U.S. Attack on Iran Disrupts Oil Flows and Prompts Global Trade Realignments

Dollar and stabilized global economic governance via the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The Marshall Plan was concluded at the start of the Cold War. The European Economic Community was founded in 1957.

The Treaty of Rome was signed on February 20, 1957, by six founding states. The Treaty of Rome associated more than a dozen overseas territories under Part IV, denying them voting powers. Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956.

Britain, France, and Israel responded militarily to the Suez Canal nationalization in 1956. Gamal Abdel Nasser’s troops blocked the Suez Canal in November 1956 by filling dozens of ships with rocks.

Britain and France withdrew from the Suez crisis in 1956 after the United States declined to support its allies. Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated attack on Israel in 1973 to regain the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. OPEC sharply increased oil prices in 1973.

OAPEC imposed export cuts and an embargo targeting Western supporters of Israel in 1973. Venezuela nationalized its own oil reserves in 1973. Oil replaced coal as the dominant energy source in Western Europe by 1970.

U.S. dollar to gold in 1971. N. Conference on Trade and Development and declared a 'new international economic order' in 1974.

The Group of Six (later G-7) was created in response to the 1973 oil crisis. The International Energy Agency was created in response to the 1973 oil crisis. Structural adjustment loans were imposed by the IMF and World Bank on non-Western oil-importing countries starting from 1976.

The Iranian Revolution occurred in 1979. The United States imposed economic sanctions on Iran, trade restrictions, and froze about $8 million in Iranian assets in November 1979. Customers stood in line during a gas shortage at a gas station in Los Angeles, California, United States, in May 1979.

The Iran-Iraq War lasted from 1980 to 1988. Giuliana Chamedes is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The article was published on May 4, 2026, at 5:10 AM.