Iran War Economic Impact: Ports, Railways and Hormuz Disruption

An Engineering, Capacity and Trade-Economic Assessment of Ports, Roads, Railways, Airports and International Corridors

Prepared by Trade Facilitation Network (TFN) Research Team

Research Supervision Muhammad Anwar, CMILT Founder & Chairman Trade Facilitation Network (TFN)

Research & Policy Analysis Data Cut-off: 9 September 2026

Executive Summary

The war on Iran has created two different but interconnected economic footprints.

The first is an engineering footprint inside Iran: physical damage to bridges, railway infrastructure, tunnels, maritime-control facilities, airport runways, radar and navigation systems, smaller port structures and other transport assets.

The second is substantially larger: an international economic footprint transmitted through the Strait of Hormuz, energy markets, shipping, aviation, freight rates, insurance, fertilizers, industrial inputs, food prices, inflation and economic growth.

TFN’s assessment finds that Iran’s transport network has been damaged extensively, but not comprehensively destroyed.

At Shahid Rajaee, Iran’s principal commercial maritime gateway, the available evidence does not establish widespread destruction of the main commercial berths or ship-to-shore container-handling system during the 2026 war. Instead, some of the clearest damage occurred in the road and railway infrastructure through which cargo moves between Bandar Abbas and the Iranian hinterland.

At Chabahar, maritime traffic-control infrastructure was damaged or destroyed while the principal Shahid Beheshti commercial terminal remained physically intact.

At Sirik and some smaller coastal facilities, direct waterside infrastructure damage was more evident.

Iran’s railway system also suffered physical damage. The Aq Taqeh Khan railway bridge near Aqqala on the route toward Incheh Borun and Turkmenistan was damaged, but safe railway movement was restored in less than a day. On the Tehran–Mashhad railway, one damaged running line was returned to service in approximately 15 hours.

These incidents demonstrate the central engineering conclusion of this research:

Physical destruction and economic disruption are not proportional.

The economic consequence of an attack depends upon the function of the damaged asset, the throughput dependent upon it, the duration of capacity impairment, the availability of alternative capacity and the speed of engineering restoration.

Bandar Abbas provides the clearest measurable example. During the first five days of the war, Hormozgan port authorities reported an average 93 percent decline in outbound truck movements carrying imported and transit cargo. At an observed low point, movements fell to approximately 165 trucks carrying 3,630 tonnes per day, compared with approximately 2,422 trucks carrying 53,284 tonnes per day after flows recovered toward pre-war levels.

The international economic effect has been considerably larger.

U.S. Energy Information Administration data show crude oil and petroleum-liquid flows through the Strait of Hormuz declining from 21.6 million barrels per day in Q4 2025 to 4.9 million barrels per day in Q2 2026, a reduction of approximately 77 percent. LNG movements through Hormuz fell even more sharply, from 10.5 billion cubic feet per day to 0.8 billion cubic feet per day over the same comparison period. Alternative routing absorbed part of the oil shock: flows through Bab el-Mandeb increased from 5.4 million to 8.1 million barrels per day.

The consequence is not confined to energy.

Higher oil and gas prices raise shipping and aviation costs. Higher natural-gas costs affect fertilizer production. Higher fertilizer and transport costs affect agriculture. Higher energy, freight, insurance and production costs eventually enter the prices paid by businesses and consumers.

The IMF’s July 2026 assessment projects global growth of 3.0 percent and headline inflation of 4.7 percent. The Fund describes the global outlook as being pulled in opposite directions by the continuing energy shock from the Middle East war and a technology-driven investment boom. It also notes that the disinflation process underway since early 2024 has stalled.

TFN therefore concludes that the economic consequences of the war should be understood through the following chain:

Physical Attack → Functional Loss → Transport Capacity Impairment → Corridor/Chokepoint Disruption → Freight, Insurance and Energy Shock → Commodity and Input-Cost Inflation → Consumer Inflation → Trade and GDP Effects

The physical damage may be local.

The economic multiplier is international.

