Daily Brief · free, every morning

Sudan tops a record crisis field as Iran war re-escalation chokes Gulf food routes

Sudan is now the world's single most severe emergency: 33.7 million people need aid in 2026, the largest caseload anywhere, with confirmed famine in El Fasher and Kadugli and the RSF siege of El Obeid killing at least 45 civilians through June drone strikes on markets and water infrastructure. South Sudan's reignited civil war and Burkina Faso's blockaded towns push the Sahel and Horn toward famine. Meanwhile the US and Iran traded strikes this week for the first time in weeks, reviving a war that has cut Strait of Hormuz traffic from roughly 110 transits daily to about 15.

The Iran war is the connective tissue. Hormuz disruption and the Houthi threat to Red Sea shipping squeeze the same sea lanes that supply wheat to East Africa's hunger belt, where Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia together hold tens of millions of acutely food-insecure people. Global food prices remain elevated, with vegetable oils at record highs, so import-dependent war economies face compounding cost and access shocks. Lebanon's parallel war with Hezbollah, 1.2 million displaced, and Gaza's collapsing ceasefire complete a Middle East arc where every front is deteriorating at once.

Watch items

Receive it every morning at your hour — free →