The protein system
Eight distinct protein systems sit under one climate. What they share is structural: land and water under stress everywhere, and food systems in the region's most populous members broken by war, sanctions and currency collapse.
The region is combined by population share: Iran accounts for 38.9 per cent, Iraq 19.6, Yemen 17.2, Syria 10.5, Jordan 4.9, Israel 4.2, Lebanon 2.5 and Palestine 2.2.[8][11] Iran and Iraq together determine well over half the score. Weighted instead by protein consumption, population multiplied by per-capita protein supply, the order is similar but not identical: Iran accounts for roughly 43 per cent of the region, Iraq 18, Yemen 11, Syria 11, Israel 8, Jordan 5, Lebanon 3 and Palestine 2.[8][11]
Per-capita protein supply spans a wider range than in any entity we have assessed: Israel 130.7 grams a day, Iran and Lebanon 79.6, Iraq 74.5, Jordan 71.1, Syria 70.6 and Yemen 45.0, against a world average of 92.5.[8] Yemen's figure has fallen from 56.1 in 2021, a 20 per cent decline in two years.[8] Six of the seven members covered by this FAO series sit below the world average; Palestine has no published figure.
Production diverges as sharply. Iran harvested 19.5 million tonnes of cereals in 2025 and still imported around 22 million tonnes, roughly 30 per cent above its five-year average.[1] At the other end, Syria produced 1.2 million tonnes,[3] Yemen roughly 400,000 tonnes against a 5.2 million tonne requirement,[4] Lebanon 90,000 tonnes,[5] Israel 60,000 tonnes of wheat against 2.3 million tonnes of consumption[6] and Jordan 30,000 against 1.065 million.[7]
The animal protein the region eats is poultry, eggs and dairy, and almost none of the grain that produces it is grown inside the region.
Durable domestic capacity: 28
Quantitative score 33, adjusted down 5 points
Capacity here is bimodal and, in most members, falling.
Iran and Iraq have real agricultural bases. Iran produced 12 million tonnes of wheat and 3.9 million tonnes of rice in 2025,[1] and Iranian Fisheries Organisation figures put capture and aquaculture output at 2.71 million tonnes, roughly double an independent World Bank aquaculture estimate.[26] Claims of Iranian dairy and poultry meat self-sufficiency circulate through state and trade media without a verifiable data year or independent series. Iraqi wheat, backed by state procurement at more than double the world benchmark price,[32] has covered domestic requirement for three to four seasons on the government's own account.[27][28] Israel is a third pattern: 99 per cent poultry self-sufficiency and roughly 2 billion eggs a year under quota, on grain that is 90 per cent imported.[23][6]
Everything below that line is degraded or destroyed. Syria's 2025 wheat output of 0.9 to 1.1 million tonnes stood against a 2.73 million tonne shortfall, after rainfall came in more than 50 per cent below the long-term average.[3][16] Roughly 75 per cent of Gaza's former cropland is destroyed or damaged.[30] Jordan's wheat covers under 3 per cent of consumption.[7]
We applied a downward adjustment of five points. FAO flags farmers' access to agricultural inputs in Iran as a concern for the coming season,[1] and the fertiliser shortfall lands during the winter wheat growth phase, propagating the loss into the 2027 harvest.[18] Iraq's claimed self-sufficiency was drawn against water reserves that had fallen to under 4 billion cubic metres by end-2025.[28] These are capacity losses already in train.
Resource headroom: 20
Quantitative score 24, adjusted down 4 points
This is the weakest pillar and the one with least prospect of improvement.
