100 Days of Iran War: Global Markets Impact in Charts

Oil Prices Cross $100 and European Gas Doubles

When bombs started falling on Iran in late February 2026, traders braced for a spike. What they got was a sustained surge. Within weeks, crude oil punched through the $100-per-barrel mark and kept climbing. The Strait of Hormuz — a narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil passes — became a chokepoint in every sense. Tankers rerouted. Insurance rates for cargo through the Gulf skyrocketed. Supply chains that ran on predictability suddenly had none.

The numbers are stark. As Figure 1 (the data visualization below) makes clear, the oil shock didn't arrive alone. European natural gas prices doubled over the same period. For a continent still healing from the energy crisis of 2022, this was a gut punch. Power-intensive industries — chemicals, steel, glass — faced input costs they couldn't absorb. Factories slowed. Margins evaporated.

Why such an extreme reaction in gas markets? Because Qatar, the world's second-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, sits directly across the Gulf from Iran. When Iranian retaliatory fire fell near Doha, LNG cargo schedules went haywire. The war's physical footprint was regional; its economic footprint was global.

Inflation Creeps Higher in the Eurozone and Beyond

Energy prices don't stay in energy markets. They bleed into everything else. By the hundred-day mark, Eurozone inflation had climbed to 3% — not a crisis number on its own, but the direction and speed of the move worried central bankers. This was inflation driven not by a hot economy but by a supply shock: the worst kind, because raising interest rates can't make oil flow through a war zone.

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, warned the war would have a "material impact" on inflation, as we noted in our coverage of the ECB's financial stability warning. The ECB wasn't alone. The Federal Reserve and Bank of England struck similarly cautious tones. The phrase that started appearing in analyst notes was "stagflation" — the ugly combination of stagnant growth and persistent price increases that haunted the 1970s.

For ordinary households, the squeeze was immediate. Heating bills in Milan looked more like midwinter costs in May. A tank of petrol cost noticeably more than it did in February. These aren't abstractions. They're the kind of daily price signals that make people pull back on other spending, slowing the broader economy even as official inflation measures climb.

Bond Markets Under Pressure: Treasury Yields Climb

If oil is the body's blood, government bond markets are its nervous system — and they've been twitching. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, a benchmark that influences borrowing costs worldwide, rose to 4.455% by early June, as we tracked in our analysis of the yield spike following Iran's communication breakdown with the U.S.. Higher yields mean investors are demanding more return to hold government debt, typically because they expect inflation to erode the value of fixed payments over time.

The pattern repeated across borders. UK government bond yields climbed sharply in the weeks after Tehran cut diplomatic channels, as we detailed in our coverage of the UK gilt market reaction. Bond traders — sometimes called "bond vigilantes" — were effectively pricing in a world of higher-for-longer inflation, bigger government war-adjacent spending, and greater uncertainty about everything in between.

This matters far beyond trading desks. When sovereign yields rise, corporate borrowing costs follow. Mortgages get more expensive. Government debt service eats up larger shares of budgets. The mechanism is slow but relentless — a tightening of financial conditions that acts like an invisible tax on economic activity.

Mortgage Rates Hit a Nine-Month High, Housing Market Cools

Nowhere is the transmission from geopolitics to kitchen-table economics more direct than in housing. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate in the United States hit 6.51% for the week ending May 21 — the highest since the previous summer. That's not an accident. Mortgage rates track Treasury yields, and Treasury yields have been tracking war headlines.

The housing market absorbed the blow unevenly. According to the S&P Case-Shiller Index, home prices fell in more than half of the nation's 20 largest metro areas from March 2025 to March 2026. Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Seattle, and Tampa were among the cities where sellers lost ground. Meanwhile, existing home sales in April were flat compared to the same month a year earlier — not a crash, but hardly the spring rebound agents had hoped for.

"With geopolitical tensions still front and center and inflation expectations starting to pick back up, the outlook remains uncertain," said Jeff DerGurahian, head economist at loanDepot. "Until there's more clarity, rates are likely to stay sensitive to headlines." That's a polite way of saying: families trying to buy a home are at the mercy of events happening 7,000 miles away.

Airlines Slash Seats, Fares Surge as Jet Fuel Costs Soar

If you've tried to book an international flight recently and balked at the price, the Iran war is partly why. Jet fuel — refined from crude oil — has risen more than 80% since the bombing campaign began. For airlines, fuel is typically the second-largest expense after labor. An 80% cost increase on a major input is, for many carriers, the difference between a profitable route and a money pit.

The industry's response has been swift and brutal. Airlines worldwide have cut 9.3 million seats from schedules for June through September, according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium. The cuts are deepest in the Middle East, where airspace closures from Iranian missile and drone attacks have compounded the fuel cost problem. Qatar Airways alone slashed 2 million seats scheduled for June through October. Emirates cut 700,000. Etihad cut 450,000. U.S.-based Spirit Airlines, a budget carrier with thin margins, announced it would cease operations entirely — a casualty of fuel costs that its low-fare model simply couldn't absorb.

For travelers, the math shows up at checkout. The average international airfare from the United States hit $1,101 in the last week of April, up 16% from the same period a year earlier, according to travel aggregator Kayak. Fewer seats plus higher operating costs equal higher prices. Basic economics, painfully applied.

Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association, warned that parts of Europe and Asia could face outright jet fuel shortages in the coming weeks. "Airline resilience is being tested," he said, "and stabilising the supply and price of fuel is crucial." The summer travel season that many carriers bank on for their annual profits is looking increasingly precarious.

Conclusion

A hundred days into the Iran war, the economic evidence points in one direction: the global economy is absorbing a supply shock that central banks can't easily offset. Oil above $100 a barrel, European gas prices doubled, inflation edging higher, bond yields climbing, housing markets softening, and airlines cutting capacity — these aren't isolated data points. They're connected threads in a fabric of economic disruption that reaches from the Strait of Hormuz to a mortgage broker's office in Phoenix to a family vacation rebooked at the last minute because fares jumped 16%.

The most uncomfortable word circulating in policy circles remains "stagflation." The European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, and the International Monetary Fund have all signaled that the war complicates their core task of keeping prices stable without crushing growth. When inflation comes from a supply shock rather than an overheating economy, raising interest rates is a blunt tool. It can slow demand, but it can't make tankers move through a contested strait or reopen shuttered airspace over Dubai.

What the data in Figure 1 shows — and what the accompanying table documents — is that markets have already repriced the world. The question now is whether governments and central banks can navigate what comes next without tipping major economies into recession. The hundred-day mark is a milestone, not an endpoint. But the trajectory, so far, is not reassuring.