1. Scope and Methodology

This research examines physical damage and operational disruption affecting Iran’s transport and logistics infrastructure and assesses the consequences for domestic, regional and international trade.

The study covers ports and maritime infrastructure, roads and bridges, railways, airports and aviation systems, international border gateways and major transport corridors.

The evidence is assessed according to five categories.

Category A — Confirmed physical destruction or damage: supported by authoritative documentation, independently verified imagery, geolocation or multiple credible sources.

Category B — Confirmed damage, but extent or financial cost uncertain.

Category C — Operational disruption or closure without sufficient evidence of physical damage.

Category D — Reported attack that could not be adequately verified and is therefore excluded from quantitative assessment.

Category E — Infrastructure remaining operational or without confirmed war damage, but important because it provided alternative or redundant capacity.

The economic assessment also separates four concepts that are frequently confused in wartime reporting:

Direct physical damage — the engineering cost of repairing or replacing an asset.

Capacity impairment — the transport capability unavailable while the asset cannot perform its normal function.

Throughput exposure — the volume of traffic normally dependent upon that capacity during the disruption period.

Economic loss — the value genuinely lost after accounting for restoration, rerouting, deferred shipments, inventories and substitution.

Accordingly:

Trade Value Exposed ≠ Economic Loss

Annual Throughput ≠ Disrupted Throughput

Installed Capacity ≠ Actual Throughput

Physical Destruction ≠ Permanent Capacity Loss

Operational Closure ≠ Physical Damage

These distinctions form the methodological foundation of the research.

2. Iran at the Centre of a Eurasian Transport System

Iran’s logistics importance is determined by geography as much as by infrastructure.

The country connects the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean with the Caspian region, Central Asia, Türkiye, the Caucasus and Pakistan.

UNESCAP’s Trans-Asian Railway network identifies international Iranian rail connections through Razi toward Türkiye; Jolfa and Astara toward Azerbaijan; Incheh Borun and Sarakhs toward Turkmenistan and Central Asia; and Mirjaveh toward Pakistan.

The scale of the system is substantial.

Before the present conflict, Iranian ports were handling approximately 235 million tonnes of cargo annually, including roughly 3.1 million TEU of container traffic.

Iran’s road system was carrying approximately 600 million tonnes of freight annually.

International road transit amounted to approximately 16.7 million tonnes, involving more than 742,000 international truck movements.

The railway system was carrying approximately 40 million tonnes of domestic and international freight annually, including approximately 5 million tonnes of international rail transit.

These numbers should not be added together because individual cargoes can appear in more than one mode during the same supply chain.

Their importance is that they establish the economic scale of the logistics system dependent upon the infrastructure examined in this study.

3. Ports Must Be Assessed as Integrated Logistics Systems

A commercial port is not simply a berth.

Its effective capacity is generated by an integrated chain:

Approach and Navigation → Berth/Quay → Ship-to-Shore Equipment → Yard and Storage → Gate → Road/Rail Interface → Hinterland

Failure at a sufficiently critical component can reduce effective port capacity even when the cranes and quay remain intact.

This distinction is essential to understanding the Iranian case.

Shahid Rajaee and Bandar Abbas

Shahid Rajaee is Iran’s principal commercial maritime gateway and handles the overwhelming majority of the country’s container traffic.

Pre-war published Iranian statistics placed its annual cargo throughput above 75 million tonnes, with figures for the year ending March 2025 exceeding 81 million tonnes.

Published trade data associated approximately US$29 billion of foreign trade with the gateway.

That US$29 billion represents trade passing through the port. It is neither the physical value of the port nor an estimate of wartime loss.

The evidence reviewed by TFN does not establish widespread destruction of Shahid Rajaee’s principal commercial container gantry cranes, quay walls or major commercial berths during the 2026 conflict.

Instead, independent reporting documented damage to at least six bridges and a tunnel around Bandar Abbas, together with a strike affecting a railway junction west of the city.

Transport authorities subsequently reported restoration of the Bandar Abbas railway axis, reopening of a Shahid Mirzayi tunnel and activation of bypass arrangements around damaged road infrastructure.