Six of the eight members hold under 1,000 cubic metres of internal renewable freshwater per person per year and five hold under 500, against a stress threshold of 1,700 and an absolute-scarcity threshold of 500: Yemen 55, Jordan 61, Israel 80, Palestine 165, Syria 318, Iraq 799, Lebanon 836 and Iran 1,435.[9] Arable land per person runs from 0.008 hectares in Palestine to 0.186 in Syria.[10]
Iran's headroom is already spent. Agriculture takes about 92 per cent of water withdrawals against a global average near 70 per cent, irrigation efficiency runs at roughly 33 per cent, between half and three-quarters of irrigated land is salt-affected at an annual cost of USD 1 to 1.8 billion, and twelve of thirty-one provinces are projected to exhaust their aquifers within fifty years.[25] With 46 per cent of cultivated area irrigated,[24] the water constraint binds directly on output.
We applied a downward adjustment of four points because the per-capita indicator measures internal resources and so flatters Iraq, whose 799 cubic metres per person is dominated by inflows from Turkey and Iran that Baghdad does not control and is visibly losing: reserves fell from roughly 60 billion cubic metres in 2020 to under 4 billion by end-2025, and the agriculture ministry halved the river-irrigated wheat area in response.[28] Iraq carries 19.6 per cent of the region's population.
Testing that reading against irrigation build-out, agricultural credit and land-use trend confirms it rather than overturning it in either direction. Land equipped for irrigation covers 46.7 per cent of regional cropland in 2000 and 50.9 per cent in 2024, a genuine but modest expansion, so the low score is not a case of crediting infrastructure that was never built.[47] Agricultural credit orientation sits below parity in every member with a series: Israel 0.45 to 0.49, Jordan rising from 0.27 to 0.41, Lebanon falling from 0.35 to 0.20, and Iraq more than halving from 0.68 to 0.29 over the same years its irrigated share of cropland fell from 78 to 65 per cent even as raw cropland expanded 20 per cent, capital and water intensity both thinning under an area gain drawn against the same depleting reserve already cited.[48] Yemen carries no credit series in any year. Regional arable land per person fell 36.3 per cent, 0.178 to 0.114 hectares, between 2000 and 2024, as population grew 61.3 per cent against arable land growth of only 2.7 per cent, worst in Palestine (down 67.5 per cent) and Yemen (down 64.3 per cent).[47][49] The current stock reading is the endpoint of that two-decade decline, not a favourable snapshot understating a recovery in train.
Israel alone has engineered headroom rather than inherited it, and that engineering stops at the farm gate: it grows no feed corn at all, on stated water constraints,[6] and the area it actually irrigates has fallen from 218,000 to 179,000 hectares against 306,000 hectares of equipped capacity since 2018, the same rationing showing up as a realised-use gap.[47]
Import exposure: 25
Quantitative score 22, adjusted up 3 points
Every member except Iraq is a structural net importer, and the region's supply concentrates on two axes that are both under fire in 2026.
Suppliers concentrate on Russia and the wider Black Sea. Some 70 to 80 per cent of Israel's wheat comes from Russia alone,[6] Jordan tenders across Romania, Bulgaria and Russia,[7] and Iran's incremental wheat is Russian.[1] Both Jerusalem and Amman intend to diversify, and both find Black Sea freight economics decisive against it.[6][7]
Routes concentrate on chokepoints. Between 85 and 90 per cent of Iran's bulk commodity imports normally land at Bandar Abbas and Imam Khomeini, both inside the Strait of Hormuz,[18] and FAO assessed in March 2026 that 20 to 45 per cent of key agrifood inputs depend on Hormuz passage.[29] Yemen's Red Sea ports and Jordan's single gateway at Aqaba sit on the Bab el-Mandeb approach, and no fuel at all reached Yemen's Red Sea ports in March 2026.[4]
Dependence ratios outside Iran and Iraq are severe: about 90 per cent of Israel's grain supply,[6] roughly 85 per cent of Yemen's food[13] and about 80 per cent of Lebanon's.[15]
We applied an upward adjustment of three points. Unlike the Gulf, this region has functioning land borders and they are carrying load: grain moves overland from Russia into Iran and from Turkey and Syria into Iraq while the Strait is closed,[21] and the Jordan-Syria corridor reopened for all goods in 2026.[7] Offsetting this, sanctions restrict Iran's payment channels, insurance and supplier set in a way no partner-concentration index captures, narrowing its effective diversification below its nominal diversification.
