• Damage to the USA so far-Iran struck at least 11 US military facilities across the Middle East,  damage to communication and early-warning radar systems at a minimum of seven bases  including a $1.1 billion AN/FPS-132 early warning radar at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar,
• Three radomes destroyed at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, and an AN/TPY-2 THAAD radar component at a UAE installation estimated at $500 million Türkiye Today. Total destroyed US military equipment has been estimated at approaching $2 billion
• How the Hormuz crisis is a crisis to global oil markets , Iran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz via IRGC warnings, has paralyzed ~20 million barrels/day of oil flow  
• Zimbabwe enters this crisis as the second most expensive fuel market in Sub-Saharan Africa — and the war's full price impact has not yet arrived

Harare- Shortly after 1:15 a.m. Eastern Time on 28 February 2026, the United States Central Command initiated what it would later name Operation Epic Fury , a coordinated, large-scale joint offensive with Israel targeting the full breadth of Iran's military apparatus, nuclear infrastructure, and senior leadership simultaneously. It was not a surgical strike.

It was, by any honest military accounting, a campaign of regime decapitation and strategic disarmament conducted across nearly 900 strike sorties, employing Tomahawk cruise missiles, F-18 and F-35 fighter jets, and , for the first time in any recorded US combat operation , single-use drones deployed en masse. The targets spanned Tehran, Isfahan, Karaj, Kermanshah, Qom, and Tabriz.

Iran's retaliation was swift and broad. Within hours, Iranian ballistic missiles and drones targeted US military bases in Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Bahrain. Drone strikes caused damage at Dubai International Airport and Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi, briefly forcing the UAE to close its airspace. Hezbollah in Lebanon, which had suspended operations since November 2025, resumed rocket attacks into northern Israel. The Houthis in Yemen, similarly dormant since November, resumed targeting commercial vessels in the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea. In a matter of hours, the Middle East had transitioned from a region of managed tensions to an active, multi-front war with no visible resolution timeline.

To understand why the events of 28 February immediately and violently repriced global energy markets, one must first understand what the Strait of Hormuz represents to the world's energy architecture. The strait is a 33-kilometre-wide waterway off Iran's southern coast connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea.

At its narrowest navigable point, the shipping lane is just 3 kilometres wide in each direction. Yet through this sliver of water passes approximately 20 million barrels of oil every single day , roughly one-fifth of global daily oil consumption , along with 20% of the world's liquefied natural gas exports.

Iran does not merely use the strait , it controls it. The Islamic Republic shares the strait's northern coastline and possesses large stockpiles of naval mines and short-range missiles that could, at will, make passage by tankers operationally and commercially untenable even without a formal blockade declaration. On the night of the strikes, the IRGC began broadcasting warnings on VHF radio channels to vessels transiting the waterway.

No formal closure was announced through recognised maritime safety channels , the UK Maritime Trade Operations confirmed this , but tanker owners needed no further signal. More than 200 vessels anchored outside the passage. At least three tankers were struck by projectiles near the strait, including one set ablaze off Oman.

On March 1 and 2, no ships appeared to transit at all. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd suspended transits through the strait, rerouting vessels around Africa's Cape of Good Hope , adding weeks to delivery times and hundreds of thousands of dollars per voyage.

Three-quarters of all crude and condensate transiting the strait , approximately 14 million barrels per day, representing 31% of all global seaborne crude exports , is destined for China, India, Japan, and South Korea. China alone receives half of its total crude oil imports through Hormuz.

A sustained blockade would not merely inconvenience these economies. It would force a bidding war for available supplies, spike prices to levels that suppress global demand, and trigger a recession within weeks.

When futures trading reopened on Sunday, Brent crude surged more than 8.5%, climbing from US$72.87 to US$79.20 per barrel. WTI jumped 7.8% to US$72.30, briefly touching US$75.33 , its highest since June 2025. War-risk ship insurance premiums for the strait jumped from 0.125% to between 0.2% and 0.4% of ship insurance value per transit , a quarter of a million dollars of additional cost per voyage for very large crude carriers, absorbed directly by energy importers.

It is important to contextualise where oil was before the strikes. JP Morgan had forecast Brent averaging around US$60 per barrel in 2026 based on market fundamentals of oversupply, noting that prices had already been trading at approximately US$10 above fair value through mid-February in anticipation of military action. That risk premium has now become a reality — and potentially a floor rather than a ceiling.