The engineering conclusion is therefore:

Marine-side installed capacity remained substantially available while the port’s landside evacuation system suffered significant impairment.

This distinction between installed marine capacity and effective end-to-end logistics capacity is one of the principal findings of this research.

4. Bandar Abbas: Measuring the Capacity Shock

Bandar Abbas provides unusually useful operational evidence because actual truck and tonnage movements were reported during the disruption.

During the first five days of the war, outbound truck movements carrying imported and transit cargo reportedly fell by an average 93 percent.

At one observed low point, approximately 165 trucks carrying 3,630 tonnes per day were leaving the port system.

After recovery, movements reached approximately 2,422 trucks carrying 53,284 tonnes per day.

The difference between the observed low point and the recovered level was therefore approximately 2,257 truck movements and 49,654 tonnes of evacuation capacity per day.

This difference should not be multiplied mechanically by five days because the low-point figure does not necessarily represent the average throughout the entire period.

Importantly, the logistics system did not cease functioning. More than 59,570 tonnes of essential goods and industrial raw materials were reportedly dispatched during those first five days using surviving port, road and railway capacity.

The case demonstrates that:

A commercial port does not have to be destroyed to lose effective capacity if the roads and railways evacuating its cargo are impaired.

5. Chabahar: Control Infrastructure Versus Cargo Capacity

Chabahar experienced a different type of damage.

Maritime traffic-control infrastructure was hit and subsequently reported destroyed.

Such infrastructure supports vessel monitoring, navigation, maritime safety and operational coordination.

However, the evidence does not establish corresponding destruction of the principal commercial berth, cargo yard or cargo-handling equipment at the India-operated Shahid Beheshti terminal.

India subsequently stated that the Shahid Beheshti terminal itself had not suffered physical damage.

Since India began operations there, official Indian reporting indicates that the terminal had handled more than 3.11 million tonnes of bulk and general cargo and approximately 14,420 TEU.

Those figures establish the commercial importance of the terminal.

They should not be presented as wartime cargo losses because prolonged loss of equivalent cargo-handling capacity has not been demonstrated.

The engineering conclusion is:

Destruction of maritime-control infrastructure can impair port functionality without destroying installed cargo-handling capacity.

6. Sirik and Smaller Coastal Facilities

Direct physical damage to waterside infrastructure was more clearly documented at some smaller facilities.

At Sirik, a floating pier sustained serious damage.

Other attacks affected smaller fishing and commercial pier facilities in Hormozgan.

Their international cargo significance is much smaller than Shahid Rajaee, but their engineering classification is different.

These incidents represent damage to the direct ship-to-shore interface, whereas much of the commercially important Bandar Abbas damage occurred in the hinterland network.

This distinction prevents the research from treating every “port attack” as economically equivalent.

7. Railway Infrastructure and Restoration

Railways provide some of the clearest evidence that physical damage and economic consequences can diverge significantly.

Aq Taqeh Khan Bridge — Aqqala

Damage to the railway bridge near Aqqala was independently geolocated.

The line forms part of the Gorgan–Incheh Borun connection toward Turkmenistan and the wider Central Asian network.

Iranian railway authorities reported restoration of safe railway movement in less than 24 hours.

The incident is therefore classified as:

confirmed physical damage with short-duration capacity impairment.

TFN has not identified sufficiently authoritative daily freight tonnage for the specific bridge section to calculate the quantity of freight delayed during the outage.

Wider North–South corridor volumes should therefore not be presented as tonnage lost at Aqqala.

The economically relevant variable is the traffic falling within the actual outage period, not the theoretical annual capacity of the wider corridor.

8. Tehran–Mashhad–Sarakhs

The Tehran–Mashhad railway was also physically damaged.

Rail services were suspended while technical teams repaired the affected infrastructure.

One running line was returned to service in approximately 15 hours, with restoration work continuing on the second line.

Mashhad connects onward toward Sarakhs, one of Iran’s principal railway gateways with Turkmenistan and Central Asia.

Again, Iran’s national railway throughput provides strategic context but should not be converted into asset-specific losses.

