{"id":205641,"date":"2026-03-28T12:12:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T12:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/no-end-to-war-in-sight-after-one-month-as-iran-squeezes-global-economy-nbcnews-com\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T12:12:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T12:12:22","slug":"no-end-to-war-in-sight-after-one-month-as-iran-squeezes-global-economy-nbcnews-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/no-end-to-war-in-sight-after-one-month-as-iran-squeezes-global-economy-nbcnews-com\/","title":{"rendered":"No end to war in sight after one month as Iran squeezes global economy – nbcnews.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

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All sides say they are winning. But one month into this war <\/a>perhaps only one outcome is certain: Immense damage to the global economy.<\/a>
After four weeks, President Donald Trump<\/a> is talking up negotiations to end this conflict that he started alongside Israel. That\u2019s even as thousands more American troops head to the Middle East with a possible ground operation<\/a> looming.
The U.S. and Israel say the war has been an unmitigated success. Indeed it has unleashed unprecedented damage on Iran: killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a> and echelons of his top officials while gutting its navy and missile defenses, but also killing almost 2,000 people, many of them civilians, according to Iranian officials.
But Iran\u2019s response \u2014 which many regional officials and expert observers warned about beforehand \u2014 has successfully transposed these aftershocks so they are already being felt around the world. Tehran has used missiles and cheap drones <\/a>to effectively blockade the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, a vital trade route through which 20% of the world\u2019s oil passed daily before the war, while attacking Gulf oil and gas facilities.
The world is now facing price rises and perhaps even shortages for energy and food that are already baked in \u2014 and that\u2019s if the conflict ended tomorrow.
\u201cThe Iran crisis is an epoch-defining event, similar in scale to the fall of the Berlin Wall or 9\/11,\u201d believes Peter Frankopan, a professor of global history at the University of Oxford. \u201cThe cascades coming towards us all are epic in scale, even if peace is agreed today,\u201d he told NBC News in an interview.
The U.S. and Israel launched their assault at 1:15 a.m. ET on Feb. 28, an attack Trump has boasted took even U.S. allies by surprise.
It came even as American negotiators were speaking with their Iranian counterparts <\/a>over a deal to contain the regime\u2019s nuclear program, in the wake of its deadly crackdown against protesters.
Whatever the initial reasoning, Trump now seems focused on solving a global oil and supply chain crisis that did not exist before the bombing started.
The war has further damaged America\u2019s standing among its European allies, unconvinced by Trump\u2019s rationale and his demands they help resolve the crisis.
At home, the war is unpopular with most Americans, polls show, and it has caused open criticism from elements of Trump\u2019s MAGA movement.
The assault \u201cmakes it clear that we are now in an age where might is right,\u201d added Frankopan, author of \u201cThe Silk Roads: A New History of the World,\u201d which examines the impact of the pre-Iran Persian Empire. We are used to seeing this from \u201crogue states,\u201d but Washington\u2019s choice of force over diplomacy, he added, \u201cwill rewire how the world sees the West.\u201d
What follows in the days and weeks ahead will depend on an array of diplomatic, military and economic moving parts.
Trump is claiming that negotiations to end the conflict are ongoing. He has extended his deadline for Iran <\/a>to reopen the Strait of Hormuz until April 6, pausing his threatened attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure amid talks he says \u201care going very well.\u201d
That has been denied by Iran, as well as expert observers. The U.S. has attacked Iran during or directly after previous negotiations, meaning trust is thin.
\u201cI\u2019ve been talking with the mediators and there are no negotiations,\u201d said Ali Vaez at the International Crisis Group, a think tank based in Belgium, who was involved in the Obama-era landmark nuclear deal of 2015, from which Trump withdrew. \u201cThere have been some exchanges of messages urging the parties to get to the table. But the preconditions of both sides are so far apart that there is no prospect for any kind of high level meeting anytime soon,\u201d said Vaez.
Using Pakistan as a mediator, the Trump administration has sent a 15-point \u201cpeace plan\u201d to Iran, which focuses on preventing it from developing nuclear weapons, something Tehran has already denied trying to do. Iran confirmed receipt of the proposal, and immediately countered with maximalist demands of its own.
