100 days after the attacks on Iran: who is paying, who is profiting, and what needs to happen

It has been 100 days since the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran on 28 February 2026. In that time, communities in Iran and across the wider Middle East have faced death, displacement, bombardment, blackouts, water shortages and deepening insecurity, while the shockwaves of war have spread far beyond the region through higher energy costs, rising food prices and worsening economic instability.

The attacks were predicted to trigger the worst energy crisis in history, according to the International Energy Agency, with around 20% of the world's liquefied natural gas (LNG) and 25% of its seaborne oil supplies at risk in and around the Strait of Hormuz. The impact, on paper, was set to be bigger than the oil shocks of the 1970s.

Since then, there have been multiple rounds of negotiations, ceasefire proposals and back-channel talks, but fighting and strikes have continued, and the Strait of Hormuz has still not fully reopened to normal traffic, keeping markets and people on edge.

Why it matters

This is not just a foreign policy story. It is about the price of fuel, food and transport, about who gets left exposed when economies depend on fossil fuel chokepoints, and about who gets rich when everything goes wrong. One hundred days on, the war on Iran has become another brutal reminder that fossil fuel dependency turns geopolitical violence into a global cost of living crisis.

100 days of war, deaths, destruction and pollution

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Air Force Gen. Dan Caine conduct a press briefing on Operation Epic Fury at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., March 4, 2026.

War is killing thousands of people and wrecking lives. In Iran and neighbouring countries, just as in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, civilians have been killed and injured in airstrikes and missile attacks, homes and apartment blocks have been reduced to rubble, and critical infrastructure like hospitals, water systems and power grids has been damaged or pushed to the brink. Families are living through repeated blackouts, water cuts and fuel shortages, and many have been forced to flee their homes in search of safety.

The financial cost of the war on Iran is staggering too. Independent trackers - based on sources such as the Pentagon's briefing to Congress and a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies - estimate that, in its first 100 days, the war on Iran has already cost US taxpayers more than 100 billion US dollars in direct military spending and related economic losses, money that could have funded schools, hospitals and clean energy instead. That does not include the much longer-term costs of rebuilding shattered infrastructure, treating physical and psychological trauma, or dealing with the climate impacts of a conflict built on fossil fuel infrastructure.

The war is also a major source of carbon pollution. An analysis of the first 14 days of the US-Israel war against Iran estimates that it generated around 5 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions, roughly equal to the combined yearly emissions of the 84 lowest-emitting countries in the world. Those emissions come from military jets, ships and vehicles, from burning fuel and munitions, and from fires and damage to industrial facilities and energy infrastructure.

Scientists are warning that this war is part of a wider pattern in which oil, gas and water infrastructure are deliberately turned into targets, with consequences that can last for decades. Strikes on refineries, fuel depots, desalination plants and pipelines do not only kill and injure in the moment, they also poison air, soil and water and undermine the basic systems people rely on to survive.

Beyond direct strikes, the war has intensified the dangers posed by oil tankers moving through one of the world's most sensitive chokepoints. The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow corridor carrying a huge share of the world's oil and LNG, and Greenpeace and other experts have long warned that it is a high-risk zone for accidents, collisions and spills. In recent months, satellite images have shown oil slicks and pollution from tanker incidents and damaged infrastructure in and around the Gulf, underlining how quickly a military escalation in such a crowded shipping lane can turn into an environmental disaster that is literally visible from space.

100 days of higher fuel prices and obscene war profits

Greenpeace UK activists project the truth about the source of Shell's huge profits onto their global headquarters by the Thames in London as well as next to a Shell petrol station.

In the weeks after the attacks, fears over the Strait of Hormuz and wider regional escalation pushed Brent crude above 100 US dollars a barrel, with the spot price spiking to about 138 US dollars on 7 April and averaging around 117 US dollars for the month. These are levels not seen since the energy price shock that followed Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. For households, that meant one more squeeze on already stretched budgets. For fossil fuel companies, it meant another jackpot.

• The world's top 100 oil and gas companies were making more than 30 million US dollars in extra profit every hour in the first month of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
  
• If prices stay around 100 dollars a barrel, they could pocket around 234 billion US dollars in additional profit by the end of 2026, with giants like Saudi Aramco, Gazprom and ExxonMobil among the biggest winners.
  
• Shell alone made 6.9 billion US dollars in first-quarter profit, more than double the previous quarter, as the war on Iran helped keep prices high.
  
• Europe's four biggest oil majors - Shell, TotalEnergies, BP and Equinor - reported over 18 billion US dollars in adjusted earnings after tax in Q1 2026, an 80 percent jump quarter on quarter.
  
• In the European Union, oil companies were making about 92.8 million US dollars a day in war profits in the first weeks of the conflict, with diesel driving much of the excess.
  
