Comoros, an island nation of less than a million people, more than 3,000 miles from Iran, may not appear to be in danger, politically, from the current Middle East conflict. Donald Trump has never mentioned it publicly. It is neither an ally nor a target of the Iranian regime. But as long as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, no country is completely immune from the fallout of the war initiated by the United States and Israel, and that includes Comoros.
Last month, the country’s government tried to raise the price of gasoline by 35 percent, blaming the price shock caused by the Iran war. Public reaction included protests, roadblocks in the capital, and clashes with security forces in which one person was killed. Government suspended oil price increases in response.
- Protests have already broken out in several African countries in recent weeks, fueled by rising oil prices caused by the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
- Experts and humanitarian organizations expect that food prices will also rise significantly in the coming months. In the past, rising global food and oil prices have been linked to times of mass protests, including the 2011 Arab Spring.
- If the conflict with Iran continues, the result could be instability and political turmoil in countries that have nothing to do with the war.
It is not the only place where the waves of Hormuz have caused social unrest. Four people were killed in Kenya in May during protests with the rise in oil prices. Bus drivers in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, have they have gone on strike with an increase of 46 percent on the price of diesel, bringing the city to a standstill.
To be sure, none of these were primarily protests against the war itself, or against Iran’s blockade of the Straits. Citizens of these countries were protesting against their governments. This is not just an example of how unintended consequences can be when the US government starts a war. There is also the possibility that by attacking Iran, the United States may be creating new security conflicts that it will face in the coming years.
The worst may be yet to come: For one thing, even as many countries face the effects of high energy costs, oil prices have not yet risen to the levels many experts were expecting if the Straits remained closed. If the Strait remains closed, that could change as countries deplete their reserves. On the other hand, if the Strait crisis has the effect on food supply that many expect, the effects of political instability may be more pronounced.
About one third of international trade Fertilizer usually passes through the Strait of Hormuz. In addition to the closure of the Strait raising the price of fertilizer itself, rising oil prices affect food prices in several other ways, including transportation and irrigation costs. “Energy is the kind of central cost in the economy that determines every cost,” said Cullen Hendrix, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The full impact may not be seen for several months, and may already be absorbed into the economy in the near future, given that the price increase occurred during the planting season for farmers in the Northern Hemisphere.
“I’m really worried about later this year and the first quarter of 2027, because then we’ll know how the summer harvest was in the Northern Hemisphere,” Hendrix added. “That could indicate a big crisis is coming in 2027.”
“You’d be hard-pressed to find instances where discontent and protest aren’t happening.”
– Caitlin Welsh, director of the International Food and Water Security Program at the Center for International Security and Studies
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has warned that the closure of the Strait “is not a temporary disruption of shipping but the beginning of a shock to the agricultural system that could lead to a major global food price crisis within six to 12 months.” The World Food Program expects that if oil prices stay around $100 a barrel until the end of the month, more than 45 million people may fall into severe food shortages.
In the United States and other developed countries, that could mean higher food prices for families already struggling to make ends meet and trouble at the ballot box for incumbent politicians. In other parts of the world, the impact could be even greater – and it could be worse.
Anytime there’s a commodity price shock, chaos will follow, said Caitlin Welsh, director of the International Program for Food and Water Security at the Center for Security and International Studies. “You’d be hard-pressed to find instances where discontent and protest aren’t happening.”
Why food prices cause political instability
Years of research have shown that when global food prices rise, low-income countries are more likely to experience several forms of political instability, such as anti-government. protests and riotslike including violent conflicts in the form of civil wars and wars between nations.
“When food and energy are not available, they reveal the divisions of society.”
– Rabah Arezki, senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School
The price is going up alone it is unlikely to translate into chaos. But they can when they come over the existing economic and political conflicts.
“It’s more of a trigger,” said Rabah Arezki, an economist and senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “Increasing food prices in rich countries do not have the same effect as in countries where unemployment is high, and where complaints are also high.” Kenya, for example, has been plagued by protests against corruption and economic mismanagement for years, including a a bad round of fighting in 2024. A sharp increase in the cost of daily living could bring already disaffected people to the streets.
“When food and energy are lacking, they reveal social divisions,” said Rami Zurayk, professor of agriculture and food science at the American University of Beirut.
The relationship between food prices and political instability is one that has been debated from The French Revolution of 1789 to the “Bread Intifada” of 1977 in Egypt. But in recent years, the two most famous examples came in 2008 and 2011. In 2008, the price of commodities such as wheat, rice, corn and soy more than doubled due to several environmental and economic factors. led to food riots and protests in more than a dozen countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
The most famous is the Arab Spring of 2011, which was first sparked by the public self-immolation of a Tunisian food vendor. World food prices it increased further more than 40 percent in the months leading up to the Arab Revolution. Countries in the Middle East and North Africa where large protests broke out that year depended heavily on imported food.
It is reductive and unfair to those who participated in the riots to just say food prices caused Arab spring. The protests focused on the long-standing grievances of these people against corrupt authoritarian regimes. But it is fair to say that increased costs were one of the triggers that turned 2011 into a year of major uprisings.
The perfect storm for food shortages
Experts say it is a particularly bad time for the rise of food conflicts in the world. World Food Program Budget was reduced by almost 40 percent this year, largely due to cuts in aid from the United States, which previously provided more than half of its budget. A paper recently published in Science noted”a significant and sustained increase in conflict” in the months following the Trump administration’s cuts to USAID in countries that were previously most dependent on that aid.
In addition, forecasters say that the El Niño weather event in the summer can be particularly severecausing drought in some regions and heavy rains in other regions, thus further stressing food supply.
Food conflicts have become more frequent and intense in recent years, after decades of decline, driven in large part by the increase of number of international conflicts.
The conflict could lead to conflict for years
“This is a unique problem because it started from a war that was selective,” Arezki said. “Unlike other crises, this is one that can be resolved.”
Theoretically, the conflict could end once Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz, although the negative effects of the closure will be felt in the energy and food markets for several months. It is unclear when that will happen: Iran sees the costs it imposes on the global economy as its main source of leverage against its rivals. In reality, however, as an oil and gas producing country with a large domestic food supply, the United States is insulated from the effects of the closure of Hormuz. Likewise for Israel, which has less dependence on Gulf oil. The pain is felt more in poor countries that have not been involved in war.
Iranians themselves are also struggling, under severe sanctions and restrictions, and rising food prices. Another major public revolt seems unlikely during wartime, but it is worth remembering that it is rise in oil prices was the proximate cause of the spread of the protest movement in the country in 2019.
Regarding the United States, given that Trump has said so he doesn’t really care about Americans‘ The cost of life when it comes to making his decisions in Iran, it is difficult to imagine that the struggle of African or Asian countries is high on his agenda. If food insecurity in the developing world were a top priority for this administration, it wouldn’t have spent much of its first year cutting funding from programs meant to address it.
But it is worth noting that the upheavals of the Arab Spring set the conditions that led to the US military intervention in Libya in 2011 and the anti-ISIS operation in Syria and Iraq three years later. United States at the moment make growth but the little-discussed air campaign against al-Shabaab in Somalia, where a years-long famine has become not only a humanitarian crisis, but also a famine. a major source of conflict. Millions are also facing food shortages the crisis in Northern Nigeriawhere the United States has been increasing operations aimed at Islamic militants accused of violence against Christians.
In other words, unstable areas around the world tend to attract US military involvement. So Americans may end up paying for the economic impact of this war in ways far beyond the gas pump or the grocery store.
