The war against Iran is emerging as one of the first major tests of how a deeply interconnected global economy behaves under geopolitical pressure.
For decades, globalisation tied energy flows, financial systems, shipping routes, and supply chains into dense networks that were widely assumed to promote stability through mutual dependence. The current crisis reveals the other side of that equation. When conflict spreads through these networks, governments face a strong temptation to turn interdependence itself into a tool of pressure.
Oil routes, payment systems, insurance markets, and logistics corridors suddenly acquire strategic importance. What scholars describe as “weaponised interdependence” — the use of strategic positions inside global networks to influence the behaviour of others — is no longer an abstract concept. The challenge for the international system is how to manage these pressures without allowing the infrastructure of globalisation to become yet another arena of conflict.
The modern global economy runs through tightly connected systems. Energy flows through a small number of maritime passages. Financial transactions pass through centralised banking networks. Industrial supply chains depend on a limited number of manufacturing hubs. When a country controls or strongly influences one of these nodes, it gains leverage over all the others who rely on the same system. Power, therefore, no longer rests only on armies or territory, but it also rests on control over the infrastructure that allows trade and finance to function.
The war with Iran illustrates this structure clearly. Iran does not possess the military capabilities of the United States or Israel, yet geography places it adjacent to one of the most important arteries of the global energy system: the Strait of Hormuz. That narrow waterway connects the Arabian Gulf to international markets and carries a significant share of global oil exports. Instability around this corridor transmits pressure through global energy markets almost immediately.
Even the possibility of disruption can move prices. Tankers delay departures, insurers raise risk premiums, and traders begin pricing uncertainty into the market. Oil markets react quickly because disruptions in the Gulf can influence global supply expectations. The US energy historian Daniel Yergin once noted that if any single location could disturb the global oil system overnight, it would be precisely this narrow passage. The world economy, in that sense, runs through it.
What analysts describe as the “chokepoint effect” captures this dynamic well. When a large share of global trade passes through a narrow route, that route becomes strategically valuable. Disrupting it even temporarily can produce consequences far beyond the immediate region, as markets respond not only to actual closures but to the mere possibility that shipping might be interrupted.
Energy markets demonstrate this with particular clarity. Rising oil prices affect transportation, manufacturing, and agriculture, with effects spreading through the global economy step by step. Countries that depend heavily on imported fuel face inflation and slower growth. A regional security crisis can therefore become a global economic concern with surprising speed.
Recent drone attacks affecting several Gulf countries have added another layer of risk to an already sensitive system. Striking near airports, ports, and shipping routes rather than major energy facilities, these incidents have nonetheless produced immediate economic consequences. Airlines suspend flights, shipping companies delay departures, and insurers raise war-risk premiums for vessels entering regional waters.
Because the Gulf functions as a central corridor linking Asian, European, and African trade, even limited disruptions around logistical nodes ripple through supply chains and commodity markets. In a tightly connected market, uncertainty alone can influence fuel prices thousands of miles away. At the same time, Gulf producers remain central to the stability of global energy markets, their exports continuing to supply major economies across Asia, Europe, and the developing world in a reminder of the region’s enduring importance to the international economic order.
INTERCONNECTIONS: Weaponised interdependence, however, operates in more than one direction.
The United States occupies powerful positions within other global networks, particularly the financial system. International banking transactions rely heavily on financial messaging infrastructure such as SWIFT, which connects thousands of banks worldwide. When access to that network is restricted, the consequences can be immediate.
Iran experienced this during earlier rounds of sanctions, and Russia faced similar measures after the invasion of Ukraine. In both cases, financial infrastructure became a decisive instrument of geopolitical influence.
The Iran conflict therefore shows how different forms of leverage interact. Iran can threaten energy flows through geography, while Washington maintains influence over the financial systems and regulatory frameworks that underpin global trade. Power in the modern international system increasingly depends on the ability to shape, and selectively restrict, these interconnected structures.
Insurance markets offer another illustration of how economic networks shape the course of conflict. Maritime trade depends on coverage provided by large international firms, and when insurers judge a region too risky, ships may refuse to enter even if the route itself remains physically open. A port can be fully operational, yet trade declines because the financial mechanisms that support transport begin to weaken. Commercial shipping, in other words, depends not only on naval security but on financial confidence.
The consequences of such disruption also extend well beyond the Middle East. Energy prices influence economic stability across the world. When oil costs rise, transportation becomes more expensive, manufacturing margins tighten, and consumer prices begin to climb. Advanced economies register this as inflation; in developing countries, where dependence on imported fuel runs deeper, the effects can be considerably more severe.
Oil and gas are not the only commodities moving through the Gulf, as fertilisers, petrochemicals, and other industrial materials travel from the region to markets across Asia, Europe, and Africa, meaning interruptions can eventually affect agriculture and manufacturing in distant economies. Financial markets amplify these developments further, as investors shift capital towards safer assets, currencies fluctuate, and borrowing costs rise, placing additional pressure on countries with fragile economic conditions.
Nowhere is this vulnerability more apparent than in China. As the world’s largest importer of energy, China relies heavily on oil shipments from the Middle East, much of it travelling through the Strait of Hormuz before reaching Asian markets. Former Chinese president Hu Jintao once described China’s reliance on maritime energy routes as the “Malacca dilemma,” in a reference to the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia. The current crisis reveals a structurally similar risk in the Arabian Gulf and one that threatens China’s energy security without requiring Beijing’s direct involvement in the conflict.
That exposure reflects a broader reality of weaponised interdependence: no major power is fully insulated from network risk. Some states dominate financial systems, others control manufacturing or critical minerals, while others hold influence over strategic transport routes. Each position provides leverage, but each also creates vulnerability.
Gradually, these dynamics are reshaping how governments think about globalisation. For decades, international trade was organised primarily around efficiency and low production costs. Today, security concerns have become equally important. Governments are investing in domestic industries, restricting sensitive technologies, and scrutinising supply chains with far greater care.
One emerging response is the concept of collective resilience — the idea that allied countries should respond together when economic pressure is applied against one of them. Rather than facing coercion alone, states would coordinate through strategic reserves, diversified supply chains, and alternative financial arrangements, distributing the costs of disruption across a wider group of partners. The objective is straightforward: to reduce the effectiveness of economic coercion by making it harder to isolate any single target.
The current crisis shows that cooperation of that kind is still evolving. Some countries have coordinated releases from their strategic oil reserves to stabilise markets, but deeper economic coordination remains limited. The global economy continues to depend on a small number of critical nodes — maritime chokepoints, semiconductor production centres, mineral supply chains — and because of that structure, disruptions in one region can still move rapidly through the entire system.
Ultimately, the war against Iran reveals something fundamental about the nature of modern power. Military strength still matters, but influence over economic networks is becoming equally decisive. Countries that control financial infrastructure, energy routes, technological platforms, or strategic resources hold advantages that extend well beyond the battlefield.
Conflicts, in a world shaped by weaponised interdependence, rarely remain confined to military fronts. They travel through the networks that sustain global trade, reshaping markets and forcing policy decisions in places far removed from where the fighting began.
The writer is editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Weekly and Ahram Online.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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