The Great Iran War Supply Chain Disruption

Plus: Close to $1billion in suspicious trades before the ceasefire announcement

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Cheddar's Big Business This Week
April 09, 2026

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The ripple effects of the Iran War go beyond oil tankers and the Strait of Hormuz, affecting global supply chains for everything from semiconductor components to ice cream. To understand how these disruptions are playing out in real time, BBTW columnist Peter Green spoke with Razat Guarav, CEO of Kinaxis $KXS.TSX ( ▼ 1.66% ) whose platform helps companies manage more than $200 billion in inventory across global supply chains. (This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity).

For readers who may not know Kinaxis, what do you do, and how does that give you visibility into what’s happening now?

“We are a global leader in helping provide a platform for supply chain planning and decision making. We work across seven verticals with companies like Unilever $UL ( ▼ 0.21% ) and Ford Motor $F ( ▼ 0.9% ) and Merck $MRK ( ▼ 1.03% ) and Qualcomm $QCOM ( ▲ 0.24% ) . We help them with forecasting their demand, planning their supplies, planning their inventories, planning their production, and we’ve got a platform that understands the physics of the supply chain and how the different elements are interrelated.”

When people think of the Middle East, they think oil. What are they missing?

“The Strait of Hormuz controls roughly 20% of the world’s oil, but also a lot of the liquid natural gas supply. Qatar supplies more than 20% of the world’s LNG, and a lot of that goes through the Strait of Hormuz. And then the Middle East has some important air cargo hubs: Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha. It’s not just passenger movements, but also air cargo. So that impacts flows between Asia and Europe, not just to the Middle East. 

What are some less obvious goods being disrupted?

“The Gulf region is one of the world’s largest suppliers of sulfur that goes into fertilizers, and a lot of the silicone that goes into chip making comes from the Middle East. Then there are some items like dates and Dubai chocolates. There’s a lot of water supply that goes in on tankers into the Middle East that has been impacted as well. And ice cream.”

Ice cream? What does that tell us about modern supply chains?

“We’ve got customers in the food and beverage industry. They make ice cream in Turkey and then ship to Saudi Arabia or the UAE, frozen in temperature controlled containers. Summer is around the corner in the Middle East, and there's a high correlation to demand for ice cream with changing temperatures. That has been disrupted.” 

How are companies responding in real time?

“Since the war started, we’ve seen a 30-35% increase in the number of scenarios being run on our platform. Some of our customers are moving things not through the ports in the Middle East, but around into ports in Africa and then going around the Cape [of Good Hope]. That extends the lead times and it also adds costs: transportation, logistics costs, inventory, carrying costs.”

How much inventory cushion do companies really have?

“It varies by industry. If you’re talking about perishable food products, they have very short buffer inventory because they’re perishable. In automotive just-in-time inventory, you’re dealing with two to three days all the way up to maybe a week and a half, at most. You don’t want to carry too much inventory.”

How does this disruption compare to COVID or the Red Sea crisis?

“It’s definitely not as widespread as COVID, when the entire world was on lockdown. This is impacting product flows in and out of the Middle East so it's a more regional conflict, but it’s more chronic than the Red Sea issue.”

If this conflict isn’t resolved soon, what changes permanently?

“No one is clear around how long things are going to last. Organizations are looking for alternatives, substitute sources of supply, rerouting things. This has led them to rethink their product flows and be a lot more deliberate about looking for optionality.”

So this could become a lasting structural shift, not just a temporary disruption?

“I think this is going to have a longer impact than just the end of the war, in terms of how product flows organize themselves. People are going to be de-risking choke points that have been exposed.”

—Peter S. Green

Big Businesses mentioned this week:

This week, big business!

War story

  • Deal/No Deal? The shaky truce announced by Iran and the White House earlier this week has set off another roller coaster ride for markets and energy prices, with Brent Crude oil dropping from $111 to $90 a barrel on the news, then rebounding back to near $100 with stock index rallies stalling after Iran claimed the ceasefire had been broken. Irrational exuberance, or just the winds of war? Either way, we are in for a long period of financial and business uncertainty as the world adopts to a new normal. Iran’s promise to let friendly boats through the Strait of Hormuz for a fee should begin to relieve some pressure on oil markets in the medium term, but the Gulf nations will take a year or more to rebuild their damaged refineries and LNG platforms. That means inflation is likely to stay at or above 3% for the rest of the year, reducing the chance of any significant rate cut by the Fed, no matter who is running it.