By early March 2026, Brent has settled in the US$78 to US$80 per barrel range , well above the pre-conflict trajectory. Barclays analyst Amarpreet Singh has warned explicitly that Brent could reach US$100 per barrel if the security situation continues to deteriorate.

Rystad Energy's head of geopolitical analysis has stated that prices could surge by US$10 to US$20 per barrel above Friday's close if tensions show no sign of easing. In the worst-case scenario , a full and sustained Hormuz blockade , energy analysts broadly agreed that prices well above US$100 and a global recession are not tail risks but base cases.

OPEC+ responded on Sunday by raising production by 206,000 barrels per day. Most energy economists dismissed it as arithmetically insufficient against the backdrop of a conflict threatening 20% of global supply. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve carries approximately 415 million barrels , but in a full Hormuz crisis, a reserve of that size could be outstripped within weeks.

The missiles raining down on Tehran and the tankers stalled at the mouth of the Persian Gulf are thousands of kilometres from Harare. In a globalised energy market, that distance is a near-irrelevant detail.

ZERA announced its March 2026 prices before the full impact of the crisis had fed through to import costs. Petrol has already risen to $1.71 per litre , a 9.6% monthly jump. Diesel has risen to $1.77 per litre , a 16.4% single-month surge. These increases were driven by Brent climbing from around $64 to $78 per barrel through February, itself partly anticipatory of the military action. The full wave of the post-28 February price shock has not yet reached Zimbabwean pumps. It will.

Zimbabwe now ranks as the second most expensive fuel market in Sub-Saharan Africa — behind only Malawi, which has seen diesel reach extraordinary levels above $3.30 per litre. Zimbabwe's $1.77 diesel puts it well above South Africa at approximately $1.30, above Zambia at $1.25, and above Botswana at $1.15 , neighbours that share similar import dependency but carry structurally lower tax burdens and, in South Africa's case, access to deep-water ports.

Zimbabwe's pump prices already sit 49% above the global average of approximately $1.19 per litre. The baseline, before any war-driven shock feeds fully through, is already deeply unfavourable.

Sources: ZERA (March 2026), GlobalPetrolPrices.com

Zimbabwe imports virtually all of its petroleum products, primarily through South Africa and Mozambique via the Beira corridor, with no meaningful domestic refining infrastructure. Every litre of fuel begins its journey as crude oil in the Middle East, is refined elsewhere, transported by sea, and moved overland through hundreds of kilometres of supply chain before reaching Zimbabwean pumps.

Global crude price increases typically take four to eight weeks to feed through to retail prices in landlocked African countries. The full impact of the current spike ,which began the night of 28 February , will most likely hit Zimbabwean forecourts in late March to early April 2026.

Zimbabwe's fuel price disadvantage is not a product of the current conflict. It is the product of accumulated policy and infrastructure failures that the conflict will now violently expose.

Taxes and government levies account for $0.52 to $0.54 per litre , roughly 30 to 34% of the total pump price, compared with less than 17% in Botswana and approximately 29% in South Africa. These levies are fixed. They do not flex downward when global oil prices fall , as Zimbabwe demonstrated clearly in May 2025, when global oil dropped 18% to four-year lows and ZERA held pump prices flat. They do spike upward when global prices rise. The asymmetry is structural.

Zimbabwe's mandatory ethanol blending programme adds further cost.

The 20% ethanol mandate, controlled by a monopoly supplier charging approximately $1.10 per litre , versus a global blending cost of $0.60 to $0.70 per litre , inflates petrol prices at source. The result is that the blending cost alone accounts for more than two-thirds of the pump price of petrol. The policy intention , reducing import dependency and supporting local agriculture , is sound. The execution cost is being paid by every motorist, transport operator, and business in the country.

And the scale of Zimbabwe's import exposure is now fully visible in the data. Zimbabwe consumed 2.1 billion litres of fuel in 2025 , up 31% from 1.6 billion litres in 2024, according to ZERA. Diesel alone accounted for 1.5 billion litres, or 71% of all consumption, reflecting its role as the primary energy input for industry, agriculture, logistics, and the generator economy that substitutes for Zimbabwe's unreliable power grid.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe confirmed the total fuel import bill reached $1.86 billion in 2025 , 18% higher than the $1.58 billion spent in 2024. ZERA expects consumption to hit 2.5 billion litres in 2026. At current prices, the 2026 import bill is heading toward $2.2 billion , nearly one dollar in every nine of Zimbabwe's total foreign currency receipts of $16.2 billion in 2025. On the 2026 trajectory, that ratio worsens further.

