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Motorists around the globe are already feeling the impact of the United States and Israel’s war on Iran, with fuel prices sharply rising since the war began.

In the US, a gallon of regular petrol that averaged $2.94 in February now costs $3.58, marking a 20 percent increase, according to data from AAA Fuel Prices, a retail fuel price tracker from the American Automobile Association (AAA).

While each US state sets its own petrol prices, several states have surpassed $4 per gallon, with California exceeding $5 per gallon, the highest level it has been in more than two years.

Which countries have the sharpest petrol price increases?

According to data analysed from Global Petrol Prices, a data platform that tracks and publishes retail energy prices across approximately 150 countries, at least 85 countries have reported increases in petrol prices following the initial attacks on Iran by the US and Israel on February 28. Some nations announce price changes only at the end of each month, so higher prices are expected for many others in April.

Vietnam recorded the highest petrol price increase of nearly 50 percent, rising from $0.75 per litre of 95-octane on February 23 to $1.13 on March 9. Laos follows with a 33 percent increase, then Cambodia at 19 percent, Australia at 18 percent, and the US at 17 percent.

The table below shows the countries that have increased petrol prices at the pumps.

Asian countries pay the biggest price

Asia is disproportionately dependent on the Strait of Hormuz for the delivery of its oil and gas, which has been effectively closed since the start of the war. The strait joins the Gulf – also referred to as the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Gulf – to the Gulf of Oman and is the only passage for the region’s oil producers to the open ocean.

Japan and South Korea are among the most vulnerable, importing 95 percent and 70 percent of their oil from the Gulf, respectively.

Both East Asian nations have enacted emergency measures to stabilise their energy markets. On March 8, Japan instructed its oil reserve sites to prepare for a potential release of strategic reserves. The next day, South Korea introduced a maximum price cap on petrol and diesel for the first time in 30 years.

In South Asia, the impact of the war is more severe than in East Asia because countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh have much thinner financial buffers and smaller strategic reserves.

In an attempt to conserve energy, Bangladesh‘s government has ordered all public and private universities to close immediately. In Pakistan, government offices will now operate a four-day workweek, while schools have closed, and a 50 percent work-from-home policy has been enacted to save fuel.

In Europe, the Group of Seven finance ministers convened an emergency meeting to discuss rising prices, with French President Emmanuel Macron raising the possibility of releasing 20-30 percent of emergency strategic reserves to ease the pressure on consumers.

How high oil costs drive up the price of food

Oil prices and food prices move in lockstep, with energy prices affecting every stage of the food supply chain, from the fertilisers used in the fields to the trucks that carry food from field to supermarket shelf.

Rising oil prices also directly affect shipping and the cost of transport.

“The lifeblood of the global economy is transport,” economist David McWilliams told Al Jazeera. “It’s getting stuff from A to B – it’s a logistics problem, a supply chain problem, and ultimately transportation is the energy of the global economy.”

Fears of stagflation – increasing inflation and rising unemployment, which major oil shocks have historically summoned – are rising. Economists point to the crises of 1973, 1978 and 2008 as evidence that every significant spike in oil prices has been followed, in some form, by global recession.

In lower-income countries, where populations spend a far greater share of their income on food and import large quantities of grain and fertiliser, rising oil prices could rapidly translate into food shortages.

What products are made from oil and gas?

Oil and gas are used for far more than just fuel. They are raw materials for thousands of everyday products.

Plastics, including water bottles, food packaging, phone casings and medical syringes, are all derived from crude oil.

Crude oil is also the hidden ingredient in synthetic fabrics such as polyester, nylon and acrylic, which are used to make everything from sportswear to carpets. It also underpins the cosmetics industry, as it is used to make products such as petroleum jelly (Vaseline), lipsticks and concealers.

Household items also rely on oil-based ingredients, with laundry detergents, dishwashing liquids, and paints all derived from petroleum products.

The global food supply is essentially built on natural gas in the form of fertilisers, used to enhance crop yields and ensure that food production can meet demand.

For years, Iran’s leaders believed time was on their side.

