Name: How The Iran War is Becoming a World War
Uploaded: 2026-03-19T17:13:01.000Z
Duration: 34 min 50 s
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On the final day of February, Donald Trump decided to take the biggest gamble of his political career and launch the biggest war the Middle east has seen in decades that is radically and quickly changing the way our entire world works.

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After months of buildup, the war was launched in coordination with Israel on 28 February that immediately involved heavy Israeli airstrikes on the personal compound of Iran's 86 year old supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killing him in a sea of fire.

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Multiple other opening Israeli airstrikes immediately targeted other senior Iranian leadership in an attempt to decapitate as much of the country's ruling elites as possible, which up to this video's production has included the Iranian Defense Minister, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or the IRGC, and

Within just the first six days of the war's start, the US military already carried out more than 2,000 airstrikes all across Iran that have sunk nearly the entirety of the Iranian navy's major surface vessels.

While a separate US submarine strike on an Iranian frigate thousands of miles away from Iran off the coast of Sri Lanka represented the first US submarine kill since the end of the Second World War.

America's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has claimed that the opening day of the war involved nearly double the number of American munitions dropped that were dropped on Saddam Hussein's Iraq on the first day of the shock and awe campaign in 2003, while the Israeli Air Force has claimed they have been actively striking around 1,000 targets all across Iran every single day as well, a pace of attacks that have been enabled by their newly gained ability to fly over Syria and American aerial tankers refueling them in the sky.

Western based human rights groups have already reported that more than 1,000 civilians across Iran have already been killed by these American and Israeli airstrikes.

Military casualties beyond the supreme leader within Iran due to this overwhelming aerial war are so far unclear.

But the Israelis have been actively attempting to strike every single IRGC headquarters across the country and and even bomb the building that contained the senior leadership responsible for selecting the next supreme leader, a clear sign that Israel's military objective at least is to grind down Iran's military capabilities and cause enough shock to the system to induce the regime into collapse by whatever means necessary.

America and Trump's objectives for having started the war, meanwhile, remain much less clear.

Trump himself has variously urged on the Iranian people to rise up against the battered regime in a revolution, so suggesting it's about regime change while also saying that he would still be willing to talk to the regime and cut some kind of a deal.

His Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has variously stated that America's war aims are to destroy Iran's ballistic missile program and its navy, while his Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, has added that it's also about finishing off all of Iran's nuclear capabilities as well.

In justifying the attacks, Trump and his administration officials have variously stated that it was because Iran was supposedly too close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, despite the strengths on Iran's nuclear program last year that had supposedly obliterated their capabilities to a sense that Israel was going to strike Iran regardless of what America wanted.

And so America had to attack Iran first in order to destroy their ability to retaliate to that Israeli attack, to a feeling by Trump himself that the Iranians were supposedly preparing to attack first and America had to preemptively strike them along with the Israelis.

the biggest reason is is simply the cold geopolitical calculus that the Americans and Israelis felt that the Iranian regime was at its weakest point in decades.

Iran's water resources had dried up after years of mismanagement and drought, its economy and currency were both in active freefall, while a large scale popular uprising against the regime in January was brutally suppressed by the regime's besieged paramilitary units after Khamenei ordered them to begin opening fire indiscriminately.

Sensing that these protests were an existential threat against the regime, credible human rights organizations estimate that the besieged paramilitary units massacred a minimum of 7,000 of the protesters, while other estimates go up to as high as 30,000 deaths or even higher, representing by far the bloodiest crackdown on protesters in modern Iranian history.

Trump threatened a clear red line that if the regime began killing protesters en masse, he would intervene militarily.

And he initially didn't do much of anything to retaliate.

The US military wasn't really in a good position to do so at the time, without even any aircraft carrier strike groups present in the region at all.

In fact, Trump's threats may have given the regime a perverse incentive to re establish their control over their own population at any cost before the US could actually deploy their assets back to the region to respond.

But following the ruthless put down of the protests and sensing the regime's lingering vulnerability, the US began rapidly concentrating their assets back into the region to the largest scale since the 2003 invasion of Iraq began threatening the regime to negotiate on surrendering its nuclear and ballistic missile programs or face the consequences, and

then eventually, evidently decided to simply attack to force the regime into submission or collapse through alternative means instead.

And now the war that he started risks exploding across the entire Middle East.

It risks massive destruction to the global economy, and

it risks rapidly devolving into a quagmire whose outcome could end up being much, much worse than the world we knew beforehand.

The Iranians have decided to retaliate against these existential American and Israeli attacks by basically attacking everyone else around them.

Since the war began, the Iranians have fired hundreds of ballistic missiles and thousands of explosive kamikaze drones into the territories of Oman, the uae, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus, Turkey and Azerbaijan.

