Nearly one year after the Trump administration spearheaded a global cutback in foreign assistance, beleaguered aid groups are now scrambling to respond to the humanitarian fallout of the widening war against Iran.
The U.S.-Israel war on Iran has reverberated across the Middle East and sent shock waves rippling across global supply chains and markets. As the war continues with no signs of ending, aid workers and humanitarian organizations are increasingly sounding the alarm on how the conflict is driving mass displacement and straining relief efforts and health systems.
“I do think this is a moment of grave peril right now,” Tom Fletcher, the United Nations aid chief, said at a press briefing at the U.N. headquarters earlier in March.
“We’re seeing these crises escalate rapidly with consequences that are out of control for those instigating the conflict, and we’re seeing increasing linkages between these different humanitarian crises—none of them good,” he said.
The fighting is deepening humanitarian crises and intensifying pressures on already-overstretched aid agencies in the region. In Iran alone, there had reportedly been more than 1,300 deaths and 9,000 injuries by March 11, according to the World Health Organization; the Lebanese Health Ministry estimated on March 16 that at least 886 people had been killed and more than 2,000 injured as the war spread to Lebanon.
Even before the war, Iran was home to one of the world’s biggest refugee populations, particularly for people forcibly displaced from Iraq and Afghanistan, and fears of a potential migration crisis have only intensified in recent weeks. The United Nations estimates that between 600,000 and 1 million Iranian households—or up to 3.2 million people—have now been displaced. Many of those people are fleeing Tehran and urban hubs in search of safety in more rural areas or in the north of the country.
The war has also strained Iran’s medical infrastructure, further limiting vulnerable communities’ options. U.S.-Israeli attacks on the country have hit at least 13 hospitals and other health facilities, according to the World Health Organization, forcing some medical centers to evacuate. Other civilian sites have also come under fire: beyond hospitals, U.S. and Israeli strikes have also hit sporting centers and schools, including one strike that killed at least 175 people, most of whom were children. And with the country’s ongoing government-imposed internet blackout—which entered its 17th day on March 16—human rights groups fear that civilians are being left in the dark about evacuation orders and airstrike alerts.
In nearby Lebanon, where the war has spread amid continued clashes between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, humanitarian conditions are also dire. Aid agencies had already been operating across Lebanon, where there has been a massive displacement crisis as a result of a long-standing Israeli military campaign targeting Hezbollah forces.
But the situation has worsened in the past two weeks as the conflict has intensified. Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 30 medical workers and injured 51 more since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
As Lebanon’s health systems have come under attack, the United Nations estimates that 815,000 people in the country have been displaced since Israeli forces started to respond to Hezbollah rocket fire on March 2, with more than 100,000 people displaced in just a single day. At least 200,000 of those displaced are children.
“What we see here is that lives have been upended on a massive scale,” Karolina Lindholm Billing, the U.N. refugee agency’s representative in Lebanon.
Aid groups are working to respond. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, for example, has launched an emergency appeal for more than $50 million to boost operations in Iran; Oxfam, the International Rescue Committee, and the U.N. World Food Program have all rushed to scale up their responses in Lebanon.
In Lebanon, the United Nations and its partners have supplied about 500,000 hot meals, 270,000 liters of bottled water, and 123,000 liters of fuel, as well as hygiene and household supplies, Fletcher, the U.N. aid chief, told the U.N. Security Council in a briefing on Wednesday.
Speaking to the Security Council, Fletcher urged greater funding from member states to support an expanded humanitarian response. “[W]e are seeing staggering amounts of money—reportedly a billion dollars a day—spent on destruction, while some politicians boast of cutting aid to those in gravest danger globally,” he said. “With a fraction of this money, we can save millions of lives globally.”
Tania Baban, a doctor and the Lebanon country director for MedGlobal, an international humanitarian nongovernmental organization, said that the sheer speed of the displacement in Lebanon has made it difficult for aid agencies to meet the needs of vulnerable communities.
“What makes this a little bit different and more alarming is maybe the pace at which this is unfolding,” she said. “These rapid displacements that we saw in the last week have been so massive and quick that the response is not being able to cater as quick enough to the needs of the displaced population.”
As Iran has launched attacks across the region and hit civilian areas, more than a dozen countries have now been impacted by the widening war, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Azerbaijan. But several of those countries—such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia—have been able to intercept most incoming drones and ballistic missiles, resulting in fewer overall casualties.
The civilians who have been killed by strikes across the Persian Gulf have largely been migrant workers, the New York Times reported. As of March 10, Iranian strikes in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain have killed at least 12 civilians, according to the Times’ calculations—11 of whom were foreign nationals.
The World Food Program said that the war has already had “immediate food security impacts” in the Middle East. In Gaza, flour prices have already skyrocketed by 270 percent. As fertilizer prices have spiked due to the ongoing uncertainty in the Strait of Hormuz, so too have wheat prices—further intensifying pressures on the region’s most vulnerable communities at a time when aid agencies are already overstretched.
Aid agencies are scrambling to scale up their operations as they reel from a difficult year that saw many of the world’s biggest foreign aid donors sharply cut funding, including the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimated in 2025 that global development aid would plummet by 9 percent to 17 percent that year, building on a 9 percent drop in 2024.
Those cuts have reverberated across the sector. “We’ve had to scale back our programs in many countries, and those impacts are being felt acutely—and even more acutely when you have a crisis like this,” said Kelly Razzouk, who served at the White House National Security Council under the Biden administration and is now at the International Rescue Committee.
“We’re obviously forced to do more in this crisis, with a lot less,” Razzouk said. “This is a huge concern for us right now.”
Some countries are stepping up their commitments. The European Union has committed more than $500 million in humanitarian aid to Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, while Canada has pledged nearly $30 million in assistance to Lebanon. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot announced last week that France will scale up its humanitarian aid to Lebanon as well, tripling the volume to 60 metric tons.
But so long as the Iran war continues, it’s not just humanitarian operations in the Middle East that could be impacted. The World Health Organization (WHO) said that the conflict has forced it to suspend operations at its Dubai logistics hub for global health emergencies. Last year, that hub handled 500 emergency orders for 75 countries, according to WHO officials, who said that the latest disruption is blocking $18 million worth of humanitarian health supplies from reaching their intended destinations.
Fletcher, the U.N. aid chief, warned last week that disrupted navigation through the Strait of Hormuz could have “immense” fallout for the organization’s humanitarian work.
“When routes close and costs surge, the help we can deliver shrinks — and the people who need it most are the ones who lose it first,” he said in a statement. “So, my message to the parties to the conflict and all those with influence over them is simple: humanitarian cargo must be allowed to pass safely through the Strait of Hormuz.”
