By Quirino Mealha with AP
The Iran war is driving up energy and fertiliser prices, threatening food shortages in poor countries, destabilising fragile states and complicating inflation control at central banks worldwide.
The economic shocks from the Iran war continue to spread and compound across the globe.
The choke point is the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes and which has been effectively shut down since the US and Israel began missile strikes against Iran eleven days ago.
“For a long time, the nightmare scenario that deterred the US from considering an attack on Iran, and which got them to urge restraint on Israel, was that the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz,” said Maurice Obstfeld, a former chief economist at the IMF.
“Now we’re in the nightmare scenario,” he added.