The war in Iran is unfolding in one of the most critical areas for the global energy market. Iran has skillfully exploited a geographical feature that acts as a chokepoint for oil shipments: the Strait of Hormuz, through which one fifth of the world’s oil production normally passes.
For more than two months, the average price of a barrel of Brent crude has risen from around $65 to over $100, with peaks well above that level. The price rises or falls depending on promising announcements about the potential reopening of the Strait, but remains high. This has produced what we might call a supply shock, because it has affected the availability and value of a key input — fuel — leading to widespread cost increases across all supply chains.
This shock is hitting a global economy that was already fragile, still reeling from the upheavals caused by the fluctuations of Trump’s tariff war.
The world was already grappling with only moderate growth, extremely high debt levels, and trade tensions. The IMF itself, which just a few months ago was still talking about a “soft landing,” now admits that the war shock could cut global growth in 2026 by several tenths of a percentage point and reignite inflation, particularly through the energy channel. In its baseline scenario, the agency estimates that projected growth for 2026 at the start of the year could fall to 3.1 percent, while in a more extreme scenario where oil remains around $100 per barrel for an extended period, growth would be cut to 2.5 percent. That figure means many countries entering a recession — in some cases quite severe — as well as higher inflation for a longer period.
This additional boost to inflation comes at a time when wages were already lagging behind prices, following more than a decade of declining labor’s share of income. The conflict acts as a multiplier on regressive trends that the global economy had been grappling with for some time.
Beyond the immediate impact on oil prices, there is another dimension that could be felt strongly throughout this year and next. The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz affects nearly 30 percent of global trade in key inputs for fertilizers (urea, sulfur, ammonia). Their prices have skyrocketed in tandem with the escalation of the conflict, and the reduction in stockpiles is already becoming evident.
If this situation persists, we could face a serious food security problem in the coming agricultural season: more expensive crops, lower yields due to nutrient depletion, and a general rise in the cost of living. This, in turn, would lead to growing social tensions, especially in countries most dependent on food imports. From this perspective, the war in Iran is not merely a regional conflict: it becomes a factor that disrupts the relationship between energy, food, and social stability on a global scale.
If we put all these pieces together, what do we have? On the one hand, increased pressure on central banks to maintain tighter monetary policies for longer, curbing growth and complicating the situation for heavily indebted economies. On the other hand, a new round of deterioration in real wages and living conditions for the majority, especially in the energy-importing Global South. Meanwhile, sectors such as the major oil companies and financial traders take advantage of volatility and high prices to improve their margins. The cost of the adjustment is once again passed on to workers.
Global Value Chains Under Fire
In my book Imperialism in Times of Global Disorder, I argue that global value chains are at the heart of capitalist globalization: an internationalized production system, hierarchically organized by large transnational capital, which captures the lion’s share of profits. Over the past decade, China’s ability to climb the ranks in some of these chains and become a pole of the world economy, along with the U.S. decision to confront these threats, had already introduced tensions into this framework, reigniting a geopolitical rivalry that put pressure on these chains.
Multinationals had to factor into their calculations not only economic efficiency — narrowly understood as reducing costs and increasing margins — but also the potential implications of interstate rivalries on their production circuits, a concept that came to be known as resilience. This led to changes in the structure of these chains, though it did not mean their reversal.
The war in Iran could accelerate a more profound reconfiguration on two levels: geostrategic and sectoral. On the geostrategic level, by striking a “chokepoint” like Hormuz and simultaneously straining other corridors such as Bab el-Mandeb and Suez, the conflict forces a redesign of logistics routes and entire supply chains: energy, chemicals, fertilizers, and certain industrial inputs.
What various analyses characterize as a “new phase of structural uncertainty” is, in the terms of my book, the expression of imperialism in disarray, in which the security of routes and the capacity for coercion come to weigh as heavily as cost efficiency when organizing supply chains.