So far, on the opening day of the war alone, Iran fired 180 ballistic missiles towards Israel and another 250 more at the various six Gulf countries.

Five days into the war, the UAE reported that Iran had fired more than 189 ballistic missiles into its territory and 941 of their cheaper explosive kamikaze drones, 93% of which they reported, were successfully intercepted by their air defenses.

Hundreds of additional projectiles have since been fired by Iran all across Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, while smaller numbers of projectiles numbering in the dozens have also been launched into Saudi Arabia and Oman.

And while most of the projectiles fired at these countries have also been intercepted, a few have broken through and damage has been inflicted.

In Dubai, the fancy Fairmont hotel on the Palm Jumeirah, one of the city's famous reclaimed islands, was lit ablaze on the very first day.

Debris from an intercepted missile rained down on the exterior of the famous Burj Al Arab luxury seven star hotel, sparking a fire there as well.

While more debris impacted Dubai's huge, huge international airport and fell across residents own backyards.

More notably, Iranian drones have deliberately struck three of Amazon's data centers in the region as well.

Two impacted Amazon data centers in Dubai on the opening day of the war, while a third impacted another Amazon data center in Bahrain a few days later, representing the first times that critical AI related infrastructure had been attacked or damaged during wartime.

And all of this has been a major, major shock to Dubai and the UAE's entire economic model, which for decades has been based on presenting itself as a supposed oasis of stability and calm in a dangerous but geographically critical region that links east and west for foreign businesses to set up their regional operations in.

It has appealed as a place of residence for wealthy foreigners for decades now from Arabs attempting to escape the strife in the rest of the region to Europeans dodging their taxes, to Russians and Ukrainians fleeing military service.

Dubai has received more foreign direct investment, more AI related data centers, and

is home to more regional foreign offices than any other city in its region.

Because of this reputation, which has led the city to be able to grow fabulously wealthy with its glittering skyline, now all of that is in jeopardy because of this war.

The hum of hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones flying over the city and the thunder of interceptors blowing them up in the sky, and

the roar of fighter jets, along with famous hotels and landmarks and infrastructure going up in flames, has shattered the illusion of Dubai being this oasis of common stability in a sea of chaos.

Not since the Second World War has a city as globally well connected as Dubai been attacked so heavily during wartime.

Foreign residents and companies will inevitably question their continued role in Dubai's future.

Following the conclusion of this war, as political risk, insurance premiums rise, and

naturally, the UAE government is doing just about everything they can to reassure everyone that everything is perfectly under control in order to maintain their reputation and economic model as best they can going forward.

Because of the sheer volume of fire that Iran unleashed upon the Gulf states in the first few days of the war, there is a palpable fear that the Gulf states might be running dangerously low on the expensive interceptor missiles they require to keep shooting down any further waves of attack.

Generally, air defenses will fire at least two interceptor missiles at each one incoming enemy missile to guarantee a kill as much as possible.

Since the start of the war, Iran has fired more than 400 ballistic missiles at the Gulf states collectively, which implies that they've likely fired around 800 interceptor missiles in order to block most of them, an incredibly fast burn rate that is more than five times as many interceptors as the United States used against Saddam's army throughout the entirety of the first Gulf War.

Critically, because all governments treat the numbers of interceptors they have in their stockpiles as a closely guarded state secret, there's no reliable information on how many of them the Gulf states actually had before the war and how low their potential remaining stockpiles are now.

They're kept a secret because if an enemy knew exactly how many interceptors an opponent had left, they would know exactly how many missiles to fire in order to overwhelm them.

All we know is that the Gulf states have expended an absolutely insane number of interceptors since the war began, and

replacing them will take years worth of production and billions of dollars.

If their stockpiles are truly on the lower end like many suspect, the Gulf states might have to begin making painful decisions on how to use whatever they have left if Iran fires further waves of strikes, choosing which sites to defend and which sites to leave exposed, possibly forcing them to eventually start pressuring the Americans to put a stop to the war, lest they have to risk their cities and major infrastructure actually getting badly damaged.

And that, in essence, is why Iran decided to radically escalate the scope of this war in retaliation by attacking basically everyone else around them, even if they had nothing to do with the US And Israeli attacks in the first place.

The US Military maintains big, very large bases and presences in Qatar, Bahrain, the uae, Kuwait, and

Saudi Arabia, which Iran has used as their justification for the retaliatory attacks on these countries.

But none of these countries actually permitted the US Military to utilize their bases for the attacks that were launched on Iran.

And they wouldn't even allow the US Military to utilize their airspaces either.

All of the American attacks came either from their aircraft carriers operating in the Arabian Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean or.

Or from their Arab bases in Jordan, but none from the Gulf states directly.

