Crazy. The New York Times reports this morning that the War with Iran is creating higher grocery prices. These people hate America.
Here is what the NYT is pushing out this morning:
What’s happening in the Middle East can seem very far away — at least until you stop for gas. Prices at the pump have jumped since Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the conflict, creating a gap in the energy supply chain that spans the world.
It’s a reminder that war has profound effects on all those who are connected to it. And we are all connected to it, somehow.
Take agriculture. “The longer the conflict in the Middle East continues,” writes my colleague Peter Goodman, who covers global economics, “the greater the likelihood that people around the globe will pay more for food. And those in the most vulnerable countries could face hunger.”
Why is that? Because the Persian Gulf is a dominant source of the world’s fertilizers, especially those that deliver nitrogen to soils — a source of nourishment for crops that amount to half the world’s food. Fertilizer is produced in the region and shipped … everywhere. If the Strait of Hormuz remains strangled, prices for fertilizer will rise. And as a result, farmers may use less on their crops, if they can get any at all. The world will get less food, and it will cost more.
We saw this happen at the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, when, as Peter writes, the world received “a wrenching lesson in the geography of agriculture.” Both countries provided the world with substantial quantities of wheat and other grains. Without them, bread shortages soon developed in West Africa and South Asia, among other places.
What’s happening in the Middle East won’t affect the harvesting of grain. But the effects of a fertilizer shortage, or more expensive fertilizer, may be even more intense. “The volumes are greater this time around, potentially, than in the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” one commodities expert told Peter. “You’ve got multiple producing countries.”
The Times ignores the fact that the Islamist terrorists running Iran have been killing its own people and thousands of others around the world since its takeover 47 years ago during the Carter Administration and that they are finally being destroyed.
The Hill put together a partial list of the Iranian Islamic terrorist actions since 1979:
Here is a timeline of much of the history of Iranian attacks, compiled in part by the non-partisan think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, who has a strong focus on national security and foreign affairs and was founded after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
April 1983
A suicide car bombing kills 63 people, including 17 Americans, at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. The Iran-backed terrorist group Islamic Jihad, a precursor and early branch of Hezbollah (not to be confused with Palestinian Islamic Jihad), claims responsibility.
October 1983
Operatives of the Iran-backed Hezbollah drive a truck bomb at a Marine compound in Beirut, killing 220 U.S. Marines and 21 other service personnel.
Hezbollah operatives drive an explosives-filled dump truck through the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City. No Americans are harmed.
March 1984
December 1984
Hezbollah terrorists hijack Kuwait Airways Flight 221 on its way from Kuwait to Pakistan and divert it to Tehran, killing two American officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Hezbollah terrorists hijack TWA Flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome and kill a U.S. Navy diver.
July 1989
April 1995
An explosives-laden van crashes into a bus near Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip, killing one American and seven Israelis. Palestinian Islamic Jihad claims responsibility.
A Hamas suicide bomber blows up a bus in the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood of Jerusalem, killing an American and three other passengers and wounding more than 100.
February 1996
March 1996
A suicide bomber blows up the Dizengoff shopping center in Tel Aviv, wounding two Americans. Twenty people die and 75 others are injured in the attack. Both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad claim responsibility.
Gunmen kill an American-Israeli dual citizen in the community of Beit El in the West Bank. Another U.S. citizen and three Israelis are wounded. No group claims responsibility, but Israel suspects Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
June 1996
September 1997
Three Hamas suicide bombers blow themselves up at the Ben Yehuda shopping mall in Jerusalem, killing a U.S.-Israeli dual citizen and wounding seven other American citizens. Four other people die and nearly 200 are wounded in the attack.
August 1998
With the assistance of Hezbollah, al Qaeda suicide bombers almost simultaneously blow up the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounding thousands. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, al Qaeda developed “the tactical expertise for such attacks months earlier, when some of its operatives — top military committee members and several operatives who were involved with the Kenya cell among them — were sent to Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon.”
