food, medicines and appliances. The region’s biggest container port, Jebel Ali, which has a capacity for nearly 20m 20-foot equivalent units (teu) a year, sits inside the Gulf. Outside the strait, the largest is Jeddah, which can hold 7.5m teu. It was already running near full tilt before the war, says Alexis Ellender of Kpler, a data firm. So our analysis suggests that Iran will be able to weaponise Hormuz for some time—and monetise it. Gulf states’ varying exposure may mean they diverge in what they will tolerate to get their ships moving. Qatar has suggested that it could accept temporary fees; others have held a tougher line. But even the hawkish uae has softened: it is starting to trade with Iran again and their diplomats are talking. On August 5th an Iranian official said the regime had agreed on a transit route with Oman and urged “certain third parties” not to meddle. Assuming this gives Iran control of Hormuz, how much could it make? An Iranian mp claimed in June that the country was collecting $1.5m-2m per vessel transiting the strait. That implies takings of more than $35bn a year, assuming traffic at about 70% of pre-war levels. That figure is eye-popping—and implausible. Rates set at gunpoint, in a market with nowhere else to go, will not survive a deal allowing near-normal flows to resume. Draft legislation submitted to Iran’s parliament envisages rates based on cargo volume, value and vessel type, with one constraint: the charge must stay below the cost of the next-best alternative. Shahin Iraninejad of gssi, a sovereign-risk adviser, points out that another legislative proposal posits an average fee of €3 a tonne in Iranian waters and €2 in international waters. He puts expected future income at a more modest $2bn-3bn a year. As bypass capacity grows, that would drop—but not uniformly. Crude tankers can hope for a bargain soon; oil-product, lng and bulk carriers may face higher fees for years. Would such revenue flows be durable? As long as charges are predictable, easy to settle and below war-risk premiums, many shippers will probably pay, says Richard Meade of Lloyd’s List, a shipping journal. But that would change if vessels repeatedly cross the strait without paying Iran. A tension emerges: Iran needs peace with America for its fee regime to function. But it

will need to keep up attacks on disobedient tankers to ensure the fees are paid—which could make peace hard to maintain. On the brighter side, Iran might drop its fees faster than it needs to. Its strategic objective, says Mr Meade, appears to be maintaining market participation and reinforcing its role as gatekeeper, rather than maximising revenue. It wants something lasting: a governance system—whether a bilateral framework with Oman, a maritime-services architecture or a permit regime. The ease with which Iran seized its new weapon shocked its foes. Its grip on Hormuz looks set to outlast the war. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/08/03/how-long-can-iran- weaponise-hormuz

Middle East & Africa | Call to disarm More “peace” and more funerals in Gaza Despite Trump’s declarations, Gazans remain hostages to Israeli politics Aug 6th 2026 Ten months after the ceasefire that was supposed to end the war between Israel and Hamas, Gazans are still burying their dead. On August 4th a funeral was held in the Sabra district of Gaza city for 112 people killed by an Israeli air strike in November 2023. Thousands are still missing. Israel still does not allow heavy machinery, needed for excavating the ruins and rebuilding, into the strip. The slow pace at which bodies are being retrieved from beneath the rubble is a stark reminder of the lack of any progress in Gaza. An announcement from Donald Trump seemed to herald a breakthrough. On July 30th the American president proclaimed “a historic agreement for the

complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza”. It was, he said, “a monumental step towards lasting peace and security”. The president’s florid words were supported, more soberly, by the Board of Peace he founded in January to oversee implementation of the ceasefire. Its road map laid out steps for the disarmament of Hamas as well as a full Israeli withdrawal from the territory, the transfer of power from Hamas to a new Palestinian technocratic authority, and the creation of conditions for the reconstruction of the devastated coastal strip. The two belligerents were quick to push back against Mr Trump’s declaration. A senior Hamas official said the group was not disarming; it would simply be storing its weapons in Gaza under Palestinian supervision. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, took five days to respond to Mr Trump’s announcement. He then issued a statement which did not confirm that Israel had accepted the deal. He merely said that his government was “looking into it”. In the meantime, his officials had been briefing anonymously that Israel had no intention of ceasing its operations against Hamas in Gaza or withdrawing before Hamas’s military capabilities were fully dismantled. Israel then launched a flurry of air strikes in Gaza, killing 19 people in just 24 hours. There is a similar dynamic on each side. Both have been under pressure for months, Israel from America and Hamas from Egypt, which (along with Israel) controls access to Gaza, and its patrons, Qatar and Turkey. Both hope the other scuppers the deal. “No one is holding their breath,” says an Israeli official. “We don’t believe Hamas will ever disarm voluntarily.” Much remains unclear. The Board of Peace said a timetable for disarmament would be worked out within 14 days, but it did not specify when that period would begin and noted that it could be extended. Beyond that, how will the decommissioning of Hamas’s arsenal take place and who will be the members of a new International Verification Committee? What will be the sequencing between disarmament and further Israeli withdrawals? How will power be transferred from the current Hamas government to the new National Committee for Administration of Gaza (ncag)?