After the United States withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Tehran effectively adopted what later came to be described as a “strategic patience” approach. Rather than immediately counter-escalating, Iran chose to endure economic pressure while waiting to see whether diplomacy could be revived.

The logic behind the strategy was simple: eventually, Washington would recognise that confrontation with Iran was against its own interests.

Today, that assumption lies shattered.

The collapse of diplomacy and the outbreak of war have forced Iran’s leadership to confront a painful reality: their belief that the US would ultimately act rationally may have been a profound miscalculation.

If Iran survives the current conflict, the lessons Iranian leaders draw from this moment may motivate them to pursue a nuclear deterrent.

The strategy of waiting

After the first Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA and launched its “maximum pressure” campaign in 2018, Tehran initially avoided major counter-escalation. For nearly a year, it largely remained within the deal’s limits, hoping the other signatories, particularly Europeans, could preserve the agreement and deliver on the promised economic benefits despite US sanctions.

When that failed, Tehran began gradually increasing its nuclear activities by expanding enrichment and reducing compliance step by step while still avoiding a decisive break.

The pace accelerated after Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament passed a law mandating a significant increase in nuclear activities, in the wake of the assassination of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. The shift was reinforced further by the 2021 election of conservative President Ebrahim Raisi.

The ultimate goal was to rebuild negotiating leverage, as Tehran believed that broader geopolitical and regional trends were gradually shifting in its favour. From its perspective, China’s rise, Russia’s growing assertiveness, and widening fractures within the Western alliance suggested that Washington’s ability to isolate Iran indefinitely might weaken over time.

At the same time, Iran pursued a strategy of reducing tensions with its neighbours, seeking improved relations with Gulf states that had previously supported the US “maximum pressure” campaign. By the early 2020s, many Gulf Cooperation Council countries had begun prioritising engagement and de-escalation with Iran, culminating in moves such as the 2023 Saudi-Iran rapprochement brokered by China.

Against this backdrop, even as tensions rose, Tehran continued to pursue diplomacy. Years of negotiations with the Biden administration aimed at restoring the JCPOA ultimately produced no agreement. Subsequent diplomatic efforts under Trump’s second presidency also collapsed.

Underlying this approach was a fundamental assumption: that the US ultimately preferred stability to war. Iranian officials believed Washington would eventually conclude that diplomacy, rather than endless pressure or a major war, was the most realistic and least costly path forward.

The joint US-Israeli assault on Iran has now exposed how deeply flawed that assumption was.

The return of deterrence

While Tehran based its strategy on mistaken beliefs about the rationality of US foreign policy, Washington, too, is misreading the situation.

For years, advocates of the maximum pressure campaign argued that sustained economic and military pressure would eventually fracture Iran internally. Some predicted that war would trigger widespread unrest and even the collapse of the regime.

So far, none of those predictions has materialised.

Despite the enormous strain on Iranian society, there have been no signs of regime disintegration. Instead, Iran’s political base — and in many cases broader segments of society — has rallied in the face of external attack.

Furthermore, Iran spent years reinforcing its deterrence capabilities. This involved expanding and diversifying its ballistic missile, cruise missile and drone programmes and developing multiple delivery systems designed to penetrate sophisticated air defences. Iranian planners also drew lessons from the direct exchanges with Israel in 2024 and the June 2025 war, improving targeting accuracy and coordination across different weapons systems.

The focus shifted towards preparing for a prolonged war of attrition: firing fewer but more precise strikes over time while attempting to degrade enemy radar and air defence systems.

We now see the results of this work. Iran has been able to inflict significant damage on its adversaries. Retaliatory attacks have killed seven Americans and 11 Israelis, placing a growing strain on US and Israeli missile defence systems, as interceptors are steadily depleted.

Iranian missile and drone strikes have hit targets across the region, including high-value military infrastructure such as radar installations. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent global energy markets into turmoil.

Apart from the immense cost of war, the US decision to launch the attack on Iran may have another unintended consequence: a radical shift in Iranian strategy.

For decades, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei maintained a longstanding religious prohibition on nuclear weapons. His assassination on the first day of the war may now motivate the new civilian and military leadership of the country to rethink its nuclear strategy.