The incident demonstrates:

High network importance + physical damage + rapid restoration does not equal permanent corridor loss.

Restoration time is therefore a critical economic variable.

9. Roads, Bridges and International Land Transit

Iran’s road freight system carries approximately 600 million tonnes annually, making it the country’s dominant inland freight mode by tonnage.

International road transit has been approximately 16.7 million tonnes annually, involving more than 742,000 international vehicle movements.

Damage to bridges and tunnels around Bandar Abbas therefore affected infrastructure serving not merely local traffic but a major port-hinterland and international transit system.

Yet Iran’s international land network was not comprehensively severed.

Important gateways toward Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia and Pakistan remained available or were restored.

The war consequently reinforces a basic principle of infrastructure resilience:

Resilience is achieved not solely by hardening individual assets, but by creating sufficient route, bridge, railway, communications and border-gateway redundancy that the failure of one component does not produce proportional system failure.

10. Civil Aviation Infrastructure

Iran’s formal submission to the ICAO Assembly provides particularly important primary evidence concerning aviation infrastructure.

Reported damage affected major airports and included radar, telecommunications, navigation equipment, runway surfaces and hangars.

The primary surveillance radar supporting approach operations at Mehrabad was destroyed.

Runway surfaces were damaged at Tabriz and Isfahan.

Three hangars at Azadi were destroyed together with 38 private, leisure and training aircraft.

A Red Crescent emergency medical helicopter was also reported destroyed at Zanjan.

The engineering significance is straightforward.

Airport capacity depends upon a system:

Runway → Taxiway → Apron → Navigation → Surveillance → Telecommunications → Air Traffic Control → Ground Handling → Landside Connectivity

A terminal building can remain intact while loss of radar, communications or navigation equipment materially reduces effective airport capacity.

This mirrors the finding at ports: functional capacity depends upon the entire logistics system rather than its most visible physical structure.

11. Air Cargo and Regional Aviation

Air cargo represents a relatively small share of freight by weight but a disproportionately important share of high-value and time-sensitive trade.

Pre-war Iranian airport statistics indicate six-month cargo volumes of approximately 42,300 tonnes at Mashhad, 41,700 tonnes at Mehrabad and 12,800 tonnes at Shiraz.

These numbers establish economic scale but should only be converted into wartime throughput exposure where the corresponding closure period and capacity impairment can be demonstrated.

The wider Middle Eastern aviation market also experienced disruption.

The economic impact extended through rerouting, longer flight times, fuel consumption, insurance and reduced cargo capacity.

As with railways, however, recovery profile matters as much as initial shock magnitude.

12. The TFN Logistics Infrastructure Multiplier

The cases examined suggest a broader framework for measuring transport-infrastructure criticality.

TFN defines the Logistics Infrastructure Multiplier as the relationship between the direct physical value of a transport asset and the wider economic throughput dependent upon its continued availability.

The multiplier increases where infrastructure has:

high throughput dependency;

high network centrality;

limited substitutability;

limited redundancy;

and long restoration time.

Conceptually:

Infrastructure Criticality ∝ (Throughput Dependency × Network Centrality × Restoration Time) / Redundancy

This is a conceptual analytical relationship rather than a calibrated econometric equation.

Its purpose is to explain why a relatively inexpensive bridge, railway junction, radar installation or control facility can support economic activity many times greater than its own replacement value.

Conversely, severe physical damage can produce relatively limited economic disruption where alternative capacity exists and engineering restoration is rapid.

13. From Infrastructure Damage to Global Economic Disruption

The engineering assessment explains what occurred within Iran.

It does not by itself explain why consumers and industries thousands of kilometres away experienced consequences.

That requires a second analytical scale.

The transmission mechanism is:

War and Infrastructure Disruption

→ Corridor and Chokepoint Constraint

→ Oil, Gas and Fertilizer Supply Shock

→ Tanker Freight, War-Risk Insurance and Fuel Cost

→ Industrial and Agricultural Input Cost

→ Commodity and Food Prices

→ Consumer Inflation

→ Financial and Fiscal Pressure

→ Lower Real Economic Growth

This is where the economic footprint becomes much larger than the physical footprint.

