At the IATA Congress 2026 in Rio de Janeiro, panellists examined the deeper causes and consequences of the ongoing energy crisis triggered by disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. Richard Quest shared that the core question he keeps asking is why the US and Israel did not realise that Iran could put its foot on the neck of the global economy as simply as that and whether they realised and chose to risk it or did they not.
Matt Kaminski shared that there is only one man who can answer the question fully and that man was briefed for the past decade or so that if you go against Iran, Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz, adding that we live in an era especially in Washington where the ideology is really what is good for Donald Trump and that Donald Trump thought in February that he could take this risk, hit Iran hard and see what happens but he wants to get out as soon as possible. Matt Kaminski shared further that experts are out of fashion and they have been both in the US and the UK for the last decade and that this is a moment where our politics is downstream from our culture but that the business is downstream from politics more than it has ever been so this is a disruptive moment and in that sense Trump is very much in sync with the national mood in the US but it could also be a destructive moment.
Nick Allan shared that if you are Bibi Netanyahu you are very pleased as to how he has managed to get the US to support a war that the prime minister of Israel has been wanting to prosecute for a very long time and that it is still a popular thing within Israel so there is a lot of domestic politics driving this in Israel. He emphasised the importance of looking forward and shared that we are seeing fundamental changes in all sorts of industries and that we are not heading back to normal.
On the timeline for recovery, Eleanor Budds of S&P shared that it takes probably two months for the crude production to ramp up, five months to get back to where it was before, and that it takes seven weeks to get some of that crude to Asia, two weeks to refine it into products and then a week or so more to distribute it into products. She shared that the supply has been lost from the market and that there is a risk premium on prices so the market will react to fundamentals, supply, demand, and it will react to risk and that the crude price always reacts to sentiment and risk in the market.
The discussion also touched on differing regional perspectives. Matt Kaminski shared that for all the doom and gloom you hear from across the world about the economy, go to the west coast, go to California and you see AI and this is clearly remaking expectations about what is possible in terms of productivity. Marie Owens Thomsen shared that three per cent is the long term global average growth rate from the 1970s so three per cent is just perfect, so to speak, neither too hot nor too cold and that losing half a percentage point if that is what it turns out to be is not great but we are still not in recession territory, warning that if the oil price were to go up much from here then we could be approaching two per cent and that we are not necessarily just talking about stagflation risks but actually something that feels like a recession. She added that all of these costs going up is going to impact every household and as soon as consumption starts to get impacted then that is where we get these recessionary impulses through changes in behaviour and that the gap between where the oil price was and where it is now is a continuing weight on economic activity as it takes away money from household budgets and reduces purchasing power.
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