There may now be fewer ideological reservations about pursuing nuclear weapons. The logic is simple: if diplomacy cannot deliver sanctions relief or permanently remove the threat of war, nuclear deterrence may appear to be the only viable alternative.

Iran’s actions in this conflict suggest that many leaders now see patience and diplomacy as strategic mistakes. These include the unprecedented scale of Iranian missile and drone attacks across the region, the targeting of US partners and critical infrastructure, and political decisions at home that signal a harder line, most notably the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader.

The choice of Khamenei’s son breaks a longstanding taboo in a system founded on the rejection of hereditary rule and reflects a leadership increasingly prepared to abandon previous restraints.

If a more zero-sum logic of deterrence takes hold across the region, replacing dialogue as the organising principle of security, the Middle East may enter a far more dangerous era in which nuclear weapons are viewed as the ultimate form of deterrence and nuclear proliferation can no longer be stopped.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Video shared online shows the destruction caused to buildings and vehicles in Iran’s capital after a reported strike near Mehrabad international airport.

Mohammed bin Abdulaziz al-Khulaifi also says Qatar and Oman cannot act as mediators while under attack.

Qatar’s minister of state for foreign affairs has called for a de-escalation in hostilities across the Middle East and urged Iran and the US to return to the negotiation table for a mediated solution.

Speaking to Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz al-Khulaifi said that Iran’s attacks on its regional neighbours bring “benefit for no one”.

Iran has responded to a nearly two-week-long bombardment campaign from the United States and Israel by firing missiles and drones at its neighbours in the Gulf region and beyond, causing casualties, damaging critical infrastructure and severely disrupting the region’s energy-driven economy.

Al-Khulaifi said Qatar remains “extremely worried” about the wider range of attacks, including against civilian infrastructure.

“It’s unfortunate where we are standing right now,” the minister said.

“We also believe that there is no pathway to a sustainable and long-lasting solution other than returning to the negotiation table,” he told Al Jazeera.

Qatar condemns in the “strongest terms, the unjustified and outrageous attacks on the state of Qatar that directly impact its own sovereignty”, he said.

Doha will continue to take “every possible and legal measure to defend and practise its exercise of self-defence against this aggression”, he added.

Al-Khulaifi said the conflict demands a “global solution” to ensure that the Gulf’s energy supply chain keeps moving through the Strait of Hormuz, where global traffic has been severely disrupted by the conflict.

Ensuring freedom of movement through the waterway is “very critical,” he noted.

It is notable, Al-Khulaifi pointed out, that Iran has targeted countries such as Qatar and Oman, which had previously served as regional mediators and tried to “build bridges between Iran and the West”.

Neither country can play that role as long as the attacks continue, he said.

“We will not be able to fulfil that role under attack, and that’s something the Iranians need to understand.”

Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani tried to convey those points during a phone call with Tehran several days ago, the foreign minister said, when he urged Iran to cease attacks on its neighbours.

“The regional countries are not an enemy of Iran, and the Iranians are not understanding that idea,” Al-Khulaifi told Al Jazeera.

Doha also remains in contact with officials in the US and has encouraged US President Donald Trump to cease hostilities, he said.

“Our line of communication is always open with our colleagues in the United States, and we keep encouraging and supporting the pathway of peace and resolving conflicts through peaceful means.

“We really hope that the parties can find that pathway, end military operations, and return to the negotiation table.”

A group of Democrats in the United States Senate is demanding public hearings on the country’s war against Iran after receiving a series of classified briefings from officials in President Donald Trump’s administration.

Lawmakers say the White House has not clearly explained why the US entered the conflict, what its goals are, or how long it may last.

Republicans currently hold a narrow, 53-47 Senate majority, which gives them the power to control what legislation comes to the floor for debate.

Some Democrats have expressed frustration after the latest closed-door briefing. Trump has not ruled out sending US ground ⁠troops into Iran.

“I just came from a two-hour classified briefing on the war,” Senator Chris Murphy from the state of Connecticut said on Tuesday. “It confirmed to me that the strategy is totally incoherent.

