The catastrophic conflict leaves behind a permanent global crisis. From Iran to Bangladesh to the U.S., the costs of the economic wreckage caused by imperialists are being borne by working-class women.
Freedom Socialist newspaper, Vol. 47, No. 4, August-September 2026
By Brooke Sassi
The 2026 U.S. war on Iran has unleashed a global catastrophe, fracturing the international economy as deeply as the Covid-19 pandemic. Over four months of unrelenting violence, it engulfed the entire Middle East and paralyzed the Strait of Hormuz. By choking off 20% of the world’s oil and gas transport, a blockade of this crucial shipping lane has inflicted the largest energy shock in modern history. And hostilities continue.
While mainstream media fixate on market recovery and diplomatic truces, the true, long-term costs of this imperialist wreckage are seen in the international working class where women act as the shock absorber for global capital mayhem.
Ruin across the Middle East and Asia
Inside Iran, the conflict triggered absolute societal fracture. The brutal U.S. aerial bombing did not just destroy military hardware; along with the naval siege of ports, it annihilated the state’s economic foundation. Hyper-inflation caused basic foods to vanish overnight. The war economy also destroyed jobs and led to a mass exodus of women from the labor market.
These conditions create a grueling domestic front. Women perform endless manual labor just to guarantee baseline survival. To shift economic resources into military spending, the authoritarian Iranian regime stripped social safety nets that working-class women rely on. Many have fallen into dire poverty.
When oil tankers were blocked at Hormuz, global crude prices instantly exploded past $100 a barrel. In the energy-dependent Asian nations, this sparked systemic fuel shortages and panic. Major manufacturing hubs like Bangladesh and Cambodia suffered severe power blackouts that crippled industries. Assembly lines ground to an immediate halt. Factory owners responded with mass layoffs and by withholding back-wages that women had already earned. This wiped out the livelihoods of millions of female garment workers and shattered their hard-won financial independence.
Furthermore, the hostilities threw the vital Middle Eastern migrant labor pipeline into absolute chaos. Over 30 million workers from South and Southeast Asia form the backbone of the region’s service and domestic workforces. The outbreak of war trapped millions of them — mostly vulnerable female workers — behind active, shifting front lines. They faced heightened physical abuse, canceled exit visas, and complete isolation. Crucially, the crisis halted financial remittances, suddenly plunging millions of rural families back home in the Philippines, India, and Nepal into acute starvation.
Working-class downgrade in the U.S.
The economic violence is not a distant foreign phenomenon; in the United States, it inflicts deep, lasting damage. While the Trump administration weaponized nationalist rhetoric to market the war as a swift security victory, independent data reveals a devastating domestic toll. Driven by global energy speculation, the national average gas price soared to $4.56 per gallon in May, and California’s prices went over $6 per gallon. Inflation reached a three-year high, triggering a spike in already costly grocery baskets.
These numbers translate directly into class warfare. Working-class families with single-mother households are suffering the sharpest economic shocks. They are caught in a vise between paying rising utility bills or buying costly food. The crisis heavily punishes immigrant communities and people of color. In states like Arizona, hard-working Latinx gardeners, day laborers, and house cleaners who drive from job to job and rely on gasoline-powered equipment saw their daily operating costs soar.
Worse, the fallout is structural and long lasting. Economists warn that because shipping costs surged astronomically, a massive secondary wave of food inflation will hammer grocery stores for the next six months or longer. Utilities will also be affected. Even as gasoline prices fluctuate, elevated everyday costs have outstripped wage growth in the private sector, eroding worker buying power.
Ultimately, this conflict proves that the impacts of imperialist war are never gender-neutral or class-blind. A temporary diplomatic truce that preserves the capitalist status quo is no solution. True peace requires an uncompromising, internationalist solidarity that directly links the struggles of the housewife in Tehran, the laid-off factory worker in Dhaka, the squeezed single moms in Detroit and the hard-working immigrants in Phoenix. We must organize to dismantle a global war machine that relies on imperialist resource extraction to secure billionaire wealth, while refusing to see that the real cost of its destruction is always paid in the bodies and labor of women.
Gas prices spike
From Feb. 28 to July 9, 2026, the average increase in gas prices in the U.S. was 28%. The national average rose to $3.86/gal., with the highest price in California, which hit an average of $5.38 on July 9. Source:gasprices.aaa.com