Upstream dependence: 26
Quantitative score 30, adjusted down 4 points
Feed is the binding upstream dependency and it is close to total.
Iran is forecast to import 11 million tonnes of maize in 2026/27 alongside 2 to 3 million tonnes of soybeans against total feed demand near 21 million tonnes,[1][18][19] and its livestock sector held 14 to 21 days of feed cover in early 2026, falling to 14 days by mid-March.[18] Israel grows no corn and imports 1.45 million tonnes, with about 80 per cent of its distillers grains and corn gluten feed from the United States alone.[6] Jordan imports 900,000 tonnes of barley and 750,000 tonnes of corn against 25,000 tonnes of domestic barley.[7]
Against that, the region holds a genuine fertiliser position. Iran is the largest urea exporter in the Gulf region on IFA estimates,[22] and Saudi Arabia and Israel together supply about 17 per cent of global phosphate fertiliser exports.[20] Iran and Iraq have sovereign energy for pumping, milling and cold chain.
We applied a downward adjustment of four points because that asset is simultaneously offline and unshippable. Some 35 per cent of global urea exports normally transit Hormuz,[20] only five fertiliser vessels had exited the Gulf since 28 February 2026,[21] and world urea rose about 26 per cent to USD 585 a tonne by March.[20] A region that exports nitrogen and cannot deliver it to its own fields is not upstream-secure, and Iran additionally imports aquaculture broodstock for want of hatchery capacity.[26]
Access and affordability: 50
Quantitative score 54, adjusted down 4 points
On the July 2026 FAOSTAT release of the FAO and World Bank affordability series, the share of the population unable to afford a healthy diet in 2024 runs from 2.3 per cent in Jordan and 14.3 in Palestine to 45.6 in Lebanon and 73.5 in Syria, with Israel at 22.7, Iraq 27.1 and Iran 35.7; no estimate of any kind exists for Yemen.[35] Weighted by population across the seven covered members, which hold 82.8 per cent of the region's people, that is 35.5 per cent, and Yemen's absence, 17.2 per cent of the region's population, flatters it.[35] Lebanon carries the sharpest deterioration on this measure, from 0.1 per cent in 2019 to 45.6 in 2024, as the currency collapse pushed the cost of a healthy diet from Int$ 1.88 to Int$ 6.45 per person per day.[35]
Syria rose from 41.0 per cent in 2019 to 73.5 in 2024, easing to 61.1 in the 2025 nowcast, and undernourishment there, 40.8 per cent on the 2023 to 2025 average, is the region's worst outcome check outside Yemen; child stunting of 23.5 per cent confirms a chronic rather than a purely price-driven problem.[35][36] Iran's 35.7 per cent against Israel's 22.7 shows that the region's largest domestic production base does not by itself buy diet affordability, and Israel's undernourishment (under 2.5 per cent) and food inflation (1.6 per cent) are the strongest readings in the region.[35][36][39] Jordan is the one clean upper-tier reading, 2.3 per cent unaffordability on a healthy-diet cost of Int$ 3.37, and it does not settle the pillar for Jordan: undernourishment of 12.2 per cent sits well above what an affordability share that low would imply.[35][36]
Price volatility spans the widest range of any indicator here: Iran's food inflation reached 105 per cent in February 2026 against Jordan's 0.37 and Iraq's 2.50, Syria ran at 22 per cent in April 2026, and Lebanon has averaged nearly 70 per cent since 2009 with an all-time high of 483 per cent in January 2022.[37][38][40][41][42] Physical access is where the affordability data itself understates the crisis: Yemen's absence from every series reflects the data blackout already documented under shock endurance,[13] and Palestine's national figure, though it has more than doubled since 2022, cannot reach Gaza, where three-quarters of former cropland is destroyed and 77 per cent of the population sat in IPC Phase 3 or worse in December 2025.[17][30]
We applied a downward adjustment of four points because that data blackout runs one way: Yemen carries 17.2 per cent of the region's population with no CoAHD, undernourishment or current price series at all, and Palestine's blended figure cannot reflect Gaza's collapse. Both gaps understate deprivation, and active conflict is degrading data reliability for both members.
