Iran War at 60 Days: $25B Cost, Hormuz Crisis, No End

Two months in, the US-Israeli war on Iran refused to end and refused to widen. An analytical piece marking 60 days since the February 28 opening of Operation Epic Fury argued the conflict has settled into "indefinite impasse": Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the US naval blockade have produced neither battlefield resolution nor a deal, and the Trump administration has rejected Iran's offer to reopen the strait in exchange for ending the blockade without naming an alternative. The piece laid out five "politically inconvenient realities" — the impasse may be the new normal, no "good deal" with the Islamic Republic exists, Washington has lost the initiative to Iran's Hormuz card, Epic Fury was a setback for Tehran rather than a defeat (regime intact, nuclear programme will be reconstituted, Hezbollah and Hamas weakened but not dismantled, Houthis still active), and the JCPOA-style "buy time and constrain" approach Trump exited in 2018 now looks even less achievable. On the same day, Iran delivered a fresh response to US amendments on the draft peace plan carried by White House envoy Steve Witkoff, which seek to reintroduce nuclear-programme issues into the text. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate Armed Services Committee the April 7 ceasefire has paused the 60-day War Powers Resolution clock; in the same hearing Pentagon officials priced the conflict to date at roughly $25 billion. The Iranian Merchant Mariners Syndicate filed an IMO complaint reporting at least 44 Iranian civilian seafarers killed and 29 injured between February 28 and April 1.

Russia ran the largest single daytime drone barrage of the war on Ukraine. Between 08:00 and 15:30 it launched 409 attack UAVs — roughly 250 of them Shahed-type — from Shatalovo, Kursk, Oryol, Millerovo and Primorsko-Akhtarsk inside Russia and from Donetsk and Hvardiiske in occupied Crimea. Ukrainian air defence shot down or suppressed 388, with 16 confirmed hits across six locations and debris at eleven more; Ternopil took more than 50 Shaheds, and Odesa and Kharkiv reported damage. Ukraine answered up the supply chain: SBU drones hit the Tuapse oil refinery for the fourth time in two weeks, and an unmanned strike on the AVT-4 unit at the Perm refinery — 1,600 km inside Russia — set "almost all oil storage tanks" alight, by SBU description. Kyiv's General Staff also confirmed for the first time that the April 25 Unmanned Systems Forces strike at Shagol airbase, 1,700 km from the border, had hit Su-57 stealth fighters and a Su-34. A separate combat-doctrine note: Ukrainian forces have now run more than 22,000 missions with AI-enabled ground robots in three months, including missions that took Russian positions and detained surrendering soldiers. Behind the front, Volodymyr Zelensky announced a military reform package starting June 2026 with minimum servicemember pay of UAH 30,000 for rear roles and several multiples for combat positions. Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Pivnenko, in a separate assessment, said Russia can sustain its current offensive intensity for one to two more years on existing mobilisation reserves.

The humanitarian dimension of the Iran war went on the record. UK Maritime Trade Operations, run from the Royal Navy's Northwood headquarters, warned of an imminent crisis: Hormuz traffic down more than 90 percent, roughly 20,000 seafarers stranded onboard with no relief or rotation, the strait under dual Iranian and US blockade. UNHCR spokesperson Carlotta Wolf said in Geneva that shipping costs from the agency's three main suppliers — India, Pakistan and China — are up nearly 18 percent and carrier capacity has fallen from 97 to 77 percent; UNHCR has rerouted via Aqaba, prioritised land routes from Dubai, and seen Sudan-aid delivery costs double, with Cape of Good Hope rerouting adding up to 25 days. The agency needs $8.5 billion for 2026 and is 23 percent funded. Yara International CEO Svein Tore Holsether warned Hormuz disruption could put 10 billion meals per week at risk through fertiliser-supply shock; UNDP analysis on the same day projected the strait closure plus subsequent fertiliser-export bans could push more than 30 million additional people into poverty, with Asian food security particularly exposed.

The macroeconomic frame tightened. The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of England, Bank of Japan and Reserve Bank of Australia all left rates unchanged but signalled they may need to hike soon to keep the energy spike from spilling into broader inflation; the Fed split 8-4, its narrowest in decades, and the Bank of England held at 3.75 percent with one vote for a hike and replaced its central forecast with three scenarios, the most extreme implying a "forceful" rate increase. The US national average gasoline price hit a four-year high of $4.30 a gallon. Two longer-horizon items reframed the post-Iran security architecture in the same news cycle: a US assessment said China has nearly tripled its nuclear warhead stockpile since 2019 and is rapidly expanding delivery systems and production infrastructure, with Beijing rejecting arms-control talks on the calculation that a stronger deterrent forces Washington to treat it as a peer; and a Bloomberg analysis warned North Korea's expanding programme — capable of producing up to 20 warheads annually, with the Hwasong-15/-17/-18/-19 ICBM family already arguably outpacing the US ground-based midcourse defence system — could overwhelm US homeland defences within a decade. France's TotalEnergies reported first-quarter profit up 51 percent to €4.96 billion on the same energy backdrop, and political parties across the French spectrum renewed calls for a windfall "superprofits" tax.

May Day became its own front. In Istanbul, Turkish police fired tear gas and arrested nearly 400 people, including union officials and opposition figures, as thousands rallied across the country against high inflation and the political crackdown that began with last year's pre-emptive arrests of leftist activists. In Germany, DGB chair Yasmin Fahimi warned of a "return to early capitalism" and threatened "a major social conflict" if the Merz government attacks pension security; protests ran in cities across the country against proposed cuts to pensions, healthcare and social benefits. Across the United States, around 500 labour groups organised an economic blackout under the "May Day Strong" banner — roughly 3,500 events calling for "no school, no work, no shopping" against rising energy costs and Iran-war-driven price pressure.

A spread of decisions that did not start with Iran or Ukraine still moved the global ledger. The Mercosur–European Union trade agreement entered into force provisionally, knitting together the 27-member EU and Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. The UN Security Council voted 13-0, with Russia and China abstaining, to cut the South Sudan peacekeeping force from 17,000 to 12,000. State television in Myanmar said Aung San Suu Kyi has been transferred from prison to house arrest, more than five years after the 2021 military coup. In southern Lebanon, the Israeli military killed at least four people on Friday, one day after killing at least 28 in the largest single-day spree since the April 16 ceasefire began. President Trump signed an executive order imposing new sanctions on Cuban regime officials cited for repression. With Viktor Orbán out of office in Budapest, France, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and Italy moved openly against fast-tracking Ukraine's EU accession, with Paris and Berlin proposing a phased framework of at least ten years that Kyiv has rejected. And in London, a British couple — Lindsay and Craig Foreman, arrested in Iran in January 2025 on a motorcycle trip — were sentenced to ten years in Evin prison on espionage charges they deny.