The day the fault lines cracked: October 7’s aftershocks travelled from Israel and Gaza to Iran, Red Sea and $100 oil

A passenger jet carrying more than 170 people was flying towards Tel Aviv. Somewhere over Saudi Arabia, one of the men trusted to fly it allegedly attacked the captain with an emergency crash axe.

The aircraft plunges. Passengers and crew scramble to overpower him. Another pilot eventually takes control.

Everyone makes it out alive.


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That was flydubai flight FZ1073 last week. UAE authorities have called the incident a "terrorist attack". Israeli officials later told Reuters that the co-pilot allegedly planned the attack before joining the airline, while another source briefed on the UAE investigation said he intended to crash the aircraft into Ben Gurion Airport.

The investigation is still underway. No evidence made public has linked the alleged plot to Hamas or to October 7, 2023.

However, Israel is a day away from marking three years since Hamas-led militants crossed out of Gaza and launched an attack that killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies cited by Reuters.

What followed has lasted three years and travelled much further than Gaza.

Tens of thousands have been killed. Cities have been reduced to rubble. Ships have abandoned one of the world's busiest trade routes. Israel and Iran have gone from fighting largely through proxies and covert operations to firing directly at each other. American forces have struck Iranian nuclear sites. Oil has crossed $100 a barrel.

A war that started along a strip of land on the Mediterranean eventually reached the world's shipping lanes, energy markets and major capitals.

October 7, 2023

It began on a Saturday morning.

Hamas-led militants broke through the Gaza border into southern Israel, attacking communities, military positions and the Nova music festival.

By the end of the attack, about 1,200 people had been killed. Another 251 were dragged back into Gaza as hostages: civilians and soldiers, children and elderly people, Israelis and foreign nationals.

For Israel, October 7 became the deadliest day in the country's history and exposed a security failure that would haunt its politics and military establishment for years.

Israel responded by going to war in Gaza.

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By October 2026, about 74,000 Palestinians had been killed in the Israeli campaign, according to Gaza health authorities, whose figures are cited by Reuters and AP. The health ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its overall count.

Israel says it targets Hamas and seeks to minimise civilian casualties. It has repeatedly accused Hamas of operating among civilians and using civilian infrastructure for military purposes. Hamas has denied some of those allegations.

Much of Gaza was devastated. Homes disappeared, hospitals struggled to function and most of the territory's population was displaced during the fighting.

Then came another enemy: hunger.

In August 2025, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the global hunger monitor used by UN agencies and aid groups, determined that famine was occurring in parts of Gaza. It estimated 514,000 people were experiencing famine conditions.

Israel rejected the finding as false and biased.

By then, however, Gaza was no longer the only place living with the consequences of October 7.

The war crossed the border

On October 8, 2023, Iran-backed Hezbollah began firing at Israeli military positions from Lebanon, saying it was acting in support of Hamas.

For months, Israel and Hezbollah traded fire across the border. Then the conflict widened dramatically.

Your package from Asia to Europe suddenly had a longer journey

That same year, the Houthis in Yemen entered the conflict from the other end of the Arabian Peninsula.

The Iran-backed group began attacking vessels in the Red Sea, saying it was acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

That mattered well beyond the Middle East.

The Red Sea leads to the Suez Canal, one of the shortcuts that keeps global commerce moving. Shut or threaten that route and ships travelling between Asia and Europe have an unpleasant alternative: sail all the way around Africa.

That is exactly what major shipping companies began doing.

Journeys became longer. Ships burned more fuel. Freight and insurance costs rose. Delivery schedules changed.

Suddenly, an attack that began at the Gaza border was being felt in global supply chains.

Israel and Iran step out of the shadows

Israel and Iran had been enemies for decades, but much of their confrontation played out indirectly: through covert operations, cyberattacks and armed groups backed by Tehran.

That barrier began to crumble after October 7.

Iran fired hundreds of drones and missiles directly at Israel in April 2024 following a strike on Tehran's diplomatic compound in Damascus that Iran and Syria blamed on Israel. Israel later retaliated.

Then came June 2025.

Israel struck Iranian military and nuclear targets during a 12-day war. Iran responded with waves of missiles and drones.

And then the United States joined in.

American forces bombed Iranian nuclear facilities before a US-brokered ceasefire ended that round of fighting.

A conflict that began with Hamas gunmen entering southern Israel had, less than two years later, helped push Israel and Iran into direct war and drawn the world's most powerful military into the confrontation.

Enter Donald Trump

Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 with Gaza still unresolved.

Within weeks, he stunned allies and adversaries by proposing that the United States take over Gaza and redevelop it after Palestinians were resettled elsewhere. Arab governments rejected the idea.

His administration then pursued talks over Iran's nuclear programme while simultaneously trying to secure a Gaza settlement.

In September 2025, Trump won Benjamin Netanyahu's backing for a 20-point Gaza proposal. Israel and Hamas subsequently agreed to its first phase, producing a ceasefire, hostage releases, the freeing of Palestinian prisoners and an initial Israeli military withdrawal.

Trump travelled to Israel the following month and addressed the Knesset.

For a moment, the Middle East appeared to have stepped back from the edge.

It hadn't.

Then came the oil shock

By 2026, the US and Israel were again at war with Iran.

This time, one of the world's most important pieces of water was caught in the middle.

The Strait of Hormuz is narrow enough to look almost insignificant on a world map. Economically, it is anything but. Roughly a fifth of global oil consumption traditionally passes through the waterway.

Disrupt it and the effects don't stay in Tehran, Tel Aviv or Washington.

They reach petrol pumps.

Iran's effective blockade of Hormuz forced Gulf producers to find alternative export routes. Tankers faced sharply higher insurance and freight costs. Governments released emergency oil reserves.

Saudi Arabia moved crude through its East-West pipeline towards the Red Sea.

Then that escape route came under pressure too.

Houthi attacks on Saudi oil tankers in July helped push Brent crude above $100 a barrel as markets contemplated something once difficult to imagine: disruption simultaneously threatening both of the Middle East's major maritime energy routes.

Reuters reported that tanker freight rates on some Middle East-to-Asia routes jumped from around $30,000 to as much as $1.2 million a day.

At that point, October 7 and it’s aftershocks had entered shipping bills, inflation calculations and energy prices.

One day, three years of aftershocks

It would be too simple to say October 7 created every conflict that followed.

Israel and Iran were enemies long before 2023. Hezbollah's confrontation with Israel goes back decades. Yemen's war produced the Houthis long before Gaza returned to the centre of global attention. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself stretches back generations.

But October 7 struck those fault lines.

It shattered Israel's sense of security and triggered a war that devastated Gaza. Hezbollah opened another front. The Red Sea became dangerous for commercial shipping. Israel and Iran began attacking each other directly. Washington found itself pulled back into another Middle Eastern war. Hormuz became a threat to the world's oil supply.