RIYADH: The Iran war has delivered the broadest economic shock to the Middle East and North Africa in at least half a century of regional upheaval, according to an analysis produced by Asharq Business with Bloomberg.
Its report, based on analyzing International Monetary Fund data dating back to 1980, compared the conflict with the onset of major geopolitical crises, including the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the 2011 Arab protests and the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
The current crisis is hitting a much larger economic bloc than previous shocks in the sample.
The combined nominal gross domestic product of the 10 directly affected economies — including Iran, the Gulf states, Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel — is about $4 trillion, equal to roughly 70 percent of the Middle East and North Africa economy and around 3 percent of global output, according to the analysis.
It underscores how the conflict may prove to be the region’s biggest turning point since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, a crisis that disrupted the global economy and led to what economists later called “stagflation.”
