Iran war could lead to food shortages in the region: Experts

Since Zainab Ibrahim, 45, and her family arrived at a shelter in Beirut on March 2, she said, there has been no food for the traditional predawn meal that precedes their daily fasts during Ramadan.

They were forced to flee their home after Israel began carrying out strikes where they live in Dahiya, a dense cluster of neighborhoods south of Beirut that is a Hezbollah stronghold.

“The situation is very difficult because there is a huge shortage of services, mattresses and, especially, food,” Ibrahim said. Charities have been providing meals for iftar, the meal to break the fast. But there are already shortages. “Yesterday they brought us chicken and rice without chicken,” she said.

The U.N. World Food Program has warned that the fighting engulfing the Middle East is already affecting the most vulnerable: those, like many families in Dahiya, displaced by the fighting or already struggling with rising food prices in Lebanon, Iran and the Gaza Strip.

Ibrahim and her family are among the nearly 700,000 people who have been displaced in Lebanon, the U.N. said, since hostilities with Israel resumed after the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader.

In Iran, the war is exacerbating a preexisting economic crisis, high food inflation and food insecurity. Short of hard currency, Iran could struggle to import the food it needs, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

A resident of Tehran, Amir Hossein Bagheri, said in a post on Facebook that bakeries were unusually empty and that food prices have skyrocketed. The cost of eggs has almost doubled in two weeks, he said.

The effects of the war in Iran have spread to Gaza, where the humanitarian situation remains dire. The World Food Program said the price of food in Gaza had increased because aid shipments were not able to enter the territory after Israel issued border closures at the start of the war with Iran. Some crossings have reopened, according to the World Food Program, but food prices remain high.

“Prices here surged immediately,” said Hussain Ghaben, 37, a father of three from Gaza City.

The memory of famine and deprivation during the war in Gaza is still fresh, Ghaben said. “People rushed to the markets and bought everything they could with all the money they had — people with money, of course,” he said. “I could not buy anything as I had no cash at all.”

He said he had five bags of flour and cans of beans stored in his tent — enough to last his family for about three months.

“I hope that is enough until the war on Iran is over,” he said.

The war in Iran has already slowed ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting supply chains in the region. The interruptions could affect fuel and fertilizer prices and drive up food prices far beyond the Middle East. About a quarter of the world’s fertilizer is transported through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The full impact on agriculture might not be seen for months, the FAO said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.