14. Strait of Hormuz: The Systemic Shock

The Strait of Hormuz should not be classified as Iranian infrastructure physically destroyed in the war.

It represents something economically more important: systemic impairment of a global trade chokepoint.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, crude oil and petroleum-liquid flows through Hormuz averaged 21.6 million barrels per day in Q4 2025.

In Q2 2026 they averaged only 4.9 million barrels per day.

The reduction was therefore approximately:

16.7 million barrels per day, or 77 percent.

LNG flows declined from approximately:

10.5 billion cubic feet per day

to:

0.8 billion cubic feet per day.

This represents a reduction of more than 92 percent.

The oil system partially adapted.

Flows through Bab el-Mandeb increased from 5.4 million barrels per day in Q4 2025 to 8.1 million barrels per day in Q2 2026 as alternative export arrangements, including Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline and Red Sea outlets, absorbed part of the displaced traffic.

The numbers demonstrate both shock and resilience.

Alternative routes prevented complete system failure.

But alternative routes could not fully reproduce the capacity, distance or economics of normal Hormuz movements.

15. Putting the Hormuz Disruption into Dollars

The difference between pre-war and Q2 oil flows was approximately 16.7 million barrels per day.

At an illustrative oil value of US$90 per barrel, this represents approximately:

US$1.50 billion per day of gross petroleum-flow value.

At US$100 per barrel, it represents approximately:

US$1.67 billion per day.

Over a 30-day period, an equivalent flow difference would represent approximately:

US$45–50 billion of gross petroleum-flow value.

This is not US$45–50 billion of economic loss.

Some production was shut in. Some cargo was delayed. Some was rerouted. Inventories were drawn down. Alternative producers increased supply.

The calculation measures the financial scale of the energy flow removed from its normal route, not permanently destroyed wealth.

That distinction is essential to credible economic analysis.

16. Energy Prices and the Wider Supply Chain

EIA reported Brent crude reaching as high as US$118 per barrel during Q2 2026 before subsequently declining as expectations of renewed Hormuz traffic improved.

The energy shock propagated beyond crude oil.

Oil prices affect road transport, aviation, shipping, petrochemicals and manufacturing.

Natural gas is both an energy source and a critical feedstock for fertilizer production.

Fertilizer affects agricultural production.

Agricultural input costs affect food prices.

The transmission mechanism is therefore:

Energy → Fertilizer → Agriculture → Food → Household Inflation

The IMF has also emphasized that Asian economies are particularly exposed because oil and gas consumption represents around 4 percent of regional GDP, while net oil and gas imports amount to roughly 2.5 percent of GDP across the region and considerably more in some economies.

The war therefore converted a geographical chokepoint problem into a global production-cost problem.

17. Freight, Insurance and the Cost of Moving the Same Cargo

Cargo does not have to be destroyed for war to impose an economic cost.

The same tonne of cargo becomes more expensive when its movement requires:

higher war-risk insurance;

higher cargo insurance;

additional vessel time;

longer routing;

higher bunker consumption;

greater inventory financing;

additional security;

and reduced equipment availability.

This distinction is fundamental.

A logistics system becomes economically less productive when more money, fuel, equipment and time are required to deliver the same physical quantity of cargo.

The resulting cost eventually appears in the price of the traded commodity.

18. Global Trade: Nominal Growth Versus Real Trade

The war also exposes an important weakness in interpreting trade statistics.

International trade can increase in nominal dollar value even while logistics efficiency deteriorates.

If a cargo that previously cost US$100 reaches its destination at US$120 because of higher energy, insurance, freight and production costs, the recorded value of trade increases by 20 percent.

But the world has not necessarily produced or transported 20 percent more goods.

Therefore:

Nominal Trade Growth ≠ Real Trade Growth

and:

Higher Trade Value ≠ Greater Trade Efficiency

This distinction is particularly important during commodity and transport shocks.

A portion of apparently stronger trade value can simply represent the capitalization of higher logistics and production costs into traded-goods prices.

