When the United States and Israel launched large-scale military operations against Iran on February 28, 2026, a shock wave reverberated around the globe, the effects of which have extended far beyond the Middle East region. Iran’s naval blockade and closure of the critical Strait of Hormuz, which carries more than one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies, have sent global energy prices soaring, resulting in an energy crisis and triggering worldwide inflation. Within Iran, vital civilian and energy infrastructure has been destroyed, and more than 3.2 million Iranians have been forcibly displaced from Tehran and other urban centers as a result of U.S.-Israeli attacks. Widespread displacement has also extended to Lebanon, where confrontations between Israeli forces and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah have forced at least 1.1 million Lebanese—20% of the country’s population—from their homes across Southern Lebanon, Beirut’s suburbs, and the Bekaa Valley. While the conflict has impacted operations across various economic and development sectors, the global humanitarian sector—which delivers life-saving assistance to nearly 100 million people annually—has been especially vulnerable to hostilities. In the midst of global supply chain shocks and mass civilian displacement, international organizations have struggled to adapt to a constantly shifting humanitarian landscape in the Middle East and beyond. Not only has the conflict and its economic consequences exacerbated humanitarian need in the Middle East region, but it has erected substantial barriers to accessing and serving the nearly 239 million people in need of assistance globally.
Hostilities in the Gulf region and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have forced aid agencies to significantly shift established aid delivery routes, creating costly delays that have altered the scale and logistics of humanitarian response. Located in Dubai, the world’s largest humanitarian logistics hub, the International Humanitarian City (IHC), serves United Nations agencies, nonprofits, and international organizations, delivering 1,225 megatons of aid to over 3.6 million people annually. Air space closures, maritime shipping disruptions, and intense missile attacks by the Iranian regime have acutely constrained the IHC’s ability to continue operations at the same scale and efficiency as before the conflict began. In one instance, a missile interception caused a fire to break out at the Jebel Ali port in Dubai, the largest container terminal in the Middle East, which is located about 10 minutes from the IHC. The immediate proximity of Iranian attacks to humanitarian infrastructure has forced agencies to operate under emergency protocol and hinders their ability to effectively coordinate aid transportation and delivery. As a result, containers of life-saving food and medical aid have been indefinitely stalled in Dubai, as delivery to their intended recipients has become dangerously complicated by ongoing hostilities. Included in these halted shipments is more than $600,000 worth of essential pharmaceuticals bound for Sudan, which houses one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.
Aside from the immediacy of missile attacks, port congestion, higher insurance premiums, and the forced rerouting of aid shipments have fundamentally disrupted the tempo of aid provision across the Middle East and beyond. With land and sea routes made more expensive by rising fuel prices and inaccessible by ongoing conflict, aid organizations have pivoted to utilizing air freight to deliver aid. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported that amidst disruptions to land and sea shipping, it has increasingly relied on air freight to transport aid to Lebanon and the Gaza Strip amid unprecedented delays of four to six weeks.
In the first quarter of 2026 alone, UNICEF exhausted almost all charter flights donated annually by logistics partners, signaling a prolonged funding crisis that will continue to endure even with a potential deal to end the conflict on the horizon. These logistical challenges, which compound prolonged financial stress, reveal a critical vulnerability: the humanitarian sector is deeply susceptible to the volatility and geopolitical tensions brought about by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, inhibiting its ability to adequately and efficiently serve populations in critical need.
The massive supply chain disruptions and oil market shocks caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have compounded logistical challenges, leaving humanitarian organizations struggling to adapt to rising costs across all stages of aid provision. As a result of increasing oil prices, global shipping costs have risen more than 16% in 2026, resulting in anticipated supply delivery delays of up to six months, according to the United Nations. The increased reliance on air freights for the delivery of aid is compounding the impacts of spiking oil prices; air freight costs have risen by 40-62% since 2025. While rising costs have affected aid routes globally, they have been especially detrimental for Middle East-bound routes. Container costs have jumped more than 316% on Middle East routes, threatening the ability of humanitarian agencies to serve vulnerable populations in Syria, Yemen, the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, and Iraq. Since the 2025 dismantlement of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), aid initiatives have been operating with financial constraints, with global spending declining more than 30 percent. As the cost of aid provision has increased, these constraints have transformed into logistical crises that threaten the execution of aid operations.
The war’s impact on humanitarian operations extends far beyond logistics—it has also directly restricted access to populations experiencing crisis. In Lebanon, conditions in the Bekaa Valley and the country’s southern suburbs remain highly unstable, and access routes are largely blocked by debris and unexploded ordnance from ongoing military confrontations. As a result, aid groups have been unable to reach those most in need—civilians who remain isolated in active conflict zones or in Israeli-occupied regions. Since the Israeli operation in Lebanon was revived in early March, at least 50 medical centers have been forced to close due to the conflict, exacerbating humanitarian need in areas with unreliable access to international support.
The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip has also accelerated as a result of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran despite slight improvements following the October 2025 ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. On February 28, the day military operations against Iran commenced, Israel quietly and indefinitely closed every crossing into the Gaza Strip, effectively preventing all access to Gaza’s 2.1 million residents. Immediately following these closures, aid organizations warned that Gaza’s food stocks would be depleted in just a week, prompting international backlash. Under immense pressure from aid groups and state actors, Israel opened the Kerem Shalom crossing under strict restrictions. However, other routes for food aid, medical evacuations, and other critical humanitarian operations remain closed, causing food costs to skyrocket by nearly 300% and sending certain parts of Gaza City teetering back toward famine. Existing humanitarian emergencies, like the one in the Gaza Strip, do not cease when new conflicts emerge in the headlines. Rather, they are compounded by the security decisions made by parties to a conflict, whether or not the region of crisis is a site of active military confrontation. The ongoing crises in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip highlight the extent to which aid organizations are constrained by field conditions and the political whims of strategic actors. In addition, the humanitarian stalemates observed as a result of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran expose the lack of agency multinational organizations, such as the United Nations, hold in ensuring the safe and efficient continuity of their own humanitarian operations.
Taken together, each of the barriers to humanitarian action that have been erected by the ongoing conflict between Iran, Israel, and the United States, the subsequent economic shocks, and the closures of critical maritime shipping routes have the potential to exacerbate existing humanitarian emergencies and create new crises in regions across the globe. Given the limited ability of the humanitarian sector to adequately respond to rapidly changing conditions to emerging crises, the conflict is steadily shaping a new status quo for the state of humanitarianism globally; the unconditional provision of life-saving aid to suffering populations has increasingly become contingent on the strategic objectives of powerful state actors. As a result, aid organizations must reckon with shifting financial and logistical landscapes in order to ensure operational resilience for the millions of people dependent on aid.
By: Madison Viger - WACNH Intern
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