The Geo-Economic Tsunami of the Iran War

The war is not over.The most dangerous phase has begun: turning oil into a weapon, drones into an ideology, and disorder into a system.

The Geoeconomic Tsunami of the Iran War

The war is not over yet.The most dangerous phase has begun: the phase of turning oil into a weapon, drones into doctrine, and chaos into a system.

No one expected that the war would last for such a short time.And no one knows how long the ceasefire will last.The US-Israeli military operation against Iran has destroyed infrastructure, destroyed capabilities, and removed top government officials.But it still stands.And that's where the real problem begins, because Washington entered the war of choice without a clear exit, without an elected representative, and without the domestic support that the campaign needs to expand.President Trump has midterm elections in November and is focused on China.Iran is, for him, a bracket.The question is whether the Middle East will accept that second role in the new national security strategy.

It is worth pausing over the next hundred days of opportunities. Most likely is not clean victory or total war, but something more difficult: limited victory. The United States has neutralized missiles, drones and part of Iran's nuclear capacity. The air campaign has been massive, coordinated with Israel and has reduced Tehran's ability to strike regional allies. But the regime remains.Without reform, without a political plan B, Washington will declare its strategic success because it has no choice. It's a beautiful TACO. Israel will celebrate its military supremacy and may call elections in October. Saudi Arabia will push for regional leadership.The internal narrative will be reorganized.

An unlikely scenario was the submission of the regime and the promotion of a pro-American government.It is the most seductive for fans of political fiction, but the most dangerous in practice.The beheading dilemma needs to be resolved: who do you negotiate with when you've eliminated the leadership?What guarantees does a legitimate voice rising from the ruins of power offer?Precedents - Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan - do not inspire optimism.A power vacuum, infighting, the fragmentation of the country: these are the most likely legacies of excessive victory.

And then there is the third scenario, the one that keeps risk analysts awake in the offices of private equity and European foreign ministries: Iran holds out and the ceasefire becomes useless.The energy and food crisis, paradoxically, strengthened Iran's negotiating position.Gulf neighbors, with exposed sovereign wealth funds and compromised sea lanes, are putting pressure on Washington to moderate or, at the opposite extreme, end.Asymmetric warfare has a price: the Iranian Shahed drone for twenty-five thousand dollars against a Tomahawk for two million.Every day the economic dimension turns into an arithmetic drain that does not favor the attacker.

In any case, this war accelerated with brutal efficiency a transformation that was already underway: technological.Ukraine was a laboratory.Gaza was a testing ground.Intervention on the ground has not gone away, but who is leading the battle has changed.The United States is developing systems such as LUCAS (Low Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System), and Iran is exporting the logic behind the Shahed drone.Asymmetry is a teaching, not a weakness.

The implications for the global economy come from volatility, not scarcity.This is the most important lesson of the crisis: markets crash not because of a lack of oil, but because of the uncertainty of its price.Taiwan and countries that need fertilizer, helium.Inflation will return because central banks have less margin today than during the Covid crisis.There are signs of stagflation that the gurus prefer not to talk about yet.The private credit sector, the sum of private equity and sovereign money, now includes the geopolitical variable as a valid elimination criterion.Exercises are more complex.Fewer global buyers.A penalty for exposure to unstable geographies is already present in econometric models.This is not a peripheral financial problem: it is a sign that the war has entered the balance.

On the grand strategy board, bullets reveal more than bullets.Israel is using the opportunity to try to rebuild the Middle East, neutralize the Iranian threat, and reverse the deal with Saudi Arabia.Aggressive militarism creates permanent instability, not permanent security.Saudi Arabia is pressuring the Trump administration with calculated ambitions to become a controlled nuclear power on the new regional map.China is strategically quiet: it also needs stability in the East, because it imports three times more from the Gulf than Iran, and its trade ties with Saudi Arabia are ten times those with Tehran.Petro-yuan is a good currency for those who can provide energy, security and continuity.Burning the world is not good for you.By collecting barrels, it develops green technologies to reduce its light.Russia, on the other hand, is watching the war in a peculiar way: oil prices are rising, heavy sanctions are being lifted, and it is seeing Western weapons that can reach Ukraine being compromised.

The European Union participating in the new big game has lost its way.It needs guarantees against Russia.It does not have its own security doctrine.It has no operational capacity to influence the Middle East.And meanwhile, the country's energy dependence on the Gulf - something Spain knows well, with 30% of its gas liquids coming from the North Atlantic - is becoming a point of structural vulnerability.With no strategic vision, no direction, President Von der Leyen's statements are worrying.

What was left after the tsunami?Geographical order, transaction, and international order without rules.The Iran war is not an anomaly: it is the logical culmination of Trump's order in which security is a paid service, diplomacy is bilateral or non-existent, and allies are measured by their benefits to the bottom line.President Trump has shown that he can conduct military operations without meetings and without NATO.Lao 2028 does not care about the post-war world.

A geoeconomic tsunami doesn't just destroy infrastructure: it destroys categories of thought and colonizes the political imagination.Vectors of security are established at the expense of energy, artificial intelligence or multilateral relations.The Strait of Hormuz is the choke point of authentic civilization.

Can Europe react before the next wave hits the shore?

*Juan Luis Manfredi Sánchez is a professor and researcher at the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence at the University of Castilla-La Mancha.

No one expected the war to be so short.And no one knows how long the ceasefire will last.The US-Israeli military operation against Iran destroyed infrastructure, crippled capabilities, and killed the regime's top leaders.But it still stands.This is where the real problem begins, because Washington has entered a chosen war without a clear exit, without a clear interlocutor, and without the domestic support that a protracted campaign requires.President Trump is gearing up for the midterm elections in November and his strategy is focused on China.Iran is a bracket for him.The question is whether the Middle East will accept this secondary role in the new national security strategy.

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