’s poorest countries.

In Sudan, the WFP has identified a risk of famine across much of the country, likely to persist until at least next year. Nearly 20 million people – 41% of the population – live in the affected areas, and they are facing acute levels of food insecurity. The number of people living in “catastrophic” food insecurity is predicted to rise to 200,000 across the country over the next few months.

Millions more people face food insecurity, concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Palestine faces an ongoing risk of famine, with 1.6 million people facing acute food insecurity. In Yemen, nearly 20 million people are in food crisis – over half of the population. And in Somalia, 6 million face food insecurity, with 2 million facing emergency.

Famine is not a natural disaster

In a globalised food system, food insecurity and famine are rarely solely the result of a poor harvest. They are generally crises of affordability and logistics. In some cases, food is available but is unaffordable for most of the population. In other cases, it is extremely difficult and expensive to transport food to where it needs to be – often due to conflict.

The Iran war has severely exacerbated both the affordability and logistics issues for many countries – particularly fuel importing countries in the global South. These countries are at the mercy of global oil markets and have little scope to protect themselves from rising prices. Thanks to decades of colonial extraction and imperialism, these states do not have the resources to invest in decarbonisation – nor to insulate their populations from the impact of rising fossil fuel prices.

The countries facing the worst food crises are all in the midst of their own conflicts – often sponsored by western powers or regional hegemons. The civil war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – while heightening food insecurity for those cut off from world trade. The UAE – a key ally of the US and the UK – is a key sponsor of the conflict.

In Gaza, Israel has perpetuated a genocide of Palestinians through both direct violence and collective punishment – like cutting off access to water and food. In the DRC, Rwanda – a key UK ally – sponsors rebel groups responsible for killing civilians across the east of the country, while exacerbating food insecurity. Conflict in Yemen continues, with countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia continuing to back their preferred factions, and civilians paying the price.

Institutionalised extraction

Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopened tomorrow, the worst may still be ahead. Oil prices are likely to remain between $80 and $90 per barrel until the end of the year. The Strait of Hormuz will be reopened slowly – if it is fully reopened at all. Minesweepers will have to trawl the Strait before insurers accept it is safe to pass through.

Crops being planted now will be harvested in autumn and into 2027 – with far less fertiliser than normal. The chief executive of one of the world’s largest fertiliser producers has warned that a nitrogen shortfall could reduce wheat and maize yields by as much as 50 per cent in 2027. Globally, the estimated drop in fertiliser supply could cost the world 10 billion meals a week.

What’s more, the current crisis is interacting with the longer-term challenge of climate breakdown to reduce yields. As I wrote in this piece, climate breakdown is already impacting global agriculture – last year, cocoa and coffee prices spiked thanks to periods of both drought and flooding. Extreme weather events will continue to affect a variety of crops in unpredictable ways. Over the long term, NASA has pointed out that rising temperatures will reduce yields in most of the world.

This year, a ‘super’ El Niño is set to hit the Southern Hemisphere, further compounding the challenges facing farmers. El Niño is a cyclical warming of the Pacific Ocean that disrupts weather patterns across the globe – bringing drought to parts of sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Australia, and flooding to parts of South America. Previous ‘super’ El Niño events have been associated with crop failures, wildfires, and flooding across dozens of countries.

Then there are aid cuts. As Anthea Lawson wrote in a guest post a few weeks ago, over the past two years, Western governments – including the UK – have slashed their overseas aid budgets, redirecting money towards defence spending. The results are already visible on the ground. In Somalia, the WFP is now operating with an 89 per cent funding gap. Overall, its budget has been cut by 40 per cent since 2024 – meaning it can only reach a fraction of those who need help.

And then there’s the global South debt crisis, which has been growing steadily worse since the pandemic. Global South nations were already carrying a collective external debt burden of $11.7 trillion and paying interest rates more than twice those faced by advanced economies. Inflation has made the debt burden even less sustainable, as it weakens these countries’ terms of trade and increases debt servicing costs. Today, 54 countries home to 3.4 billion people spend more on debt repayments than on health or education.

Unity against empire

The Iran war did not create any of these problems. The grotesque inequality between the global North and South is the result of imperialism: the economic and political domination of the poor world by the rich world required for capitalism to function. But Trump and Netanyahu’s invasion of Iran has created an acute crisis, which is forcing millions of people into severe food insecurity – just as western governments step back from providing support.

Of course, the west was never going to ‘save’ the global South. As visionaries like Ghana’s Nkrumah and Indonesia’s Sukarno realised decades ago, global South countries must band together to exert collective power at the global level if they are ever to resist western imperialism. As Sukarno himself put it, the global South must become “one powerful wave to sweep away our main enemy: political imperialism and economic imperialism.”

This article was originally written for the Grace Blakeley Substack channel and has been re-published with permission.

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