Iran's real aim in attacking the Gulf states the way they have, is to try and cause as much damage to the global economy as physically possible in an attempt to force Trump to end the war under the pressure of even further pain.

In addition to the attacks on the cities themselves and the terror they inflicted on residents, consider the damage the attacks have already done to the global oil and airline industries as well.

Iranian missiles and drones have bombarded Saudi Arabia's largest oil refinery at Ras Tenera and Qatar's supermassive LNG facility at Ras Lafan, shutting down production at both for an uncertain amount of time.

Meanwhile, Iran has also ordered the closure of the narrow Strait of Hormuz and threaten to light a blaze any ship that dares to pass through.

For decades, this action has been the most feared method of escalation that Iran has been capable of.

The Strait of Hormuz is the most critical maritime chokepoint in the world, since virtually all of the oil exports of Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, and

most of those of Saudi Arabia and the UAE have no other choice but to pass through it towards the world market as well as all of Qatar's LNG exports.

As a result, one third of all the world's seaborne crude oil and one fifth of all the world's LNG transit through the Strait on a daily basis.

even with the majority of its large surface fleet sunk, Iran is believed to still have thousands of naval mines at its disposal that it can use its large number of much smaller motorboats to litter across the strait, in addition to attacks on cargo and tanker ships with drones and missiles.

The result has been that since the war began, the strait has remained effectively closed, choking off a massive amount of the global supply of oil and gas, with ships too reluctant to pass through out of both fear and skyrocketing insurance costs, some 3,000 merchant vessels of all different kinds found themselves stranded by the end of the first week of the war, representing roughly 10% of the entire global container fleet.

Iraq has already begun running out of storage space for crude oil that would normally be loaded up on tankers and is being forced to shut off production at multiple major fields, slicing production by millions of barrels a day.

And the other Gulf states remain in a dangerous race against the clock to get the strait back open again or face closures of their own.

Kuwait has warned that they also might need to shut down production shortly, and

While Saudi Arabia has the ability to export some of their oil along pipelines out to the Red Sea coast, they might have to eventually shutter the majority of their production as well, since most of it also still has to go through her muds.

If this trade remains closed for a week, several weeks, or several months, the consequences of all of this held up oil and gas blocked from the world market will grow increasingly painful for everyone in the world to bear.

As of my writing of this script, the price of a barrel of crude oil has already jumped up by more than 14% since the war began, while the price of a megawatt hour of natural gas in Europe has spiked more than 70%, while Asia, who is the most critically affected since they purchased most of their oil from the Persian Gulf, has been the most negatively affected of all by skyrocketing gas and jet fuel prices.

The longer the strait remains closed, the higher global energy prices will rise, the higher global inflation rates will rise with them, the lower global economic growth will sag, and

the greater money that Russia will earn on their own oil and gas sales that will benefit the Kremlin's war machine in Ukraine.

That Trump is also still ostensibly trying to put a stop to all of this, of course, is a massive gamble on the part of the Iranians.

On the one hand, attacking the Gulf states like this and their energy resources puts huge pressure on the United States to stop the war in order to avoid inflation from growing too far out of control.

But on the other hand, doing this directly impacts China's primary source of oil that comes from the Persian Gulf as well and pisses them off while it also pushes the Gulf states further away into the Israeli camp and also invites retaliatory strikes on their own oil and gas infrastructure and shipping that they overwhelmingly rely on for their economy too.

Then consider the damage being inflicted to the global aviation industry.

The primary airports at major regional hubs like Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha have all been impacted and damaged by the war since it began.

With missiles, drones and aircraft all streaking through their skies, the airspaces were completely shut down across Iran, Iraq's Corporation, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Oman and Yemen, with partial airspace closures enforced in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

By the end of week one of the war, more than 18,000 flights to the Middle east region had been canceled, most of them to the major connecting hubs of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha that are central hubs to global air transportation between Europe, Asia and Africa.

A gigantic hole in the map of global airline routes has formed across the entire width of the Middle east from Iran to the Mediterranean, as everyone avoids the active conflict zone.

And with Russia's airspace still blocked off to Western airlines because of the ongoing Ukraine war, there are basically only two narrow aerial highways that have formed to connect flights between east and West.

One across the Southern Caucasus in Central Asia and the other across Egypt and central Saudi Arabia.

All of them longer routes than normal that are requiring more jet fuel to fly.

At the same time as oil prices are spiking too.

As I was writing this script, it was reported that Iran fired a missile into the territory of Azerbaijan as well, reportedly damaging the regional airport in Azerbaijan's autonomous Nakhayvan exclave and wounding four people in the process.

Potentially representing a challenge to this northern alternative air corridor as well that might even further constrain global airlines options and which has led Azerbaijan to also threaten retaliation against Iran.