Shock endurance: 29
Quantitative score 32, adjusted down 3 points
Endurance diverges more within this region than any other pillar, and it is where the gap to the Gulf is decisive: the difference is capital rather than production.
Jordan and Iraq hold the deepest grain cover in the index. Jordan's MOITS reported about ten months of wheat and seven and a half of barley in March 2026, behind 2.31 million tonnes of storage that would support more than sixteen months if fully used, with bread prices frozen through December 2026.[7] Iraq's reserves were assessed at roughly 14.5 months behind a Public Distribution System delivering subsidised flour nationally,[28] and February 2026 flour and rice prices were 6 and 8 per cent below a year earlier.[2]
Israel buys endurance rather than storing it. Wheat stocks of about 366,000 tonnes cover under two months of consumption,[6] but GDP per capita of USD 60,337[11] and a functioning private import trade have kept supply intact, and poultry and eggs met domestic demand throughout active war.[6]
Below that line there is very little. Iran holds 7 to 8 million tonnes of operational grain inventory against 1.4 million tonnes of monthly wheat consumption,[18] which reads as five months of bread and three weeks of animal protein, and its retail wheat flour price is up about 170 per cent year on year on GDP per capita of USD 3,924.[1][11] That is a system transmitting the shock to households rather than absorbing it.
Crisis purchasing power scores 42, and it mirrors the same divide rather than closing it. Israel holds 15.8 months of import cover on an A (S&P) rating, Baa1 negative at Moody's, with functioning capital-market access, and Iraq holds 11.2 months on oil-revenue fiscal space; Jordan holds 7.8 months on a BB-/Ba3 rating.[43][44][45] Lebanon's superficially comparable 13.6 months sits behind a sovereign default, Fitch's Restricted Default and Moody's C, that has closed capital-market access since 2020,[43][46] and Palestine holds 1.9 months with no independent currency and a fiscal position dependent on Israeli-collected clearance-revenue transfers.[43] Iran, Syria and Yemen report no reserves data at all, under sanctions, post-conflict transition and conflict respectively. Iran alone carries 43 per cent of the region's protein consumption and its purchasing power is opaque and sanctions-constrained, alongside Syria and Yemen's complete absence of reserves data, so this component stays close to neutral even though three individual members show genuine financial firepower. The indicators put the pillar at 32.
We applied a downward adjustment of three points. Across roughly a quarter of the region's protein consumption, humanitarian assistance substitutes for domestic endurance and is being withdrawn: WFP support in Houthi-controlled Yemen has been paused since September 2025, affecting 9.5 million people,[13] and about 12 million Syrians have no planned assistance, with rations covering 32 per cent of minimum calories where delivered.[14] Donor-funded buffers are not sovereign endurance. Partly offsetting, Iran's system has absorbed four decades of sanctions without structural collapse and Israel demonstrated wartime continuity, both documented shock performance.
Trajectory
Three things would change this picture, and only one of them is in the region's hands.
The first is water governance, the only durable lever. Iraq's halving of river-irrigated wheat area and mandate for drip and sprinkler systems[28] and Syria's 2026 to 2030 agricultural strategy[34] are the correct instruments, and neither is funded at the scale of the deficit. Iran's 92 per cent agricultural water share at 33 per cent efficiency[25] is the largest recoverable resource in the region, and self-sufficiency policy is what prevents its recovery.
