I started tracking this conflict the way I track everything else: build a model, write down what I think happens next, and then let reality grade me. This is the first entry in that record. The goal isn't to be right — it's to be legible about why I thought what I thought, so the misses teach me something.
Here's where we are roughly a month in.
What happened
On February 28, 2026, a coordinated wave of strikes — roughly 900 of them inside twelve hours — hit Iranian nuclear facilities, missile sites, and leadership. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed. Iran answered with hundreds of missiles and thousands of drones aimed at Israel, U.S. bases across the Gulf, and allied Gulf states, including Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG complex and Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura refinery.
On March 2, the IRGC declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. That's the line that matters. Vessel transits fell about 94% — from roughly 120 a day to single digits — and by March 5 war-risk insurance for the zone had been formally cancelled. QatarEnergy declared force majeure and stopped LNG and urea output.
For context on why one waterway moves global markets: the Strait normally carries around 20 million barrels of crude a day — a fifth to a quarter of seaborne oil — alongside about 20% of the world's LNG and roughly a third of global fertilizer exports. You can't lose that much throughput without it showing up everywhere.
The price shock
It showed up immediately.
| Benchmark | Pre-war (Feb 27) | Peak (Mar 8) | Late March | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brent crude | ~$67/bbl | $126/bbl | ~$100–107 | +49–60% |
| WTI crude | ~$63/bbl | $113/bbl | ~$90 | +43% |
| Jet fuel (Singapore) | ~$85/bbl | ~$200/bbl | ~$143 | +68% |
| US gasoline | $2.81/gal | $3.92/gal | ~$3.88 | +38% |
| US diesel | ~$3.40/gal | $5.00+/gal | ~$4.80 | +41% |
| Urea (NOLA) | $475/ton | $720/ton | ~$650 | +37% |
| Container (Shanghai–LA) | ~$2,000 | $4,500+ | ~$4,500 | +150% |
| Asian LNG spot | ~$13/MMBtu | $25/MMBtu | ~$22 | +69% |
The IEA called it the greatest global energy-security challenge in its history. Goldman put U.S. recession odds at 30%. The Dallas Fed modeled a potential 2.9-point hit to global GDP if the disruption ran through Q2.
Who absorbs it
I went sector by sector — 59 named companies across 15 industries — with extra weight on firms based in or operating out of Chicago and Brisbane, the two places I actually care about.
Airlines take the most direct hit because fuel isn't a line item for them, it's the business: jet fuel runs 20–35% of operating cost and it roughly doubled. IATA flagged fares up ~9%; tens of thousands of flights were already cancelled. Anything fertilizer-dependent (so, food) inherits the urea spike. Anything that moves on a container ship inherits the freight spike and the reroute around the Cape of Good Hope. The pattern is consistent: the closer a business sits to the chokepoint's outputs — fuel, fertilizer, freight — the harder and faster it gets hit.
What I'm watching
The single most important variable right now isn't a price. It's whether the closure is a negotiating posture or a structural fact. Trump signaled openness to talks late in the month; Iran denied direct contact. Those two things can't both stay true for long.
My working call: oil holds an elevated band rather than snapping back, because reopening a mined strait under cancelled insurance is not a thing you do in a week even if everyone wants to. I'll grade that next time.
This is the first post in a running series tracking the 2026 Iran war and its economic fallout. I source deliberately wide — corporate wires and independent outlets both — because the gap between them turned out to matter. More on that in the next entry.