Before the temporary ceasefire and failed negotiations between Washington and Tehran, the US-Israeli war in Iran had already created “cascading” crises that have far exceeded early worst-case projections, according to a recent report by the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.
As of April 7, 10 interlocking issues were already reshaping the humanitarian landscape across the Middle East and beyond, policy analyst Will Evans points out in that report. These problems fit into four thematic categories: displacement and protection; violations of international law; global cascading effects; and the collapse of the humanitarian response system itself.
The war began on Feb. 28, 2026. By the time USCRI released its update, the conflict had already produced what the organization described as the largest energy supply disruption in modern history, with consequences for food, fuel, and civilian protection that reached far outside the region.
The region was already home to an enormous displaced population before the first strike. USCRI reported that 24.3 million people were living in forced displacement across the Middle East when the war began, many of them in fragile conditions with limited legal protections. The Iran war has only added new layers of crisis on top of that foundation.
In Lebanon alone, more than one million people have been displaced by airstrikes and military operations that extended across Beirut, South Lebanon, and the Bekaa Valley. Around 189,000 individuals, the majority Syrian nationals alongside Lebanese citizens, crossed into Syria to flee the violence. That movement created what USCRI called a “double displacement” dynamic: people already displaced by previous conflicts were being forced to move again, with their options narrowing rather than expanding.
The situation facing Afghan nationals proved especially acute. Over the past year, Iranian authorities had pressured nearly two million Afghans to return to Afghanistan. That mass deportation effort now collided directly with a new wave of regional instability, leaving a population with nowhere safe to go caught between the pressures of two crises at once.
The report places the US directly in its aim for not operating under the obligations of international law. USCRI cited calls from UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk for the United States to conclude its investigation into the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ School in Minab, which occurred on Feb. 28, the first day of the war.
Reporting from CNN, BBC Verify, the New York Times, and Amnesty International has each, independently, attributed responsibility for the strike to the US based on the available evidence. No investigation has yet been completed.
On the institutional side, the US State Department announced the formation of a new humanitarian bureau in March 2026. The report noted it has not yet become operational, leaving a gap at a moment when coordination capacity was most urgently needed.
USCRI has documented several categories of conduct it described as clear violations of international humanitarian law, including intentional attacks on desalination plants and healthcare workers.
The situation inside Iran itself has remained largely invisible to outside observers. The country operates under a near-total internet shutdown, cutting off the civilian population from information about the conflict and cutting off journalists and monitors from the ability to document conditions on the ground.
The energy disruption produced consequences that extended well beyond the region’s immediate conflict zones. Roughly one-third of the world’s fertilizers travel through the Strait of Hormuz, exported from Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. Closed shipping routes had halted fertilizer movement, with cascading effects on global agricultural supply chains.
The World Food Program issued a warning in March that an additional 45 million people could be pushed into acute hunger worldwide. Sudan, South Sudan, Gaza, Yemen, and Mali were identified as countries at particular risk. The Dubai hub used by WFP to store high-density nutritious foods for children in Afghanistan, Gaza, Sudan, and other hunger-crisis countries is “severely constrained,” the report said.
Underlying all of the above was a structural problem that predated the war and has only worsened since it began.
The global humanitarian funding system was already underfunded before Feb. 28. The conflict has sharply increased the cost of response while simultaneously compressing the supply chains and logistics networks on which aid organizations depend. USCRI argues that policymakers should fund the humanitarian response, describing it as the fastest path toward shifting the engagement from active crisis management toward longer-term recovery. But first, the report says, the “most important action now is to deescalate the conflict before it spirals further out of control.”