A fuel price increase of 20 to 30% in Zimbabwe , which is well within the range of current scenarios , could add 3 to 5 percentage points to inflation, further eroding household purchasing power and pushing a larger portion of the population into deeper food insecurity. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, already managing a fragile monetary environment with a policy rate at 35% ,  the highest on the African continent , has limited tools to absorb an externally driven price shock of this magnitude.

The government could theoretically reduce fuel levies to cushion the blow, as it did when it cut the Strategic Reserve Levy to zero during the 2022 Russia-Ukraine shock. It has not yet indicated that option is being considered. The more likely outcome is that Zimbabweans absorb the higher prices through reduced consumption and deepened poverty.

Three Scenarios , and What Each Means for Zimbabwe

Base case , managed disruption, Brent US$80 to US$90:

Hostilities intensify over weeks but the Strait of Hormuz is not formally or fully blocked. Tanker rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope adds freight costs and delays but not a supply crisis. For Zimbabwe, pump prices rise by a further $0.15 to $0.25 per litre phasing in by April , pushing petrol toward $1.90 and diesel toward $2.00. Elevated inflation, further pressure on household incomes and business margins. Painful, but survivable.

Intermediate case , prolonged partial blockade, Brent approaching US$100:

IRGC mine-laying, drone attacks on tankers, and insurance market paralysis combine to reduce Hormuz throughput materially without shutting it entirely. Strategic petroleum reserves are tapped. Asian importers begin hoarding. For Zimbabwe, pump prices approach or exceed $2.10 per litre , levels last seen during the acute 2022 Russia-Ukraine shock, when transport operators warned of route suspensions. Inflation spikes. The formal economy faces a cost shock it may not be able to absorb without structural instability.

Worst case , full Hormuz closure sustained for weeks:

Over 14 million barrels per day of seaborne crude and 20% of global LNG are interrupted simultaneously. Oil prices rise to levels that suppress global demand through economic collapse rather than behavioural change. For a country like Zimbabwe, already operating at the margins of macroeconomic viability, a global recession would compound every existing vulnerability simultaneously. This is not a scenario energy economists are currently calling a base case , but several are no longer calling it a tail risk.

The current shock is externally originated and Zimbabwe's government cannot control the military calculus in Tehran, Washington, or Tel Aviv. What it can control is the degree to which Zimbabwe's structural vulnerability to oil price shocks is allowed to persist as a permanent feature of the economy.

The most immediate lever is levy reduction. At $0.52 to $0.54 per litre , 30 to 34% of pump price versus less than 17% in Botswana , Zimbabwe's levy burden is a political choice, not an economic necessity. A targeted, time-limited levy reduction during the period of the current shock would cushion businesses and households while the broader supply chain adjusts. It requires compensating budget measures. But the economic damage of not acting will cost more.

The medium-term imperative is breaking the ethanol blending monopoly. The current arrangement keeps blending costs at $1.10 per litre , nearly double the global norm of $0.60 to $0.70. Competition in this segment would compound savings across the entire fuel supply chain and reduce the structural price premium Zimbabwe carries into every global oil shock.

The longer-run structural response , and the one with the largest payoff , is accelerating Zimbabwe's solar energy transition. Zimbabwe averages 3,000 hours of sunshine per year, among the highest in the region. A meaningful shift to solar across industrial, commercial, and residential segments could displace significant diesel imports within five years. Experts estimate that an aggressive solar transition could cut Zimbabwe's annual fuel import bill by as much as $400 million within five years  ,  figure large enough to materially ease the country's chronic foreign currency constraint. Every kilowatt of solar installed is a structural hedge against the next conflict in a faraway strait.

These reforms require upfront fiscal courage, particularly on levies where revenue loss would need to be compensated elsewhere. But the alternative , a perpetually uncompetitive economy that absorbs the full force of every Middle Eastern conflict through the most expensive retail fuel prices in its region — is a far costlier long-term proposition. And the current crisis is making that argument in real time.

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