19. Inflation and Global Economic Growth

By July 2026, the IMF projected global growth at 3.0 percent for 2026, followed by 3.4 percent in 2027.

The Fund described the outlook as being shaped by two forces moving in opposite directions: the continuing energy shock from the Middle East war and a technology-driven investment boom.

The IMF’s pre-conflict global growth forecast had been approximately 3.4 percent for 2026.

The conflict interrupted that momentum.

At the same time, global headline inflation was revised upward to 4.7 percent for 2026.

The IMF concluded that the disinflation trend underway since early 2024 had stalled.

The global economy has nevertheless proved more resilient than initially feared. Inventory drawdowns, additional production outside the Gulf, reduced energy demand, renewable-energy capacity and technology investment have absorbed part of the shock.

This resilience does not mean the economic cost disappeared.

It means that alternative capacity absorbed part of it.

That is precisely the same resilience principle observed at the infrastructure level inside Iran.

20. Estimated Economic Cost to Iran

Estimating Iran’s economic loss requires particular caution because war damage, sanctions, domestic economic conditions, oil-export constraints and other factors overlap.

The latest IMF assessment projects Iran’s economy to contract substantially in 2026.

Using a nominal economic base of roughly US$300 billion and comparing the current growth trajectory with pre-war expectations produces an indicative annual output difference of approximately:

US$12 billion.

TFN does not classify US$12 billion as Iran’s complete war loss.

It represents an indicative output shortfall relative to a pre-war trajectory.

It does not comprehensively include:

physical reconstruction costs;

destroyed public and private assets;

long-term investment losses;

fiscal expenditure associated with the conflict;

human losses;

future productivity effects;

or all foregone hydrocarbon revenue.

Iran’s own substantially larger compensation claims should therefore remain analytically separate from TFN’s independent assessment.

As of the publication cut-off, no sufficiently comprehensive independently audited assessment exists that would justify combining all Iranian physical, fiscal and macroeconomic damage into a single definitive figure.

21. Estimated Global Economic Effect

The global calculation requires the same discipline.

Before the conflict, the IMF expected global growth of approximately 3.4 percent in 2026.

Its July assessment projects 3.0 percent.

The difference is approximately:

0.4 percentage point.

Applied mechanically to a world economy exceeding US$100 trillion, the difference represents an economic magnitude of several hundred billion US dollars.

TFN therefore considers approximately:

US$450–500 billion

a reasonable order-of-magnitude representation of the deterioration in the 2026 global output trajectory relative to the pre-conflict path.

This must not be interpreted as an audited US$450–500 billion war-damage bill.

The IMF itself identifies powerful offsetting influences, particularly technology investment, while trade policy, monetary conditions and other economic developments also affect global output.

The correct interpretation is therefore:

The deterioration of the 2026 global economic trajectory is of an order measured in several hundred billion US dollars, with the Middle East war and its energy shock representing a major—but not exclusive—cause.

22. Why the Dollar Figures Must Not Be Added Together

This research identifies several very large financial quantities:

approximately US$12 billion of indicative Iranian output shortfall;

approximately US$450–500 billion as an order-of-magnitude global output-trajectory effect;

tens of billions of dollars of petroleum-flow value affected during individual months;

higher freight and insurance costs;

higher commodity expenditure;

and inflationary effects across importing economies.

They should not be added together.

The same shock appears at different stages of the economy.

Higher oil prices become higher freight costs.

Higher freight becomes higher import prices.

Higher import prices become inflation.

Inflation affects consumption and GDP.

Adding every stage would count the same economic disturbance several times.

The figures therefore measure different dimensions of the shock, rather than components of one accounting total.

23. Engineering and Policy Lessons

Effective capacity must replace asset counting

Counting destroyed bridges, runways or port structures is insufficient.

Infrastructure assessment should measure the economic capacity dependent upon the damaged function.

Port investment must include hinterland resilience

Bandar Abbas demonstrates that berth and crane capacity can remain intact while effective throughput falls sharply because road and railway evacuation is impaired.

Future port planning should therefore distinguish:

Installed Marine Capacity

from:

Effective End-to-End Logistics Capacity.

