How a widening conflict could reshape energy, shipping, inflation, and strategic positioning — and what COTRUGLI alumni should be asking now.

I. Are We Looking at a Short Campaign — or the Opening Phase of Something Longer?

The first question is not whether the United States and Israel have demonstrated extraordinary intelligence and strike capability. Recent events suggest that they have. The real question is different: does operational brilliance automatically produce strategic closure? As of March 3, 2026, public reporting points to an intense U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, major leadership losses, and immediate spillovers into shipping and energy markets. But none of that, by itself, proves that the conflict will end quickly or cleanly.

Markets often assume that superior technology, intelligence penetration, and early battlefield success will compress the timeline of a conflict. Sometimes they do. But sometimes they merely change the form of the war.

So the better question is this: What if Iran cannot win conventionally, but can still impose years of economic friction, regional disruption, and strategic drag?

That is not a fringe scenario. It is a serious business scenario.

II. Could Iran Lose the Military Contest and Still Hurt the Global Economy?

Yes. That is exactly the kind of outcome executives should model.

Iran does not need to achieve outright military victory to create meaningful economic damage. It may be enough to sustain pressure through asymmetric tools: cyber disruption, proxy activation, shipping risk, missile pressure on energy corridors, and prolonged uncertainty around the Gulf. In that kind of conflict, the key variable is not “Who wins the war?” but “Who can keep the system unstable long enough to raise costs for everyone else?”

That distinction matters. Many firms still think in binary terms: peace or war, victory or defeat, open or closed. The NEO environment is different. It rewards partial disruption. It monetizes ambiguity. It punishes those who plan only for a return to normal.

III. Why Should Business Care?

Because the economic channels are already visible.

The Strait of Hormuz is not a symbolic chokepoint. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says flows through Hormuz accounted for more than one-quarter of global seaborne oil trade and about one-fifth of global oil and petroleum consumption in 2024 and early 2025, plus around one-fifth of global LNG trade. Reuters reported today that LNG freight rates jumped more than 40% amid the current conflict, while other reporting shows marine insurers withdrawing or repricing war-risk cover for Gulf shipping.

And this is not hitting a stable global logistics system. The Red Sea was already under strain. IMF analysis showed Suez Canal trade down 50% year-on-year in early 2024, while World Bank work found rerouting could raise travel times dramatically for cargo and tankers. In other words: this crisis is landing on top of an already stressed maritime architecture.

So the business question is no longer, “Is this geopolitical?”

It is: Which parts of my P&L, supply chain, financing costs, and client demand are exposed if this persists?

IV. What Should COTRUGLI Alumni Be Asking Right Now?

Not “Who is right?” Not “Who will win?” Not even “Will this be over soon?”

The sharper questions are:

1. Where are we directly exposed to energy and freight volatility? Which contracts, routes, inputs, customers, or suppliers become fragile if shipping costs remain elevated or delivery times lengthen?

2. How much resilience do we actually have? Not in PowerPoint terms — in days of inventory, alternative suppliers, balance-sheet flexibility, backup communications, and energy price tolerance.

3. Which decisions become dangerous if we assume normalization too early? Expansion based on cheap capital. Procurement based on single-source efficiency. M&A priced for calm markets. Tourism or real-estate bets assume confidence rebounds quickly.

4. Where could demand rise even in disruption? Cybersecurity. critical infrastructure hardening. energy diversification. logistics re-optimization. verification and provenance systems. dual-use software. compliance and sanctions intelligence.

That last point matters. In unstable environments, some sectors do not merely survive — they become strategic.

V. Where Might the Opportunity Be?

Here, I would be careful, but not timid.

If this conflict remains protracted or periodically escalatory, four zones deserve close attention.

First, energy security. Europe’s long-term incentives toward diversification, storage, grid resilience, and non-fragile baseload do not weaken in this environment; they strengthen.

Second, logistics intelligence. The firms that can reroute, insure, verify, and dynamically model supply chains under conflict conditions will matter more than firms built only for cost minimization.

Third, cyber and critical infrastructure resilience. The longer a regional conflict lasts, the harder it becomes to separate “military theater” from “commercial systems exposure.”

Fourth, trust architecture. In a world of AI, disinformation, sanctions risk, and operational opacity, the ability to prove provenance, policy compliance, and counterparty integrity becomes economically valuable — not just ethically attractive.

That is where many leaders still underestimate the coming shift. Verification is no longer overhead. It is becoming infrastructure.

VI. What Should Alumni Consider Doing in the Next 30 Days?

If I were turning this into an executive memo for the COTRUGLI network, I would make the asks concrete.

Run a 30-day exposure review. Map revenue, suppliers, routes, financing assumptions, and customer segments against three scenarios: contained conflict, rolling disruption, and prolonged regional instability.

Stress-test liquidity. Ask what happens if energy, freight, or insurance costs stay elevated longer than markets currently expect.

Audit geopolitical dependencies. Especially around imports, single points of failure, cloud concentration, and sanctions-sensitive counterparties.

Upgrade cyber and communications resilience. Conflicts that begin in one geography rarely stay confined to one domain.

Build option value now. Alternative suppliers. standby logistics paths. regional partnerships. faster decision routines. smaller experimental bets in resilience-linked sectors.

This is not panic. It is doctrine.

VII. The Real Question

The issue is not whether Iran can “win” in the conventional sense.

The issue is whether the conflict can create a world in which weakly positioned firms bleed slowly, overpay structurally, misread timing, and lose strategic freedom.

That is the possibility serious leaders must examine now.

The Centaur is not the person who predicts the future with theatrical certainty. The Centaur is the one who sees that uncertainty itself has structure — and builds for it before others do.

So perhaps the right closing question for business leaders is not: How long will this war last?

Perhaps it is: If it lasts longer than consensus expects, are we positioned merely to endure it — or to move while others freeze?

That is the question the NEO battlefield asks. And it is the question Vanguard leaders must be trained to answer.

Written by Dražen Kapusta, Principal & Founder, COTRUGLI Business School | Co-Founder & CEO, HashNET Technologies, Advisor, UNIDO and European Union on AI and Blockchain Strategy