Author | Mailin@AMZ123

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On February 28th, the US-Israeli coalition launched a "historic fury" air strike against Iran. With the first shot breaking the sky, it also announced that the Middle East - this "oil-rich" land of gold rush, has completely changed.

As of March 20th, the war has entered a white-hot stage, and many Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have been gradually involved in the conflict. For a time, the whole Middle East was in chaos and continuous artillery fire.

However, those burned by this post-war are not only the local Middle East but also the "money bags" of cross-border sellers. With the supply chain lifeline cut off and the market pattern changed, is the stormy Middle East still a gold rush land worth deep exploration for those going overseas?

Middle East E-commerce: From Blue Ocean to Powder Keg

As the e-commerce battlefields in Europe and America become increasingly fierce, emerging markets represented by the Middle East have begun to rise借乘势崛起。

It is young, rich and full of vitality. Under the right time, geographical advantages such as demographic dividends, consumption potential, and policy winds, this rich and wealthy land has become a must-win place for more and more people going overseas.

The Dubai E-commerce Report states that since 2022, the annual growth rate of online retail sales in the Middle East and North Africa has been about 11%, and it is expected that the market size will reach 57 billion US dollars by 2026.

However, there are also complex cultural environments and deep-rooted social contradictions here. It is like a powder keg that may explode at any time, and there are always endless conflicts and wars.

Therefore, with the outbreak of direct military conflict between the United States and Iran, it also means that the development rhythm of this once highly anticipated e-commerce hot land has been completely disrupted.

Logistics Lifeline Cut Off

Different from the past, this war has directly burned the logistics hubs on which the e-commerce industry depends for survival.

Firstly, core ports and air transport hubs have been shut down. As the largest and most important comprehensive port in the Middle East, Dubai's Jebel Ali Port has been completely shut down after being attacked, and a large number of goods have been backlog. In terms of air transport, the airspace of Iran, Iraq, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and other countries has been completely closed or severely restricted, and major regional hub airports such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha have been forced to stop flying.

More deadly is the "cut off" of the main artery of maritime shipping. The Strait of Hormuz, as the "throat of the Gulf", has a very important strategic and shipping status and is also the core sea passage for Chinese goods to the Middle East. Since Iran announced the blockade of the strait on February 28, core hubs in the Middle East such as the UAE's Jebel Ali Port and Saudi Arabia's Dammam Port have almost pressed the pause button, and container ships sailing from China to the Middle East are basically stagnant in the Indian Ocean.

In the face of this sudden crisis, a number of shipping giants have urgently taken countermeasures. Maersk issued a notice to customers on March 6, saying that the suspended routes include the FM1 route connecting the Far East and the Middle East, and the ME11 route connecting the Middle East and Europe. Previously, Maersk also announced the suspension of freight bookings from multiple Middle Eastern and Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Iraq, Bahrain and Oman.

As the situation intensifies, many container shipping companies have suspended navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and diverted ships to bypass the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa.

According to data from shipping data analysis company Xeneta, there are currently about 147 container ships staying in the Persian Gulf to avoid risks and wait. This situation is causing port congestion, transportation delays and rising freight rates, and gradually affecting the global market.

As shipping routes are forced to be interrupted, maritime costs have also skyrocketed and become uncontrollable. Data from the Shanghai Shipping Exchange shows that the freight rate of the China-Persian Gulf route has skyrocketed by more than 72% within a week. At the same time, shipping companies have imposed high peak season surcharges, and the war risk rate of the Persian Gulf route has soared from 0.25% to more than 50%.

Logistics is the lifeline of e-commerce, and this large-scale conflict directly cuts off the core logistics channels inside and outside the region, causing the "heart" of the supply chain to stop suddenly.

In just a few days, the Middle East e-commerce, which was once in a golden growth period, was suddenly covered with a thick shadow, and suddenly turned from a high-growth blue ocean to a high-risk halt.

Market Shrinkage and Structural Differentiation

As the US-Iran conflict intensifies, the Middle East e-commerce market is playing a song of ice and fire.

Cutting off the main artery of the supply chain is only the first step. Its long-term impact lies in shaking the foundation of the Middle East as a new blue ocean for e-commerce, leading to market shrinkage and structural differentiation, and at the same time increasing market uncertainty.

Data from the Middle East E-commerce Association shows that the large-scale escalation of the US-Iran conflict has led to a sharp decline of 30% in the overall order volume of cross-border e-commerce in the Middle East. From the demand side, local consumer confidence has been severely hit and shows structural differentiation. The willingness to purchase non-living necessities such as 3C electronics and fashion accessories has significantly decreased, and the expenditure focus has quickly shifted to living necessities such as food and daily necessities.