“I think this is pretty simple: if the president did what the Constitution requires and came to Congress to seek authorisation for this war, he wouldn’t get it – because the American people would demand that their members of Congress vote no,” he added.

Here is what we know:

What has happened so far?

Since the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, senior officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have held several closed-door meetings to brief Congress members on the military campaign and its progress.

Because the meetings are classified, lawmakers are restricted in what they can publicly disclose about the information they received.

What are Democrats saying?

Several Democratic senators have said they left the briefings frustrated, arguing that the administration had not provided clear answers about the war’s objectives, timeline or the long-term strategy guiding their approach to the conflict.

Earlier this week, six Democratic senators also called for an investigation into a strike on a girls’ school in Minab, in southern Iran. Reports indicate the attack, which investigators say involved US forces, killed at least 170 people, most of them children.

“There seems to be no endgame,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said. “The president, almost in a single breath, says it’s almost done, and at the same time, it’s just begun. So this is kind of contradictory.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts raised concerns about the cost of war.

“The one part that seems clear is that while there is no money for 15 million Americans who lost their health care, there’s a billion dollars a day to spend on bombing Iran,” Warren said on Tuesday.

“The one thing Congress has the power to do is to stop actions like this through the power of the purse,” she added.

Others seem worried that a ground deployment could take place.

“We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of the potential objectives here,” Blumenthal, of Connecticut, told reporters after Tuesday’s classified briefing.

“The American people deserve to know much more than this administration has told them about the cost of the war, the danger to our sons and daughters in uniform and the potential for ⁠further escalation and widening of this war,” he added.

What are Republicans saying?

Republicans, who have slim majorities in both houses of Congress, have almost unanimously backed Trump’s campaign against Iran, with only a handful expressing doubt about the war.

Some Republican leaders say the strikes are necessary to curb Iran’s military capabilities, missile programme and regional influence.

They have also argued that the operation is limited in scope and designed to weaken Iran’s ability to threaten US forces and allies in the region.

Republican Representative Brian Mast of Florida, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, last week publicly thanked Trump for taking action against Iran, saying the president is using his constitutional authority to defend the US against the “imminent threat” posed by Tehran.

But some Republican members of Congress have voiced concerns.

Representative Nancy Mace from South Carolina said she did “not want to send South Carolina’s sons and daughters into war with Iran”, in a post on X.

Rand Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky, accused the Trump administration of changing its narrative and rationale for the war on a daily basis.

“We keep hearing new reasons for war with Iran—none convincing,” he wrote on X. “‘Free the oppressed’ sounds noble, but where does it end? We’ve been told for decades Iran is weeks from a nuke. War should be a last resort, not our first move. A war of choice is not my choice.”

Why does the debate matter?

The dispute has revived a long-running debate in Washington, DC, about the limits of presidential war powers.

Under the US Constitution, Congress has the authority to declare war, but modern presidents have frequently launched military operations without formal congressional approval, often citing national security or emergency threats.

The law allows the president to deploy US forces for up to 60 days without congressional authorisation, followed by a 30-day withdrawal period if Congress does not approve the action.

Some lawmakers and legal experts say the war on Iran highlights the need for stronger congressional oversight of military action.

“In the 1970s, we adopted something called the War Powers Resolution that gives the president limited ability to do this,” said David Schultz, a professor in the political science and legal departments at Hamline University.

“And so, either you could argue that what the president is doing violates the Constitution by… not [being] a formally declared war; or b, it exceeds his authority, either as commander-in-chief or under the War Powers Act,” he added.

“And therefore, you could argue that domestically, his actions are illegal and unconstitutional,” Schutlz said.

The Trump administration has argued that the February 28 strikes were justified as a response to an “imminent threat”, a rationale often used by presidents to justify military action without prior congressional approval.

However, US intelligence agencies had themselves said before the start of the war that they had no evidence of an imminent Iranian threat to the US or its facilities across the Middle East.

Footage from the ground in Erbil, Iraq shows several drones over the city’s airspace and the wrecking of a drone falling through the sky onto the city.