  • Making book: Less than three hours before President Trump announced he’d reached a “two-sided” ceasefire deal with Iran, unidentified traders made a $950 million bet on oil prices falling, the largest wager on oil yet ahead of a major policy ​announcement by Trump, Reuters reported. According to London Stock Exchange Group data, traders sold a combined 8,600 lots of Brent and U.S. ​crude futures 2 hours and 45 minutes before Trump’s announcement. Market watchers are picking up other trades tied to the announcement, including a reported $51 million trade on oil that marks the 16th time the same unidentified investor has reportedly traded successfully ahead of a Trump announcement. 

  • Rising oil prices have airlines tacking on fuel charges of $10 or more for passengers. Some airlines, including United $UAL ( ▼ 1.3% ) and Jet Blue $JBLU ( ▼ 3.85% ) , Delta $DAL ( ▼ 0.02% ) and Southwest $LUV ( ▼ 1.62% ) are adding the surcharge for checked baggage, while others are adding a fee to longer trips. Air Canada $AC.TSX ( ▲ 0.27% ) is adding a $50 fee for flights to warm-weather destinations. Jet fuel costs have nearly doubled from $2.42 a gallon before the Iran war to $4.16 on April 8, according to Argus Media. That hasn’t hurt Delta, which said this week that even after spending $2 billion extra in fuel in the second quarter, it expects profits to grow 10% to about $1 billion.

  • California Nightmaring: The Iran War is hitting in an unexpected place: California, which gets about 25% of its crude oil from the Middle East, and a lot of its refined jet fuel and gasoline from Asian countries that get their oil from the Persian Gulf. Key jet fuel supplier South Korea is halving the amount of fuel it sends to California to cope with a supply crunch at home. Gasoline prices in California, where taxes add $1.10 to every gallon, broke $6 a gallon, the highest by far in the U.S.

  • The Nuclear Option: Governments across Asia are planning to reopen or rebuild shuttered nuclear power plants as the Iran War and its aftermath show the dangers of depending on imported LNG to power their countries. South Korea’s planning to rush the refurbishment of 10 nuclear plants, and Taiwan is reversing a no-nukes policy adopted after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in nearby Japan. And Japan is changing rules to allow shuttered nuclear plants to restart. In fact, 38 countries have signed on to a plan to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050.

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The usual suspects

  • Ack attack: Bill Ackman has offered $64 billion for Universal Music Group $UMGP ( ▼ 23.69% ) , the home of Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar, with 30% of the global music market. Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital values Universal at a 78% premium to its share price before his offer, but the financing of it is complex, and would include Universal selling its roughly 3.5% stake in Spotify $SPOT ( ▼ 2.18% ) . Ackman has been trying to squeeze value out of UMG for a while, and key to his plan is bringing the company from Amsterdam to the New York Stock Exchange, where it would be eligible for inclusion in the $SPX ( ▼ 0.11% ) , forcing “many more top” index funds to buy it. Ackman told investors he sees stock quadrupling in value in five years. Ackman would leave leadership at Universal unchanged, but bring in former Hollywood super agent Moichael Ovitz as board chair. Markets failed to share his enthusiasm, as Universal’s share price rose just 16% after the announcement.

  • Shine on, you crazy Dimon. Ever since Warren Buffett sent the last of his 60 annual folksy letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders $BRK.B ( ▼ 1.09% ) in 2024, the investing world has been looking for its next epistolary oracle, and it may have found him in JP Morgan Chase’s $JPM ( ▼ 0.15% )  F-bomb-tossing CEO Jamie Dimon. Dimon has called the folks behind a weakening private credit market “cockroaches” and now he’s warned in his most recent letter to shareholders, that inflation going up slowly could be “the skunk at the party.”

