Council on Foreign Relations
The Iran War’s Hidden Front: Food, Water, and Fertilizer
Mar 13 2026
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The countries in the region—which boast over 60 million people—are particularly exposed to food shocks. They are almost entirely import-dependent when it comes to rice (77 percent), corn (89 percent), soybeans (95 percent) and vegetable oils (91 percent), according to Institute for Public Policy Research. Any disruption of supply chains will quickly have significant consequences. In Iran, food price inflation has risen 40 percent in the past year, prices for rice have increased sevenfold, green lentils and vegetable oil threefold. It is likely that new overland transport corridors will open, putting Russia, Turkey, and Syria in a position of strategic control over vital supplies. Saudi Arabia traditionally imports through its Red Sea ports which have been massively affected because of attacks by Iran-aligned Houthi rebels.
The Middle East, including the Gulf countries and Northern Africa have high wheat consumption (over 200 pounds per capita per year) and it is no coincidence that skyrocketing bread prices and food insecurity were contributing factors during the Arab Spring rebellions in 2011 and 2012. In Egypt, then the world’s largest wheat importer, the political situation became unmanageable when a once-in-a-century winter drought in China, a flash drought in Russia, a wet harvest season in Canada, dry conditions in Australia, and catastrophic flooding in Pakistan led to global wheat shortages. These external shocks intensified social, economic, environmental, and climatic changes that led to an erosion of the social contract between citizens and governments in Northern Africa and the Levant.
Food and water threats
This conflict takes place at a time when the global situation is already unstable with more than 670 million people (over 8 percent of the world’s population) suffering hunger and a number of crisis hotspots pushing large groups into starvation and Phase Five of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) scale. IPC is a tool for improving food security analysis and decision-making. Phase Five is its highest level and classified as “famine with solid evidence.”
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Water is also of concern. The first Iranian attacks on desalination plants in Bahrain and strikes landing close to a massive complex with forty-three desalination plants in Saudia Arabia indicate yet another layer of strategic warfare. The entire Gulf region is extraordinarily dependent on desalination technology with four hundred plants in the GCC member states producing almost 40 percent of global desalinated water. In Kuwait, 90 percent of the drinking water depends on these plants, 86 percent in Oman, and 70 percent in Saudi Arabia. In total, 100 million people in the region rely on these water sources.
A leaked 2008 cable sent from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh documented that one desalination plant supplied over 90 percent of Riyadh’s drinking water and stated that the city “would have to evacuate within a week” if the plant, its pipelines, or associated power infrastructure were seriously damaged or destroyed. Political leaders in the region understood back then that water was (and is) more important than oil to the national well-being. Today, Saudi Arabia is even more dependent on desalination plants. Energy-intensive technology provides almost three-quarters of its drinking water.
Fertilizer constraints create a food security ripple effect
Little discussed is the role the region has in global fertilizer exports. Fertilizer accounts for up to 25 percent of agricultural commodity production costs, and the war is putting one third of global fertilizer trade at risk of disruption. The shipment of natural gas has declined precipitously, which affects feedstock for nitrogenous-based fertilizers. Meanwhile, conflict-afflicted Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, are critical exporters of fertilizers like urea, diammonium phosphate (DAP), and anhydrous ammonia.
With shipping activity through the Strait of Hormuz affected, the effect on global fertilizer exports is enormous and will generate cascading effects. Countries across the world had already increasingly relied on the Gulf states to offset fertilizer losses from the war in Ukraine and growing Chinese export restrictions. But with about one quarter of global fertilizer production passing through the Strait of Hormuz, prices are already spiking. In the Middle East, the price for urea rose by 19 percent within a week, creating new fiscal challenges for agriculture sectors across the globe.
(and moar…)
https://www.cfr.org/articles/the-iran-wars-hidden-front-food-water-and-fertilizer