Restoration time should become a core resilience metric

The Aqqala and Tehran–Mashhad cases demonstrate the economic value of rapid engineering response.

A damaged asset that regains functionality in 15 hours has a fundamentally different economic impact from an identical asset requiring six months to restore.

Infrastructure planning should therefore measure time to functional restoration, not merely reconstruction cost.

Redundancy has measurable economic value

Alternative roads, railway alignments, ports, border crossings, pipelines, power systems, communications and navigation facilities may appear underutilized during normal conditions.

During disruption, their spare capacity becomes an economic asset.

The same principle applies internationally.

Alternative pipelines and Red Sea export routes did not replace Hormuz, but they absorbed part of the shock.

Trade facilitation is part of infrastructure resilience

Infrastructure resilience is not exclusively an engineering problem.

Customs procedures, border operations, transit guarantees, digital documentation, port clearance and regulatory coordination determine how quickly cargo can move to an alternative route.

Physical redundancy without administrative interoperability may therefore provide only theoretical capacity.

24. Conclusion

The war on Iran demonstrates that the economic importance of transport infrastructure cannot be measured by counting destroyed structures.

Iran’s logistics system has suffered genuine physical damage across road, rail, maritime and aviation infrastructure.

But the evidence does not support the conclusion that the country’s transport network has been comprehensively destroyed.

Some infrastructure remained intact.

Some damaged assets were bypassed.

Some were restored within hours.

Others suffered major operational impairment despite survival of their principal cargo-handling infrastructure.

Bandar Abbas provides perhaps the clearest example.

A major commercial port could retain substantial marine-side infrastructure while damage and disruption to its road and railway connections sharply reduced effective cargo evacuation.

Aqqala and Tehran–Mashhad demonstrate a different condition: genuine physical railway damage can produce relatively short economic disruption where engineering restoration is rapid.

Chabahar demonstrates another: critical control infrastructure can be destroyed without corresponding destruction of the commercial cargo terminal.

These cases lead to the principal engineering conclusion of the research:

The economic criticality of transport infrastructure is determined less by the replacement value of the damaged asset than by the throughput dependent upon it, its position within the network, the availability of alternative capacity and the time required to restore its function.

But the largest consequence of the conflict lies beyond Iran.

The physical damage was geographically concentrated.

The economic effects were not.

EIA data show oil flows through Hormuz falling from 21.6 million barrels per day to 4.9 million barrels per day, while LNG movements declined from 10.5 to 0.8 billion cubic feet per day.

Oil prices rose sharply. Freight and insurance costs increased. Energy-importing economies faced higher bills. Fertilizer and industrial-input supply chains came under pressure. Inflation accelerated.

The IMF now describes the global economy as being pulled between the lingering energy shock from the war and an investment boom in technology.

This leads to TFN’s broader conclusion.

There are in fact two multipliers.

The first is the Logistics Infrastructure Multiplier: the relationship between the physical value of an infrastructure asset and the economic throughput dependent upon it.

The second is a Global Economic Transmission Multiplier: the process through which disruption of strategically located infrastructure and corridors propagates through energy, freight, insurance, commodities, production costs, inflation and ultimately economic growth.

A bridge may be repaired within hours.

A railway can reopen within a day.

A control tower can be rebuilt.

But the economic shock generated by disruption of a globally significant transport and energy system can continue across countries and markets long after individual physical assets have returned to service.

As of 9 September 2026, TFN assesses Iran’s indicative annual output shortfall relative to its pre-war trajectory at approximately US$12 billion, while the deterioration in the global 2026 output trajectory is of an order consistent with approximately US$450–500 billion relative to the pre-conflict path, subject to the attribution limitations explained in this research.

These figures are not final war-loss accounts.

The conflict remains economically active and international energy and logistics systems continue to adjust.

The ultimate economic cost will therefore depend not simply upon what was destroyed, but upon:

how long connectivity remains impaired;

how much capacity remains unavailable;

how rapidly infrastructure is restored;

how effectively alternative routes absorb displaced trade;