The second is reserve depth, which is already improving. Jordan's Qatraneh expansion, Israel's Haifa terminal and stock-reporting law and Iraq's PDS-backed reserve point the same way, deliberately: Jordan's own rationale cites the risk of maritime disruption extending transit times.[7] Reserve depth buys time without buying sovereignty, which in a region with this little headroom is rational.
The third is the war, which sets the near-term path. While Hormuz is closed, Iran's protein system runs on a diverted trickle through Chabahar[21] and its fertiliser plants cannot supply its own fields, pointing to a weaker 2027 harvest regardless of rainfall.[18] Reopening would restore Iran's imports and its urea exports at once, worth several points on imports and upstream, and would do nothing for Yemen, Syria or Gaza, where the constraint is not the Strait.
We expect the regional score to fall rather than rise in PSI 2027. The recovery signals, Syria's appreciating pound,[14] Iraqi dam and reservoir storage recovering from about 5 billion to about 34 billion cubic metres over the 2025/26 wet winter[33] and Yemen's rial appreciating 55 per cent,[4] are small against a fertiliser shortfall entering the 2027 crop and a humanitarian budget in retreat.
Country notes
Iran (about 43 per cent of regional protein consumption, and the entity that sets the score). Largest real production base, most exposed logistics: 19.5 million tonnes of cereals in 2025,[1] 85 to 90 per cent of bulk imports through Hormuz ports and 14 to 21 days of feed cover,[18] 170 per cent wheat flour inflation,[1] and the Gulf's largest urea export position, currently unshippable.[22]
Iraq (about 18 per cent). The only member with genuine cereal self-sufficiency, claimed for a fourth year on a 5 million tonne crop against FAO's 4.4 million tonne estimate,[27][2] behind roughly 14.5 months of grain cover;[28] the constraint is water it does not control.[28]
Yemen (about 11 per cent). The floor of the index: roughly 400,000 tonnes of cereals against a 5.2 million tonne requirement,[4] 85 per cent of food imported,[13] 5.0 million people (47 per cent) in IPC Phase 3 or worse in March to May 2026,[12] and the region's lowest water and protein supply.[9][8]
Syria (about 11 per cent). The sharpest collapse in the index: cereals 1.2 million tonnes in 2025, more than 60 per cent below average, against 3 million tonnes of forecast wheat imports and acute foreign-exchange constraints;[3] twelve million people have no planned assistance,[14] while an appreciating pound is the first improvement in over a decade.[14]
Israel (about 8 per cent). Richest member at USD 60,337 per capita[11] and among the most import-exposed anywhere: 90 per cent of grain imported, 70 to 80 per cent of wheat from Russia alone, no corn grown against 1.45 million tonnes of imports;[6] against that, 99 per cent poultry self-sufficiency[23] and wartime continuity on under two months of wheat cover.[6]
Jordan (about 5 per cent). Effectively no production and the best reserve posture in the index: ten months of wheat, seven and a half of barley and 2.31 million tonnes of storage,[7] on 61 cubic metres of renewable water per person;[9] the weaknesses are a single gateway at Aqaba and the reserve as a target, a silo-system cyberattack having been thwarted on 3 March 2026.[7]
Lebanon (under 3 per cent). Structurally the least prepared importer: 90,000 tonnes of cereals in 2025, half the five-year average,[5] roughly 80 per cent of food imported, and Beirut's silos destroyed in 2020 and never replaced, so wheat arrives just-in-time with no buffer;[15] about 874,000 people were in IPC Phase 3 or worse over the 2025/26 winter.[31]
Palestine (about 2 per cent). No sovereign protein system in either territory: Gaza's December 2025 IPC analysis put 1.6 million people, 77 per cent of the population, in Phase 3 or worse, famine having been declassified after the October ceasefire,[17] with 75 per cent of former cropland destroyed or damaged[30] and the region's lowest water and arable land per person.[9][10]