August 2001
January 2002
Gunmen affiliated with the Iran-backed al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade kill a U.S.-Israel dual citizen and wound another individual in the West Bank community of Beit Sahur.
July 2002
A bomb planted by a Hamas terrorist kills five Americans at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, killing five American students, including an American-Israeli dual citizen and an American-French dual citizen. A total of nine people died in the attack.
June 2003
An American citizen, along with 16 other people, died when a Hamas terrorist blew himself up on a bus in Jerusalem.
October 2003
Terrorists from the Iran-backed Popular Resistance Committees kill three U.S. diplomatic personnel in a bombing in Gaza.
2003-2011
Iranian-backed militias kill at least 603 U.S. troops in Iraq, according to the Pentagon. Iranian training and material support for Iraqi militias during the surge greatly increased the difficulty of U.S. forces to combat the insurgency and included some of the deadliest weapons used against American troops, including explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
August 2003
A Hamas suicide bomber blows up a bus in Jerusalem, killing five Americans and wounding one other American. A total of 24 people died in the attack.
August 2006
Hezbollah fighters kill American citizen Michael Levin, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), during the Second Lebanon War. He is the only American to die in the conflict.
January 2007
Twelve men affiliated with the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) disguised themselves as U.S. soldiers, entered the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in the Iraqi city of Karbala, killed five U.S. soldiers, and wounded another three. In 2019, the U.S. State Department issued a $15 million bounty for information on an IRGC Quds Force commander who planned the attack and other “assassinations of coalition forces in Iraq.”
July 2014
Hamas terrorists kill two Americans serving in the IDF during fighting between the terrorist group and Israel in Gaza as part of Operation Protective Edge.
October 2015
Hamas terrorists kill an American citizen and his wife, residents of the West Bank community of Neria, in their car in a drive-by shooting.
December 2019
Rockets fired by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia, kills an American security contractor and wounds several U.S. service members and Iraqi personnel at the K1 military base in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
January 2020
A direct Iranian ballistic missile attack against the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq causes more than 100 U.S. troops to suffer traumatic brain injuries.
March 2020
The family of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007, announces that he likely died in an Iranian prison at an unknown date.
September 2020
U.S. intelligence reports indicate that Iran is weighing a plot to assassinate U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Lana Marks.
February 2021
An rocket fired by an Iran-backed militia at coalition forces in the Iraqi city of Erbil wounds a U.S. service member and four U.S. civilian contractors.
July 2021
Iranian-backed militias conduct at least three rocket and drone attacks against U.S. forces in 24 hours in Iraq and Syria, wounding two U.S. service members.
September 2022
An Iranian rocket attack kills an American citizen in Iraqi Kurdistan.
November 2022
A captain in Iran’s IRGC orchestrates the killing of an American citizen living in Baghdad who worked at an English language institute.
March 2023
An Iranian drone kills an American contractor and wounds five service members and another contractor when it strikes a coalition base near the Syrian city of Hasakah.
October 7, 2023
Hamas kills at least 48 Americans and kidnaps at least 12 Americans in a massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel.
December 2023
A drone attack conducted by an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia against U.S. forces in Erbil wounds three American soldiers, including one critically injured with shrapnel to the head that placed him in a coma.
January 2024
A drone launched by Kataib Hezbollah kills three U.S. soldiers at a U.S. military base in Jordan and wounded more than 40 other service members.
October 2024
Iran executes German-Iranian national and U.S. permanent resident Jamshid Sharmahd on fraudulent terrorism charges.
November 2024
A report released by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies indicates that Iran and its proxies have conducted more than 180 attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East between October 17, 2023, and November 19, 2024, resulting in more than 180 wounded and three killed U.S. service members.
November 2024
The U.S. Department of Justice announces charges against an Iranian national and two American accomplices for plotting to assassinate President Trump.
March 2025
A U.S. jury convicts two agents of Iran for plotting to assassinate Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad in New York in 2022.
June 2025
At least three U.S. bases in Syria and two U.S. bases in Iraq are attacked with missiles or drones, likely by Iranian-backed militias.