Trump has made life very difficult for hundreds of millions around the planet, with his dumb, pointless, ill advised war of choice. No end in sight. He thinks greater threats and more bombing is the solution. Yet since World War I nobody has ever won a war without boots on the ground. Perhaps he's just too simple-minded and arrogant to comprehend that? Most of us knew it was just a matter of time until Iran started using its proxies against the US as a way to harm the world economy. Don simply wasn't smart enough to anticipate that. Global oil prices hit $100 a barrel on Thursday for the first time since May as the widening war between the United States and Iran stifled the flow of energy in the Middle East. The price rebound in Brent crude oil over the past few weeks reflects the market’s growing concern about the expanding conflict, which now extends from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. Both arteries are vital to the global energy trade. The Houthi threat to prevent ships from traveling to and from Saudi Arabian ports on the Red Sea has complicated travel in an area that was serving as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran and the United States are jousting for control. The Houthis, an Iran-backed group in Yemen, claimed on Wednesday that they had targeted two Saudi oil tankers with missiles and drones. If the Houthis manage to block Saudi Arabia from using the Red Sea, they would be cutting off about 4 percent of the world’s oil supply and leaving Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s biggest producers, with very little access to global markets. As the war in the Middle East limits the supply of energy worldwide, millions of farmers are contending with scarcity and higher prices for fuel, threatening their access to irrigation and menacing the food supply. Faced with depleted harvests, many rural households in Asia and Africa are borrowing to cover the costs of cultivation, challenging their ability to produce future crops. In much of the world, the closure of the strait has blocked shipments of food and fertilizer, making prices much higher.
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