SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
iraq
'The Situation Is Scary': Global Economic Chaos as Trump’s Iran War Sends Markets Diving
"To me, it was not just the worst-case scenario," said one economic analyst. "It was an unthinkable scenario."
Mar 09, 2026
President Donald Trump's unprovoked and unconstitutional war against Iran is sending shockwaves across the global economy in the form of skyrocketing oil prices and diving financial markets.
The prices of both Brent crude oil and WTI crude oil futures on Monday surged past $100 per barrel, as countries across the Middle East announced production cuts in the wake of chaos and destruction caused by the Iran war.
The impact of the price surge on the US stock market was immediate, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened Monday trading down by more than 600 points, while the Nasdaq dropped by 300 points.
According to a Monday report from the Wall Street Journal, both Iraq and Kuwait have announced oil production curbs because they have been unable to ship their supply through the Strait of Hormuz and have thus run out of space to store excess petroleum.
JPMorgan Chase analyst Natasha Kaneva noted to the Journal that this is the first time in recorded history that the Strait of Hormuz has ever been completely closed off for shipping, and warned the economic consequences would be severe.
"To me, it was not just the worst-case scenario," Kaneva said of the strait's closing. "It was an unthinkable scenario."
The Journal wrote that Trump's decision to launch a war with Iran has already sparked "the most severe energy crisis since the 1970s," which is now "threatening the global economy."
Petroleum industry analyst Patrick De Haan wrote in a Monday analysis that US drivers should expect to feel the impact of this oil shock in the coming days.
"Gasoline prices in many states could climb another 20 to 50 cents per gallon this week, with price-cycling markets potentially seeing increases as early as today," De Haan projected. "Diesel may rise even more sharply, with increases of 35 to 75 cents per gallon possible as global distillate markets react."
In a Monday analysis posted on his Substack page, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman dove into the logistics of stopping and restarting oil production, and argued that the impact of the strait's closure will grow significantly as time goes on.
"As the Strait remains closed, producers are shutting down, and this isn’t like turning off a tap that can be quickly restarted," Krugman explained. "There’s apparently a real nonlinearity here: a two-week closure of the Strait has much more than twice the adverse impact on global oil supply as a one-week closure. If this goes on for multiple weeks... oil prices, which retreated slightly off their highs early this morning, could go much higher."
Krugman said that the shock was not yet bad enough to make an economic crisis inevitable because the US is much less dependent on oil than it was in the 1970s.
Nonetheless, Krugman cautioned, "the situation is scary."
Punchbowl News reported on Monday that the politics of the Iran war "have to worry" incumbent Republicans who were already in real danger of losing their majority in the US House of Representatives even before Trump launched an illegal war.
"With the Strait of Hormuz closed, oil prices have soared to more than $100 per barrel (from just under $70 per barrel 10 days ago)," wrote Punchbowl News. "There’s been a huge spike in gas prices nationally."
The report added that Trump has not been helping his party by expressing indifference bordering on hostility to Americans' concerns about how his war will impact their personal finances.
"Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace," Trump wrote in a Sunday Truth Social post. "ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!"
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Last Thing Iraq Needs: US Sanctions Threaten a Nation Trying to Heal
As I leave Baghdad, I carry a sense of Iraq’s resilience, the palpable scars of war, the warmth of its people, the hope for a better future, and the ongoing story of a nation rebuilding itself.
Dec 14, 2025
I arrived at the Taj Hotel in Baghdad's Jadriyah neighborhood at 6:00 am, worn thin by the long flight from Los Angeles. After sleeping until mid-afternoon, I stepped out into the 90°F heat on a simple mission: find falafel, fries, and a place to exchange money. A local bus picked me up and dropped me right across from a falafel shop—a small act of hospitality. Full and settled, I walked beside the Tigris River, watching construction cranes against the sky. Life was visibly moving forward. Yet the mental newsreel kept playing: bombs falling on these same banks 20 years earlier. I was a tourist now in a country I had once protested my own nation for invading. Needing to escape both the heat and the weight of those memories, I returned to the hotel for Nutella cake and Iraqi tea, yet deeply conscious of the complex layers beneath the surface.
The next day settled heavily. We started at Tahrir Monument and the roundabout where Saddam’s statue once stood—toppled in 2003 by US Marines in an image seen around the world. Today, no plaque marks the spot. Only election banners fluttered in the wind. From there, we traveled to the Arch of Ctesiphon, a soaring Persian vault from 540 AD. Nearby lay the relics of a different era: a derelict tourist complex and a museum designed by North Koreans, its walls scarred with bullet marks. Al-Mada’in, our guide remarked, had been a final stronghold against the invasion. It’s one thing to read about war and occupation, another to stand where it happened and touch the pockmarked concrete.
Just yards away, young boys kicked a soccer ball in the dust, a powerful scene of life insisting on moving forward. That contrast stayed with me: The tourist complex, once a thriving vacation spot with a luxurious pool, is now a place to store garbage. Aside from the enduring arch, the entire area lies in ruins, destroyed in the war and never rebuilt. Who knows if it ever will be. For some parts of Iraq, rebuilding only began around 2017, over a decade after the invasion. With elections approaching, I wondered about Iraq’s future—and what accountability looks like when destruction runs so deep.
A slower day followed, wandering through Old Baghdad: its bazaar, colonial facades, antique shops, Christian churches, and tea houses thick with the smoke of cigarettes. But I felt an unease seeing Saddam-era memorabilia, like old currency, sold as casual souvenirs. My time in Iraqi Kurdistan, at Amna Suraka and Halabja Memorial, had shown me the human cost of his brutal regime. Later, we passed the haunting cement skeleton of one of Saddam’s grand mosques, frozen mid-construction by the 2003 war. It stood empty, monumental yet abandoned, like a set from Dune—a stark metaphor for interrupted futures.