\u201cThe conflict is at a stalemate because the parties are fighting different wars,\u201d Vaez said. \u201cThe U.S. and Israel are fighting a war aimed at weakening Iran, while Iran is fighting a war to survive.\u201d
The Iranian view has always been that \u201calthough the U.S. and Israel have a higher capacity to inflict pain on them, the Iranians have a higher threshold for absorbing pain,\u201d Vaez said. \u201cAs it doesn\u2019t collapse, Iran is winning from its perspective.\u201d
Both sides also believe they have cards left to play.
The U.S. is diverting thousands more marines<\/a>, sailors and paratroopers to the region, and has refused to rule out a ground invasion in which it could attempt to seize Iran\u2019s vital oil terminal on Kharg Island or to break Iran\u2019s stranglehold over Hormuz.
\u201cThe United States Military is meeting or exceeding all of its benchmarks, and the President\u2019s decisive action is quickly eliminating short- and long-term threats to the United States and our allies,\u201d White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement to NBC News.
One way or another, the U.S. seems determined to loosen Iran\u2019s grip on the waterway, with White House officials saying forces are \u201czeroed in on systematically eliminating the terrorist Iranian regime\u2019s ability to disrupt the free flow of energy.\u201d
Between 1,900 and 2,500 vessels are currently stranded in the Persian Gulf, according to the International Maritime Organization, depriving the global oil market of around 8 million barrels every day, and sending costs for some fertilizers \u2014 around one-third of which transits Hormuz \u2014 doubling. Global stock markets tumbled again Friday.
On Friday alone, the price of U.S. oil <\/a>surged 7%, bringing its total rise since the war with Iran began to more than 50%. Since the start of the year, U.S. crude oil prices have soared more than 75%.
There has already been significant human suffering.
The war has damaged some 82,000 civilian buildings, including hospitals and the homes of 180,000 people in Iran, the International Organization for Migration said Friday. Those prosecuting the war \u201chave not understood that tens of millions of civilians across the region bear the brunt of violence, displacement and destruction,\u201d Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said in a statement.
Residents of Tehran, the Iranian capital, say they are exhausted by the bombs that have battered their city on a daily basis and terrified of the security checkpoints that have popped up looking for spies.
Trump\u2019s uneven messaging on the war\u2019s aims and end date, along with the constant screech of jets overhead, has shattered their nerves even more, residents say.
\u201cThe main question is whether this will go on for years or if it\u2019s almost over,\u201d said one Tehran resident, who asked not to be identified for safety reasons. \u201cThe country has had enough and cannot endure a long war, even though the system might want one, trying to flex and make it costly for the whole region as they threaten Arab nations every day.\u201d
Yet Israel has vowed to \u201cintensify and expand\u201d its attacks on Iran, punishment it says for Tehran continuing to launch missiles at its civilians. It has also escalated its offensive into neighboring Lebanon on the grounds of countering the Tehran-backed Hezbollah militant group, raising fears it may plan the long-term occupation <\/a>of much of the country\u2019s south. Some 1 million people in Lebanon have been displaced by that conflict, including 300,000 children, according to the United Nations\u2019 refugee agency.
However, amid all this, the Iranian regime has not fallen but, in fact, hardened.
The supreme leader\u2019s death saw the appointment of his son, Mojtaba Khamenei<\/a>, who has not yet been seen in public, is injured and likely \u201cdisfigured,\u201d according to the U.S. Little is known about the younger Khamenei, and his elevation has only allowed the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to consolidate power, according to close observers of Iran.
The Houthis, Iran’s Yemeni proxy force, fired a missile at Israel for the first time in the current conflict on Saturday, in a signal that the group could soon join the war.
As they have done before, the Houthis could start firing on ships in the Red Sea, another vital waterway on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula. And if Trump does ultimately decide to hit Iranian power plants or launch a risky ground operation, Tehran has threatened to hit back even harder across the region.
What worries independent observers is that there appears to be far more scope to expand and intensify rather than calm the conflict.
\u201cThere is both tentative diplomatic outreach and ways for all sides to take more steps up the escalation ladder,\u201d said Naysan Rafati, a senior analyst on Iran at the International Crisis Group. \u201cFor the moment, the latter seems more likely.\u201d
Alexander Smith is a senior reporter for\u00a0NBC News Digital based in London.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeAll sides say they are winning. But one month into this war perhaps only one outcome is certain: Immense damage to the global economy.After four weeks, President Donald Trump is talking up negotiations to end this conflict that he started alongside Israel. That\u2019s even as thousands more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":205642,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-205641","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}