Residents across the Persian Gulf are paying more for everyday goods. Five months into a crisis that has transformed how food and household necessities reach Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, the costs are showing up in store prices and inflation forecasts. Since March, when the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to commercial shipping, these nations have turned to air freight to move cargo that once traveled by sea.
The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, carried roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas before the war. Iranian officials said on Saturday that talks with Oman on a new shipping lane were nearly complete, though they warned the deal would not fully reopen the route. For now, the closure holds.
“A lot of the necessities, and I’m talking food, that these Gulf nations require comes in by boat,” said Shon Hiatt, an associate professor of business administration at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and director of its Zage Business of Energy Initiative. “So, what have they been doing? They’ve been flying in, whenever they can, their food products and their household goods. And that’s caused inflation in these states.”
The scale of disruption extends beyond what headlines typically capture. Maersk added emergency surcharges on cargo to the affected Gulf states in the first weeks; other carriers followed within 48 hours. Yet air freight works only for small, expensive, urgent items like medicine and electronics. It cannot move grain or building materials at the volumes a country needs. Planes have helped, but they cannot replace ships.
The human toll is becoming clearer in economic forecasts. Oxford Economics Middle East has raised its 2026 inflation projections for all six Gulf Cooperation Council countries, with Bahrain’s forecast climbing nearly a full point to 2.1%. Scott Livermore, the firm’s chief Middle East economist, explained that the closure is holding imports from entering the region, and moving goods by truck or plane costs significantly more than sea routes. These increases begin from a historically low base: inflation in Saudi Arabia ran between 1.5% and 2.5% from 2023 through 2025, while the UAE saw 1.6% to 1.7%. The direction is now upward, and residents will feel it.
Some Gulf states have found partial relief. Ship calls at Sohar, a port 125 miles north of Muscat and outside the strait, rose about 40% after the war began, with cargo capacity increasing 55%, according to Oman’s Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology. This alternative has limits. Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain lack comparable ports outside the Strait and cannot send their exports around Hormuz by pipeline. For these nations, the closure cuts deeper.
The damage extends into food production itself. A March study by Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy traced how Gulf gas serves as raw material for fertilizer and chemicals used in growing food. Cut the gas exports and food prices rise far beyond the region. Saudi Arabia and Oman escaped the study’s worst-case scenario for one reason: both have ports outside the strait. Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain have no such advantage.
Meanwhile, the physical danger of moving goods through the region has grown stark. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company reported last week that 15 of its ships had been hit by missiles and drones since the war began, with three struck in a single week. One crew member was killed and 20 injured. A 16th ship was hit Saturday. Qatar lost about 17% of its capacity to export natural gas when Iranian missiles struck the Ras Laffan plant in March; two cargoes loaded there have been attacked at sea since July.
Media coverage has largely focused on oil prices, missing the impact on basic goods. As reported at https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-905042, the crisis has reshaped how analysts understand the Strait’s role in global commerce. “We’ve put a lot of the focusing on the oil because it’s affecting us,” Hiatt said. “But there has been very little actual reporting on the impact of both household goods and food for these countries.”
Governments are already planning for permanent change. A railway linking all six Gulf countries, spanning 1,700 kilometers, is more than half complete and scheduled to be fully operational by December 2030. A second line connecting the UAE to Oman’s port at Sohar is 40% done. The accounting firm PwC argued in May that rail now matters as much as new pipelines, because everything the region ships and everything it eats needs a way in and out that does not cross the Strait.
Whether ships will return when a new lane opens depends on the companies that own them and the insurers that cover them. “I’d want to see other ships go through first,” Hiatt said.