The U.S.-Iran war is making world hunger much worse

An internally displaced family sits at a makeshift shelter during a visit by World Food Program officials to assess the knock-on effects from the escalation of hostilities in the Middle East in Kahda district of Mogadishu on May 7. | REUTERS

Oct 23, 2026

Step away from the minute-by-minute news cycle for a moment and consider what two of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have wreaked: Russia and the United States, with their illegal wars against Ukraine and Iran, share much of the blame for reversing a whole generation’s progress in the fight against hunger.

According to the new Global Hunger Index, recently released in the lead-up to World Food Day, the combined scourges of undernourishment, child stunting and child wasting — all symptoms of relative starvation — have become worse, halting a two-decade trend of improvement.

The numbers in this year’s index reflect hunger conditions in 122 countries during the years 2021 to 2025. But as the report’s experts make clear, the war that U.S. President Donald Trump launched against Iran in 2026 will exacerbate the deterioration, condemning tens or hundreds of millions to hunger in the years to come, in addition to the estimated 645 million who were “undernourished” in 2025.

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