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US-Israeli war with Iran opens doors to new world disorder 18 May 2026

For the better part of a century, the United States stood at the head of an international system governed by a set of shared expectations. International law was supposed to restrain even the most powerful nations. The United Nations, for all its flaws, offered a venue for resolving disagreements. And following a norm that stretched back to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and was later embedded in US law by Ronald Reagan in 1981, the assassination of a head of state was not considered a legitimate tool of statecraft. That system has now collapsed.

The signs are unmistakable. During the ongoing conflict, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a public directive authorising the military to kill any senior Iranian official without seeking further approval. The United States and Israel assassinated Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Day 1 of this conflict, and in doing so signalled that the killing of any national leader is now acceptable. What kind of international order can be built on such foundations? The honest answer is that we are not building anything; we are watching the old edifice burn.

For West Africa, this is not a remote event. It has arrived at petrol stations and kitchens across the region. Seven weeks into a war that its architects expected to last only days, the economic fallout has proved far more damaging than the military strikes. The conflict has become a strategic quagmire for Washington, a draining war of attrition that has laid bare the constraints on American military power. But for commodity traders in Lagos, Accra and Abidjan, the real trap is economic, and it has already closed.

At the start of 2026, a litre of petrol in Lagos cost around N830. By the end of March, prices had climbed to N1,325, almost double what they were. Diesel, which powers generators and trucks, rose from roughly N1,100 per litre to more than N1,500, a 36% increase that pushed up costs at every stage of the supply chain. Short taxi rides in Lagos jumped from N200-300 to N350-550, a rise of 75-83%. In Abuja, similar journeys went from N300-500 to N500-900. A bag of sachet water increased from N220-250 to N300-400. Loaves of bread became 11-18% more expensive.

These figures reflect the daily reality of a region that imports most of its refined petroleum from abroad. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which handles 20% of global oil consumption, took nearly 13 million barrels per day off the market. The International Energy Agency has described this as the most serious energy security threat ever recorded. And for Africa, which sources between 60% and 80% of its refined fuel from the Gulf, the consequences have been swift and severe.

The war's economic reach extends well beyond fuel. Fertilisers have become an overlooked casualty of the Hormuz shutdown. Gulf countries provide 30-35% of global urea exports, and the closure of the strait has halted shipments. Global fertiliser prices surged by 54% in two months, reaching $726 per metric ton, the highest level since the war in Ukraine. Sub-Saharan Africa imports up to 90% of its fertiliser, so this poses a direct threat to the next growing season. With planting underway across the region, farmers must choose between paying inflated prices or watching their harvests shrink. The World Food Programme has already warned that 10.4 million people in West and Central Africa are experiencing acute hunger. That number will grow.

The Dangote refinery, which opened in 2023 with a capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, was supposed to end Nigeria's exposure to global fuel shocks. It has helped. The refinery has exported 17 gasoline cargoes to other African countries and increased its urea shipments. But it cannot shield the region from a disruption of this magnitude. The refinery still has to buy crude feedstock in dollars at international prices. When Brent crude jumped from $82 to more than $110 per barrel in March, Dangote's prices rose correspondingly. The refinery is a buffer, not a defence.

Leading realist scholar John Mearsheimer has already characterised the Iran war as a strategic defeat for Washington, the third major US failure in the region following Iraq and Afghanistan. The evidence supports this grim assessment. All five THAAD batteries deployed in the region have been struck. Their advanced radars have been knocked out. US and Israeli interceptor stocks are being depleted at an unsustainable rate, with effective sortie capacity estimated to have fallen by 35-50%. Forces have been pulled back from forward positions to more distant staging areas in the Indian Ocean and eastern Mediterranean.

The political damage is equally severe. Arab states have openly complained that the United States cares more about protecting Israel than about them. Once the fighting subsides, that perception will linger. Gulf countries are likely to hedge their bets in future, by diversifying their security relationships away from Washington.

The United States is overstretched and distracted. Its ability to project power in Africa will shrink. This brings both danger and opportunity. The danger is that conflicts in the Sahel and the Horn will receive less international attention, allowing insurgencies and coups to worsen. The opportunity is that African countries will gain more room to manoeuvre in diversifying their partnerships. Turkiye is already expanding its presence with drones and training missions. Russian contractors are moving into spaces left by French and UN withdrawals from Mali, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic. The retreat of external security guarantees has accelerated.

The cruellest irony of this war is that before the strikes, Ayatollah Khamenei was firmly opposed to Iran acquiring weapons of mass destruction, which he called haram under Islamic law. His potential successors, including his son Mojtaba, are all reported to favour building a nuclear bomb. So the US and Israeli strikes have not prevented Iran from going nuclear. They have pushed it in that direction.

Before the conflict, Iran had produced about 440 kilogrammes of uranium enriched to 60%, a level just a step away from weapons-grade. Around 200 kilogrammes remain, enough for roughly five nuclear warheads. The Arms Control Association has noted that while strikes can delay Iran's nuclear programme and destroy some infrastructure, military action cannot eliminate the underlying proliferation risk. When the war ends, Iran will retain the expertise and much of the material needed to build a nuclear bomb.

But the spread of nuclear weapons will not stop with Iran. Public opinion in several non-nuclear states, including Turkiye, Poland and South Korea, is shifting in favour of developing domestic nuclear capabilities. The lesson many countries will draw is simple: nuclear weapons deter attack in ways that conventional forces cannot. Iraq and Libya gave up their weapons programmes and were later attacked. North Korea built nuclear weapons and has so far avoided military action. A nuclear Iran, followed by nuclear Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, will fundamentally transform the security landscape of the Middle East and North Africa. 

For West African traders, the primary impact will be prolonged disruption to energy markets and shipping routes. Do not expect a return to pre-war stability any time soon.

The stable world that many of us took for granted is gone. The doors that have been forced open will not close again. The real question is what will come through them. For West Africa, the answer will be measured in the cost of fuel, the price of fertiliser, and the endurance of its traders. That endurance has been tested before. It will be tested again.

Cheta Nwanze is a partner at SBM Intelligence.