Because of the Iran War “In 3 Months We’ll Enter a Famine” Says Economist Who Predicted the 2008 Crash
Steve Keen is an Australian post-Keynesian economist who predicted the 2008 crisis around 2005 by modeling private debt levels through Hyman Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis. He wrote Debunking Economics and built simulation software called Minsky.
When he talks about systemic risk, there’s a track record behind it.
He sat down with Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO, released April 6, 2026, roughly 5 weeks after Operation Epic Fury, the joint US-Israeli strike campaign that hit Iranian nuclear sites, military infrastructure, and killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28.
Iran’s retaliation has been asymmetric. Instead of matching firepower, they seized control of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint roughly 21 to 33 kilometers wide at its narrowest point. Their toolkit includes drones, ballistic and anti-ship missiles, submarines, naval mines, and a “mosquito fleet” of fast-attack speedboats. They now control what passes through and what doesn’t, based on each country’s diplomatic stance toward Iran.
Up to 20 to 30% of the world’s seaborne fertilizer, including urea, ammonia, and phosphates, and roughly a third of global helium passes through the Strait. Modern agriculture runs on synthetic fertilizers derived from natural gas. Keen warns that if the blockade holds, global crop yields could drop 10 to 25%, triggering famine within months. No alternative routes exist at scale. Helium disruption hits semiconductor manufacturing, MRI machines, and fiber optic production.
Oil prices have already surged past $110 to $126 per barrel since the Strait was seized, feeding what Keen calls “warflation” on top of the coming food crisis.
Keen says Iran’s underground military network is so extensive that a ground invasion would be a suicide mission. The scale of their tunnel systems, weapons caches, and troop positions is largely unknown to Western intelligence.
He called Trump’s approach a pump and dump scheme, accusing him of driving up the oil price and exploiting the situation for personal and allied financial gain. That framing is Keen’s opinion, not established fact. When Bartlett asked why Trump keeps claiming the war has been won, Keen said his advisors are feeding him propaganda because you cannot tell a person like that he’s made a mistake.
He laid out 5 scenarios for how the war ends. His first is that Iran destroys Gulf power infrastructure, rendering Saudi Arabia and Qatar effectively uninhabitable. His second is that Iran disables Israel’s nuclear capability. He told Bartlett both are plausible and that one of them scares him deeply.
The full episode is on The Diary of a CEO right now.