War With Iran Is Forcing the World to Reckon With Geography’s Power

For decades we have lived in a world that seemed to transcend geography.

Information, money, goods, germs and weapons have come to defy distance. Whispered confidences and billion-dollar bounties are traded instantaneously. Smartphones, satsumas and sandals are delivered to your doorstep from across the globe. Ballistic missiles are able to traverse continents in minutes.

But such everyday assumptions have been challenged by the economic havoc wrought by the blockage of a single vital shipping and energy route in the Persian Gulf.

The conflict in the Middle East, set off by U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran seven months ago, has driven up energy prices. It has also had a hand in pushing up interest rates, disrupting factory production around the world, jeopardizing harvests and stoking angry protests from Syria to Guatemala.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/05/business/economy/iran-war-oil-geography.html