  • Amazon’s Postal cuts get cut: Jeff Bezos’ Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 2.02% ) has scaled back its threat to all but abandon using the U.S. Postal Service for “last mile” delivery of its packages. Now, Amazon will cut the number of packages it ships using USPS by 20%, rather than the 65% reduction announced in March. Last year, Amazon accounted for 15% of all package revenue earned by UPS $UPS ( ▲ 0.06% ) , or about $6 billion. Fedex $FDX ( ▼ 0.78% ) and UPS have both cut back on delivering for Amazon, which in some areas has its own, competing, package delivery business.

  • That tip jar at Starbucks $SBUX ( ▼ 0.33% ) X just went from grande to venti. In an effort to boost employee pay without cutting into its own bottom line, Starbucks says it plans to give more customers a way to leave a tip when paying by credit or debit card. It also says it's offering new $300-a-quarter bonuses for top-performing baristas. Meanwhile the Seattle-based coffee brewer has yet to reach an agreement with the Starbucks Workers United union representing about 600 of its 10,000 U.S. stores. The union wants 4% annual raises along with better pay and better protections for baristas, which would cost a lot more than giving quarterly bonuses to top performers.

  • Who’s got the power on TV these days? NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Pro sports are one of the few bright spots in linear TV programming these days, drawing massive live audiences, and the advertisers and profits that come with them. The NFL currently gets about $10 billion in revenue from TV rights sold to networks and streaming firms, but Goodell knows he is in the catbird seat, and is hoping to boost that to $16 billion, reports Puck. The NFL is looking at the NBA, which has been boosting its TV revenue, and the recent Paramount Skydance $PSKY ( ▼ 2.12% ) merger will let Goodell re-open the NFL’s current contract with CBS. The net result? Analysts say networks will be spending less money on other programming as they compete for live sports deals. 

  • Ready for your closeup Mr. Altman? If you’re still wondering how stable the AI boom is, here’s another straw to add to the camel’s back. OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar says the company is not ready to go public this year, The Information reports. That’s because she’s not sure the company can count on enough revenue to support its spending commitments. Oops. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the firm is still on track for the IPO, so the dissonance is even more acute. Meanwhile, Altman told investors (according to The Information's, er… information) OpenAI keeps having to buy extra computing capacity to meet chatbot demand, but as it buys more, its margins keep shrinking. Why? Because it can’t charge clients enough to cover its costs. So, we asked ChatGPT whether OpenAI ever become profitable? The answer: Unlikely. “The question is not “can they make money?” It’s can they make enough money to outrun their costs? The real issue: compute costs are enormous. This is why even strong revenue growth still leaves them deeply unprofitable.” From the mouths of (robot) babes, eh?

Car talk

  • Is Chrysler fading out? Is this the end for Chrysler, the automaker that President Jimmy Carter bailed out in 1979, making then CEO Lee Iacocca a household name when he paid back the loans? Well, at the recent New York Auto Show, the perennial number three Detroit automaker was down to just one model in its lineup - the Pacifica minivan. Chrysler’s been tumbling downhill since it went bankrupt in 2009 and was sold to Italy’s FIAT. Last year, it sold a mere 126,000 cars. Chrysler parent Stellantis $STLA ( ▲ 1.39% ) (FIAT merged with Peugeot and rebranded) lost $25 billion last year, which suggests there may not be a knight out there galloping to Chrysler’s rescue. Stellantis shares are down 73% from their all-time high two years ago. 

    (Giphy.com)

  • Trump to Ford: Drop Dead. The Trump Administration is turning a deaf ear to calls from Ford $F ( ▼ 0.9% ) to drop imported aluminum tariffs until the fire-damaged New York factory that churns out the aluminum sheet for exterior panels of the best-selling F-150 pickup. Ford says the 50% tariffs on replacement sheet metal will cost it $3 billion by the time the plant is back online in June. 

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Peter S. Green is a veteran reporter and editor who has spent more than two decades covering business and finance from Eastern Europe to New York City, and has worked for Bloomberg News, The New York Post, The New York Times and The Messenger. He lives in New York City and is always looking for the next big story. Email him here.