• In the UK, the market value of major North Sea drillers including Shell, BP and TotalEnergies rose by about 73.5 billion pounds in just four weeks after the first attacks.

This is what fossil fuel dependence looks like in practice: people pay more to drive, heat their homes and move goods, while producers and traders cash in on volatility.

If that sounds familiar, it should. This is the fossil fuel industry's war playbook: a crisis hits, supply fears are amplified, prices rise, profits surge, and then the same companies argue that the answer is more drilling, more gas terminals and more dependence on the very system that made everyone vulnerable in the first place.

100 days of rising food prices and Big Ag windfall profits

A fruit and vegetable vendor in front of his stall, Tamkuha and Sitapur regions, rural India.

The war did not just hit energy. It hit food systems. Food prices rose to their highest level since 2023 in April, driven in part by the conflict in the Middle East, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. This matters because when energy and fertiliser prices rise together, food inflation can spread quickly through farming, transport, packaging and supermarket shelves.

In March, Greenpeace warned that disruption to fertiliser supply chains caused by the war and the closure risk around the Strait of Hormuz could trigger a new global food price shock. Its reporting showed how the crisis was exposing the fragility of a food system hooked on fossil fuel-based fertilisers and long, vulnerable supply chains.

By May, the pattern of profiteering became clearer. Fertiliser firms made bumper profits off the back of the Iran war supply crisis, as farmers' livelihoods were squeezed.

Farmers face more expensive fertiliser and fuel. Families around the world face higher grocery bills. And as with oil, a handful of giant firms are turning the crisis into another revenue stream. The result is a food system that is profitable for shareholders, but dangerously brittle for everyone else.

100 days of transport costs, disruption and protest

April 2026: Northeast corner of R105 and O'Connell Street Lower in Dublin City Centre, blockaded during the 2026 Irish fuel protests, with law enforcement present.

The transport sector is responsible for around 60% of total oil demand. When fossil fuel prices rise, transport becomes the messenger that delivers the shock to everyone else.

Higher fuel costs push up bus fares, airline tickets, freight rates and eventually the price of everyday goods. In the weeks and months after the first strikes on Iran, protests over fuel and transport costs erupted from Kenya, where people took to the streets against record petrol prices and fare hikes and at least four people were killed, to Haiti, where workers demanded wage increases to keep up with fuel and food inflation. In Pakistan, truckers and commuters protested over diesel and bus fares, while in France and other European countries, farmers and drivers blocked roads and fuel depots to denounce soaring costs and government inaction.

These protests are a rational response to a rigged system that expects ordinary people to absorb each new fossil-fuelled crisis, while those with private jets, mega-yachts and record dividends carry on as usual. Without a rapid shift away from oil-based economy and a fair sharing of costs, every new shock will keep landing hardest on those who did least to cause it.

100 days of governments responding to the crisis

The last 100 days have exposed a system designed to fail people and reward profiteers. Trump's war on Iran has deepened suffering in the region, but it has also made life harder and more expensive for tens of millions of people thousands of kilometres away because our economies remain tied to fossil fuels for energy, plastics and fertilisers.

Global demand for oil has dipped slightly: the International Energy Agency now expects oil demand to fall by more than 2% this quarter, with most of that drop coming from developing countries in Asia, the region most dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Alongside this, 76 countries have rolled out emergency measures to cut oil use further, from speed limits and work-from-home schemes to fuel-saving campaigns and support for public transport.

These moves, combined with painful price-driven demand destruction, have helped richer and more resilient economies insulate themselves from the worst impacts for now. But these measures have clear limits, especially for poorer countries that cannot easily shield their populations or absorb another price spike. The crisis is by no means over, and each day the world remains hooked on oil and gas, the next escalation or supply disruption will bring the same vulnerability back again.

What needs to happen

April 2026: On the eve of the First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, an international summit in Santa Marta, Colombia, Greenpeace Spain activists display a giant image of Donald Trump vomiting oil onto a black-stained fountain in Madrid's Plaza de Colón, alongside the message in English: "No oil, no war".

No one should be getting rich off war and chaos. Governments should tax fossil fuel and agribusiness war profits, protect households from rising bills, and accelerate the shift to renewable energy, efficient homes, better public transport, reuse systems and more local, resilient food production.

A serious response to the last 100 days would be not to double down on the system that caused the shock. It means taxing windfall war profits from oil, gas and fertiliser companies. It means faster public investment in renewables, storage, insulation and efficient transport. It means protecting people first through social tariffs, public transport support, emergency food measures and help for farmers to move away from fossil fuel fertilisers.

It also means treating the last 100 days as a warning. Efficient government responses, people-centred solutions, taxation of windfall war profits and ambitious renewable energy deployment are not side issues. They are what energy security, food security and economic stability look like in a world where fossil fuel dependency keeps turning crises into global punishment.