Welcome to This Week in Panic, a new feature on Let’s Do the Panic Again where I look at . This is inspired by the wonderful podcast Bloodwork — listen to Bloodwork — and its weekly This Week in Violence newsletter and is both my attempt to give readers more regular content and make myself write more here, rather than try and sell potential newsletters to other outlets. I work four jobs, one being freelance reporting so I’m trying to keep that viable, hence the lack of newsletter updates. This hopefully changes that. Now, onto the Panic Blog.
We’re now almost three weeks into the United States and Israel’s war with Iran, a war that has objectively spiraled into a regional conflict with several Middle Eastern and European nations being pulled into the conflict voluntarily and indirectly and the global economy and systems of trade endangered. As it currently stands, more than 2,000 are dead, at least, including 13 American service members and numerous civilians across the Middle East. Multiple nations have now been hit in airstrikes. And just as the war was started with seemingly no clear justification or reason except decades-long animosity and a desire to bomb Iran, it shows no real sign of deescalating or even ending soon. The American president is demanding unconditional surrender while his administration posts memes and Iran is promising retaliation as Tehran and other parts of the country continue to be ravaged by the attacks. This is the direct impact. The indirect impact could be globally devastating.
There is a lot about the war that I cannot write about, as I already cover the military aspect, deployments and personnel and hardware news over at Task & Purpose and can’t write about that elsewhere (go read our coverage, it is good). But I want to talk about the non-military indirect effects of this war. Namely some of the environmental ones, because the Iran war is showing just how threatened the climate, food supply and general health and survival are. And those anxiety inducing issues are the reason this newsletter exists.
The most obvious impact of the war is the effect it has on oil prices. Maybe you’ve seen it at the pump, it’s already evident even before Iran moved to close off the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway where Even as the airstrikes and bombings continue and civilian deaths rack up and the American government posts Call of Duty-based memes — again, listen to Bloodwork — it’s also increasingly clear how little the administration considered these downstream effects. Multiple reports say that the U.S. officials who made the call either didn’t know or didn’t consider the risk of the strait being closed. Fuel prices are up and we haven’t even seen the true shock to the system yet. That will be downstream, and hit a world already struggling with costs of goods.
But enough about fossil fuels, let’s look at how so many essential components for agriculture and medicine go through this same path. Elements for fertilizer and prescription drugs pass through this route and now global medicine and farming are at risk. Again, not an instant issue, but one that’s going to hit hard in the coming months when crop yields are down or prescription drug prices soar. A war to take out the Iranian regime might screw up the global food supply and it seems like no one considered that. It’s not just scarcity but the precarity of it all.
The truly anxiety-inducing part of this war, beyond the immediate mass death, is what is now being targeted. Both Iran and Gulf states have reported attacks on water desalination plants, with Iran claiming that the U.S. “set the precedent” by doing the first such attack. Middle Eastern states, particularly those on the Arabian Peninsula, are dependent on these plants to get enough water to survive. Several Gulf nations owe the overwhelming majority of their drinking water to these plants. That security gone, that means mainly mass suffering from water shortages and it also means instability and violence. Yes, water wars. Yes, like in Mad Max: Fury Road. The world has already seen several cities face the risk of severe water shortages in recent years — “Day Zero” being the term for when the water runs out — and Corpus Christi, Texas is currently in such a situation. But this is that risk at a larger scale, and a distinctly man-made danger. It is very easy to, if bleak, to visualize parts of war. Bomb drops, people die, maybe hospitals are flooded with the wounded. It’s not so easy imagining a region deprived of water.
There's also the fact that attacks on drinking water installations violate the Geneva conventions, but as with most parts of modern war, prosecution of such crimes and violations by any party are extremely rare.
Similarly, an apocalyptic visual emerged a week into the war, when an oil depot in the Tehran area was attacked, blowing it up and filling the sky with fire and then, during the day, so much smoke it made it look like night. Journalists reported acid rain pouring down on the city of millions. It’s not immediately clear what the full extent of the combination of oil and chemicals means for the health of those in Tehran, but it’s not good. People already reported chemical burns, headaches and nausea. The long-term risk of cancer is high.
Beyond the wider risk to civilians, the bombardments are also threatening centers of power and money. There is some deeply dark and bleak humor here, namely rich influencers who posted luxury lifestyles and try to sell supplements no one needs panicking and trying to get out of the danger zone. Global capital flocked to five-star resort cities and now face reality. Or as one executive said to the Financial Times, in one of those quotes that will go down in history, “The trade was not that you were getting exposed to geopolitics when moving to Dubai. It was not a consideration. People have moved families.”
There’s a famous modern quote about climate change, that it “will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it.” Similarly the ripple effects of this war will get closer and closer to you the more it continues, in ways that maybe you and the people ordering troops into battle never considered. Maybe it’s gas prices now. Maybe it will be produce costs next year. Maybe that trip gets delayed as flights remain in chaos. Whatever way, that’s where we find ourselves, staring back at a conflict that doesn’t appear to end. Because the war isn’t stopping on the battlefield.