Now, as the world’s attention drifts to other conflicts, the weight of history here feels so obvious.
We traveled to Babylon. Before entering, we paused before one of the last remaining monuments to Saddam. His image is now outlawed; we gazed at the bullet marks and graffiti scoring the stone. Nearby, his palace loomed over the Euphrates—a hollow shell gazing across timeless dust. After roaming Babylon’s ruins, we crossed a low fence onto the palace grounds. Entering the space once occupied by a brutal dictator again filled me with unease. While others explored the looted, spray-painted halls, I was struck by the collision of histories here: ancient civilization, the US invasion, and the regime’s own atrocities against the Kurds.
From there, we journeyed to Karbala and the breathtaking Al-Abbas Holy Shrine. I wore an abaya to enter, humbled by the devotion, chanting, and crying that resonated in the air. The contrast stayed with me: between ransacked palaces of fallen power, land ravaged by war, and this enduring faith. We paused briefly at one of the world’s largest cemeteries in Najaf before visiting the Holy Shrine of Imam Ali. The long drive south to Nasiriyah that followed gave me space to hold all these layers: history, belief, silence, and dust.
A highlight came in the Mesopotamian Marshes. Gliding by water buffalo through vast wetlands, said to be the Garden of Eden, I felt a deep connection to this ancient ecosystem and the Indigenous communities who sustain it. The use of reeds to build entire homes felt like a quiet miracle. Later, we visited the Great Ziggurat of Ur—a stairway to a Sumerian sky. We moved through biblical landscapes that day, though in the distance stood an old American military base, now repurposed by the Iraqis. Someone showed me photos of US soldiers standing on those same Ziggurat steps.
As I leave Baghdad, I carry a sense of Iraq’s resilience, the palpable scars of war, the warmth of its people, the hope for a better future, and the ongoing story of a nation rebuilding itself. Now, as the world’s attention drifts to other conflicts, the weight of history here feels so obvious. The US footprint left in Iraq is deep—and as it threatens Iraq with sanctions, it is the last thing this country needs as it tries to move forward and heal.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Arab World Condemns Netanyahu's Support for 'Expansionist Colonial' Vision of 'Greater Israel'
In supporting the notion of "Greater Israel," the prime minister suggested he supported efforts to expand Israel's borders by conquering large parts of several of its neighboring countries.
Aug 15, 2025
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing condemnation after he endorsed the goal of establishing "Greater Israel."
Many interpreted that as a promise to further expand Israel's borders into other parts of the Arab world.
As the Times of Israel explains:
The term Greater Israel refers to Israel in expanded borders in accordance with biblical or historical descriptions, and has many versions, some of which include parts of today's Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia...
It is still adopted by some far-right figures in Israel who express a desire to annex or eventually control many of those territories.
In an interview Tuesday on Israel's i24 TV network, interviewer Sharon Gal—a former right-wing member of the Knesset—handed Netanyahu an amulet depicting what he said was "the Promised Land."
"This is my vision," said Gal, before asking Netanyahu, "Do you connect to the vision?"
Netanyahu responded, "Very much."
Gal then stressed that the map "is Greater Israel."
"If you ask me, we are here," Netanyahu responded. "You know I often mention my father. My parents' generation had to establish the state. And our generation, my generation, has to guarantee its continued existence. And I see that as a great mission."
Though the pendant itself was not visible onscreen, it was likely the one sold by Gal's company, which the Times of Israel says depicts a "relatively maximalist" map containing territory stretching from the Nile River to the Euphrates—an area encompassing swathes of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq.
i24 has cut this provocative exchange from the video of the interview on its Hebrew or English language YouTube channels. However, it can still be viewed on i24's Hebrew-language website.
The idea of colonizing other parts of the Arab world according to historic Jewish texts is popular among the far-right portion of Netanyahu's governing coalition.
Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's minister of finance, has said he wants a Jewish State "according to the books of our sages" that will "extend to Damascus," the capital of Syria, and suggested Israel will "slowly" conquer the other side of the Jordan River.
At a conference in March 2023, before Israel's current military assault on the Gaza Strip began, Smotrich spoke at a conference behind a podium depicting a map of "Greater Israel," which encompassed parts of Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.
Earlier this week, Smotrich unveiled a new 3,000-person settlement in the illegally-occupied West Bank known as E1, which he said "buries the idea of a Palestinian state" because "there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize."
Netanyahu has long sought to downplay the idea that Israel has waged the destruction of Gaza or its attacks on Syria and Lebanon with the goal of expansion. Even as his government talks openly of permanently exiling the people of Gaza to make room for Jewish settlers, the prime minister has maintained that his goals are purely defensive.
Mustafa Barghouti—the leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, a liberal party in the West Bank's legislature—said Netanyahu's endorsement of "Greater Israel" means "he is on a mission to violate all international laws, commit crimes against humanity, and annex Palestinian and other Arab countries' territories." The Palestinian Authority likewise said Netanyahu's comments were an expression of Israel's "expansionist colonial policies."
That outrage has echoed across the Arab world.
Saudi Arabia expressed its "complete rejection of the settlement and expansionist ideas." Egypt said the remarks had "implications of provoking instability and reflecting a rejection of the pursuit of peace in the region, as well as an insistence on escalation."
Qatar, which has often tried to mediate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, called the comments "an extension of the occupation's approach based on arrogance, fueling crises, and conflicts."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular