Pro­longed dis­rup­tion of en­er­gy sup­plies from the Mid­dle East due to the Iran war would deal a se­vere blow to the glob­al econ­o­my, send­ing some coun­tries in­to re­ces­sion and spread­ing in­fla­tion and high­er un­em­ploy­ment, the Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co­op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment said in a re­port Wednes­day.

Hard­est hit would be Asian economies that de­pend on crude oil, fu­el and nat­ur­al gas from the Per­sian Gulf, sup­plies that have been large­ly choked off by the clo­sure of the Strait of Hor­muz due to the risk of Iran­ian at­tack. And poor­er coun­tries where peo­ple spend more of their in­comes on fu­el and food would al­so be se­vere­ly af­fect­ed, the OECD said.

But the con­se­quences of sharply high­er en­er­gy prices and in­fla­tion would be felt around the world. Glob­al growth would slump to lev­els not seen ex­cept for ma­jor set­backs like the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis and re­ces­sion of the late 2000s. Un­der the OECD’s pro­longed dis­rup­tion sce­nario, glob­al growth slows from 3.4% last year to 2.1% this year and 1.8% in 2027, po­ten­tial­ly push­ing some economies in­to or close to re­ces­sion.