At the sectoral level, the war is reinforcing trends that were already emerging from the tariff dispute and the pandemic: partial regionalization, selective “nearshoring” (relocation to more limited locations closer to the countries where multinationals have their headquarters), and fragmentation into blocs. The United States and the European Union are seeking to relocate or secure critical links — energy, green technologies, strategic minerals — to reduce their dependence on unstable regions and on China, while China consolidates alternative corridors and its leadership position in supply chains associated with the energy transition, such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels.
The structure of productive internationalization is not being reversed. Rather, a more segmented and militarized globalization is taking shape, marked by rivalry among powers and the constant threat of sanctions, blockades, and wars. Wars with broader regional impact are increasingly becoming the norm in various parts of the world, with growing consequences for the disruption of systemic functioning — a reality that must be internalized in the “management” of these supply chains.
From Imperial Order to Systemic Chaos
This scenario is part of a broader dynamic of the disintegration of the world order that the United States has led since the end of World War II, first on the basis of Bretton Woods and then, after the end of the Cold War, as the dominant power on a global scale. Although the U.S. still maintains a significant lead in terms of material power, its relative decline and its difficulties in translating that advantage into effective power are becoming increasingly evident. And its ability to discipline allies, contain rivals, and stabilize the order it itself constructed has been in decline for some time.
The concept of “systemic chaos,” which I borrow from the world-system school, aims to describe this process. This is a state into which the world system has been gradually entering at least since the 2008 crisis, and which has accelerated over the past five years. In the wake of that crisis, the political systems of wealthy countries began to be disrupted, challenged by both the Right and the Left.
With Trump, a strategy has taken hold in which the United States makes decisions that are, in themselves, a factor in the dissolution of the very order it had forged. In his economic war and military decisions, Trump outlines a geopolitics of unbridled imperialism. He openly acknowledges the law of the strongest, where once there was talk of a “rules-based order” from which he now seeks to disengage. At the same time, the 2025 National Security Strategy states that, “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,” and declares that the country cannot continue to “police the whole world.”
Of course, a major power cannot simply and happily renounce these “responsibilities” without suffering a severe erosion of its position. That is why Washington is demanding more from its allies while simultaneously trying to free itself from commitments in order to act with greater unilateralism. The result is a more unstable order, rife with tensions between the need to continue arbitrating the system and the desire to focus on defending immediate interests.
In this context, the major setback Trump is suffering in Iran is deepening global disorder and accelerating the slide toward systemic chaos. The failure to secure a victory against Iran is markedly deteriorating the United States’ capacity for arbitration. The use of force is proving to be an increasingly limited tool for reshaping the situation in a way favorable to the leading power, because any escalation triggers a chain of unpredictable risks.
What we are seeing in Iran is that a military intervention designed to reaffirm leadership in the Middle East ends up exposing the limits of that ambition. It leaves behind global economic costs, creates rifts between the United States and its allies, and opens the door for other powers — starting with China and Russia — to capitalize on Washington’s decline. Far from restoring U.S. authority, the war exposes it: it shows the use of force as an increasingly necessary recourse, while highlighting its difficulty in imposing clear and lasting results.
This deepens systemic chaos in at least two ways. First, because it consolidates a scenario in which no power is in a position to guarantee a stable “order”: we have a U.S. imperialism that is still dominant but increasingly challenged, and a group of powers that cannot replace it, but can only exploit the cracks. Second, new fault lines are being created, along with greater militarization, more energy crises, and heightened tensions in the global economy.
These are not merely temporary disruptions after which a pre-shock state of normality will be restored. Rather, we find ourselves in a lasting situation, marked by the combination of regional wars with global impact, economic-financial shocks, and rivalries among powers. Until the factors fueling this chaos are resolved one way or another, the war in Iran must be seen as a new turning point in the crescendo of global disorder.
Originally published in Spanish on May 15 in La Izquierda Diario.
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