Under pressure from America, on July 26th the Israeli cabinet voted to allow the 15 ncag members to enter Gaza at last and the initial deployment of the International Stabilisation Force (isf). But the date for the NCAG’s arrival has not been set, nor is there much idea how it will wield power in Gaza. The same is true of the first 200 isf peacekeepers, expected from Morocco and Uganda. Israel is demanding that its troops be allowed to continue operating in areas where the isf is nominally in charge. This continues a pattern of obstruction by Israel’s government ever since Mr Trump presented his peace plan in October 2025, aimed at ending the Gazan war in which over 73,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed. Israeli forces have kept up their air strikes, albeit at a lower tempo than during the war, killing over 1,200 Gazans since the ceasefire, and have steadily encroached beyond the “yellow line”, the boundary between the half of Gaza controlled by Hamas and the half occupied by Israel. Gaza’s 2.1m inhabitants are now huddled in about a third of its total area. Around three- quarters are displaced, their homes either destroyed or in the Israeli occupation zone, or both. Israeli restrictions on supplies going into Gaza mean that no serious reconstruction has begun. If there is any glimmer of hope, it is that the argument in Israel about whether to keep the ceasefire is over. In recent months Israeli officials had talked up the prospect of another large-scale campaign in Gaza to enforce disarmament. Mr Trump’s renewed engagement has at least squelched those suggestions for the time being. “Any progress is going to be at a snail’s pace,” said a diplomat involved in negotiations. “That’s still better than the alternative.” Real change is unlikely until after Israel’s election on October 27th. Mr Netanyahu is under fire from the far-right ministers in his own cabinet, who want him to publicly reject the Trump plan, and from his opponents, who deride his failure to deliver his much-promised “total victory” over Hamas. Hostages to Israeli politics, Gazans will continue belatedly to bury their dead and wait for something better. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/08/06/more-peace-and-more- funerals-in-gaza

Middle East & Africa | Berry beautiful Forget gold and copper. Africa’s latest boom is in fruit A surge in fruit exports shows how high-value agriculture can spur industrialisation Aug 6th 2026 “IT’S A HIVE of activity,” says Alistair Campbell, observing the scene at his blueberry farm 40km outside Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. Hundreds of workers pick the fruit from the bushes, before carrying the bounty to a cold-storage facility. After sorting, the berries are flown to east Asia, where demand is high for the largest globules, or shipped to Europe. “We’re flat out,” says Mr Campbell, who used to captain Zimbabwe’s cricket team. “We could sell our crop five or six times over.” For once the colour associated with a boom in Zimbabwe is blue, not gold. This year Zimbabwean growers expect to export 12,000 tonnes of

blueberries, 40 times more than in 2017. “Every man and his dog is planting blueberries,” says one of the country’s most prominent bankers. The tiny fruit contains a bigger lesson. Manufacturing has struggled in sub- Saharan Africa: its share of output has been more or less flat for 15 years. That worries analysts who think African growth depends on Asian-style, export-oriented factories. Yet high-tech farms are in effect mini-factories, labour-intensive and linked to global supply chains. This “industrialisation of freshness”, in the words of Christopher Cramer, an academic, could be a boon for Africa—and force a rethink of what is meant by farming and manufacturing. Africa’s economic history has left policymakers with an ambivalent view of agricultural exports. Under colonial rule many countries exported just a single crop, a model that remained after independence. From 1966 to 1973 almost half of sub-Saharan African countries earned half their export revenues from a single commodity. When prices plummeted, economies crashed. That helps explain why many governments diverted resources from farms to half-baked industrial schemes. But in recent years African agribusinesses have responded to rising global incomes—and demand for fresh produce. The Africa Agriculture Trade