Iran War: Concerns Mount in Nigeria, Others Over Looming Food Shortage, Rising Inflation

*Trump administration underestimated Iran war’s impact on Strait of Hormuz, says report

Dike Onwuamaeze with agency report

Global anxiety is rising over the economic fallout of the escalating conflict involving the United States, Israel, and Iran, with analysts warning that disruptions to energy and fertilizer supplies could trigger widespread food scarcity and rising inflation.
The war is already pushing up oil prices and threatening key shipping routes such as the Strait of Hormuz, raising fears of higher transport, farming and food production costs worldwide.

Owing to this, experts in agriculture and economics have urged the Nigerian government to take proactive measures that would mitigate the negative effects of scarcity of fertiliser on the country’s food security.

This comes as a report yesterday indicated that the Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US military strikes while planning the ongoing operation, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The experts who spoke on the looming food shortage warned that lack of access to fertilizer by farmers during this planting season in Nigeria could lower food production, plunge the country to high food costs and reverse the gains recorded in decelerating food price inflation in the country.

These views were expressed by the Chief Executive Officer of CPPE Dr. Muda Yusuf; Acting Chairman, Lagos State Chapter of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Mr. Shakin Agbeyewa, and the Agric Sectorial Group Chairman, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Mr. Omotunde Banjoko, in separate interviews with THISDAY yesterday.
Yusuf said the ongoing war in Iran was disrupting the shipment of fertilizer and threatening Nigeria with a looming food security risk.

He, therefore, said the government should urgently consider targeted and time-bound fiscal concessions on critical fertilizer inputs and production-related charges in order to moderate the rise in domestic fertilizer prices.
Yusuf said: “This is a serious concern because fertilizer is one of the most important productivity-enhancing inputs in agriculture.

“The ongoing conflict has already unsettled global fertilizer markets, especially the market for urea, while the wider disruption in the Gulf and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz are creating significant supply and logistics pressures across energy, shipping and input markets.”

“For Nigeria, this poses a direct risk to food production and food prices. Fertilizer costs were already under pressure before the present escalation.

“These pressures are especially troubling for Nigerian agriculture because a large proportion of farmers are smallholders with weak purchasing power and limited capacity to absorb input cost shocks.

“If fertiliser becomes unaffordable or inaccessible, application rates will decline, yields will weaken, food output will suffer, and food inflation could begin to rise again.”

Yusuf further suggested that government should activate strategic coordination among the Ministries of Finance, Agriculture, Industry and Trade, as well as customs, ports and transport authorities, to ensure that fertiliser supplies are prioritised and distribution bottlenecks minimized.

He also made a strong case for temporary risk-sharing support for small holder farmers through well-targeted input support mechanisms, especially for the most vulnerable food-producing belts.

Speaking in the same vein, Agbeyewa noted that the disruption in the supply of fertiliser would have a telling negative effect on the cost of food production and food prices in Nigerian markets.

He said the high landing cost of fertilizer and high costs of transportation would make it to be out of the reach of poor farmers.

He, therefore, tasked the government to investigate the collapse of multiple fertilizer blending plants in Nigeria and find ways of resuscitating them.

He said: “What is happening to Nigeria’s policy on fertilizer blending plants? We used to have these blending plants but all of sudden they just stopped functioning. Couldn’t the government look into why they stopped and revive them?”

Similarly, Banjoko said that prices of fertilizer and food products would certainly escalate following the disruption of the shipment of fertilizer.

He said this would invariably increase the cost of production for farmers who would certainly transfer them to consumers.

Trump Administration Underestimated Iran War’s Impact On Strait of Hormuz

The Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US military strikes while planning the ongoing operation, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

President Donald Trump’s national security team failed to fully account for the potential consequences of what some officials have described as a worst-case scenario now facing the administration, the sources told CNN.

While key officials from the Departments of Energy and Treasury were present for some of the official planning meetings about the operation before it started, sources said, the agency analysis and forecasts that would be integral elements of the decision-making process in past administrations were secondary considerations.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright have been key players throughout the planning and execution stages of the conflict, the sources acknowledged. But Trump’s preference of leaning on a tight circle of close advisers in his national security decision making had the effect of sidelining interagency debate over the potential economic fallout if Iran were to respond to US-Israeli strikes by closing the strait.

And now it may be weeks before the administration’s efforts to alleviate the intensifying economic fallout take hold, officials said Thursday, including high-risk naval escorts of oil tankers through the strait that the Pentagon believes are currently too dangerous to conduct. The president, meanwhile, has continued to downplay the tumult in energy markets and the danger. He told Fox News that oil tanker crews should “show some guts” and go through the strait.

The reality in the strait has left diplomatic counterparts, former US economic and energy officials and industry executives who spoke with CNN in a state of confusion and disbelief.

“Planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of US national security policy for decades,” a former US official who served in Republican and Democratic administrations said. “I’m dumbfounded.”

Shipping industry executives have made regular requests to the US Navy for military escorts, all of which have been rebuffed. In regular briefings for industry participants in the region, US military officials have repeatedly made clear they have not received orders to begin any escort operation and the risks to US assets remained extremely high, according to two executives with knowledge of the matter.

Bessent told Sky News’ Wilfred Frost on Thursday that those escorts would begin “as soon as it is militarily possible.”

“That was always in our planning, that there’s a chance that US Navy, or perhaps an international coalition, will be escorting oil tankers through,” he said.

But the path to this point, sources said, appears to mark the complex convergence of geopolitical assumptions, energy market forecasts and cross-cutting strategic priorities.

Lawmakers pressed top Trump administration officials during a recent classified briefing about the lack of an operational plan to re-open the strait as the conflict continued, according to multiple sources familiar with the closed-door session. An administration official disputed that there were no plans, noting that the US military has long planned and trained to address a major disruption to the critical thoroughfare for global commerce.

But there was no indication that there were any near-term solutions to the problem that threatened to consume the international economy given the scale of the threat still posed by Iranian assets in and around the strait, the sources familiar said.

The reason the administration underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the strait, multiple sources said, was officials believed their doing so would hurt Iran more than the US — a view that was bolstered by Iran’s empty threats to act in the strait after US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last summer.

“Through a detailed planning process, the entire administration is and was prepared for any potential action taken by the terrorist Iranian regime,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, while touting the US military’s success.

“President Trump has been clear that any disruptions to energy are temporary and will result in a massive benefit to our country and the global economy in the long-term,” she added.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X on Friday that Trump was “fully briefed” on planning for the possibility of Iran closing the strait.

During a press briefing Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the idea that officials underestimated the war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz is “patently ridiculous.”

“Of course, for decades, Iran has threatened shipping in the Strait of Hormuz,” Hegseth told reporters. “This is always what they do hold the Strait hostage. CNN doesn’t think we thought of that. It’s a fundamentally unserious report.”

CNN had reached out to the Pentagon for comment prior to publication.

Multiple current and former US officials told CNN that plans for any military action against Iran would account for the possibility of Iran closing the waterway. The US military has long maintained and updated plans to address Iranian military action in the critical corridor.

But at a moment where global oil and LNG supplies were plentiful, US oil production sat at record highs and Trump officials were basking in a pliant Venezuelan government and the potential for rapid expansion of new production from a former foe, the global scale of the downside risks was not viewed as a major consideration.