The cut-off of the supply chain lifeline is even more devastating. Affected by the logistics congestion in the Middle East, the operation of multiple e-commerce platforms is restricted, and the delivery time of goods sent to the Middle East has been significantly extended.

According to a report by logistics data platform 17Track, the estimated delivery time of Temu to the Middle East is up to 20 days; SHEIN has extended the delivery time from the previous 5 to 8 days to 8 to 10 days; On Amazon, the delivery time of some goods has been extended to 35 to 45 days, about 10 days longer than before the conflict.

Due to port closures, large-scale flight cancellations, and delays in last-mile delivery, local consumers' trust in e-commerce platform logistics has begun to collapse. Compared with the uncertainty of waiting for a long time after online shopping, they now prefer to choose to shop in physical stores where "money is paid and goods are delivered" at the same time.

In this situation, localized performance capabilities become the key to winning and losing for Middle Eastern sellers to resist risks. For sellers who have stocked up in local warehouses in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other countries in advance, they can still maintain normal supply in the short term, otherwise they will face the dilemma of stock shortage and order stagnation. But if the war continues to spread, large-scale stockouts will also be inevitable.

Not only that, this war has even burned the core infrastructure of e-commerce operations, causing platform service suspension and localized layout obstruction, further aggravating operational difficulties.

Among them, Amazon's three AWS data centers in the Middle East were attacked by drones, causing core cloud services to be interrupted, and Amazon's office in Dubai was also forced to close temporarily. Nearly 300,000 cross-border sellers face the risk of order cancellation and inventory backlog.

More importantly, the outbreak of the US-Iran conflict coincides with Ramadan in the Middle East, which is also the most important sales season for Middle Eastern sellers. However, the sudden change of the market has also caused a large number of sellers' stocking rhythm to be disrupted, goods to stagnate at ports and unable to clear customs, and thus miss the best node of the peak season.

Overall, there is a huge temperature difference inside and outside the Middle East e-commerce market at the current stage. The sudden outbreak of the war has greatly increased the operational uncertainty of a large number of cross-border sellers. In the short term, challenges such as stockouts, weak demand, and soaring costs are inevitable; in the long run, to achieve stable and sustainable growth, localized deep capabilities will be the most critical part.

Fire and Fury, Is Going Overseas to the Middle East Still a Good Business?

In the short term, going overseas to the Middle East will face extremely severe pain. Under the circumstances that infrastructure has been directly hit, logistics lifelines have been completely interrupted, and market demand has rapidly declined, the current Middle East is no longer the safe haven that can easily make money in the past, but a pressure cooker with greatly amplified risks and opportunities.

The continuous fermentation of the US-Iran conflict has led to multiple encirclements of Middle Eastern sellers in terms of funds, costs, profits, supply chains, etc. Order decline, inventory emergency, profit shrinkage, and lack of cash flow have become common phenomena.

But in the long run, the Middle East can still do it, but the rules of the game have changed. From the user side, consumer demand is still there, but it has become more cautious. According to data jointly released by Flowwow and Admitad, in the first half of Ramadan 2026, e-commerce GMV in the Middle East and North Africa increased by 21% year-on-year, and the number of orders increased by 18%.

The war did not stop Middle Eastern consumers from shopping, but the blasted data centers, blocked straits, interrupted routes, and lost customers jointly hindered the business connection between Chinese sellers and Middle Eastern consumers.

But this does not mean that the connection is completely cut off, it's just that the business logic of going overseas to the Middle East urgently needs to be changed.

The oil-rich Middle East was once one of the fastest growing markets for Chinese cross-border e-commerce. Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have become new holy lands for Chinese sellers to make gold relying on policy dividends and consumption potential, but market changes caused by wars are reshaping the industry's risk perception.

More and more sellers deeply realize that the Middle East market can still be laid out, but they must not put all their eggs in one basket. It is a high-risk strategy to focus business on one or two Gulf countries. Both market and supply chain construction need to diversify risks.

Secondly, localized logistics performance capabilities will determine the core competitive barrier. This conflict also makes cross-border sellers deeply realize that in an era of uncertainty in logistics, enterprises with local inventory and local performance capabilities show stronger anti-risk capabilities. In the future, the simple cross-border direct mail model may gradually give way to the in-depth layout of "overseas warehouses + localized operations". It can be foreseen that establishing a deep localized performance system will become a general trend.

Overall, the dividend period of globalization is being reshaped by geopolitical risks.

The recent situation in the Middle East has also sounded a heavy alarm for cross-border sellers.

Under the spread of war, the Middle East is no longer an adventurer's paradise full of gold, but a arena with extremely high requirements for professionalism, tenacity and strategic determination. In the short term, logistics interruption, cost soaring and market stagnation are realities that must be faced. But in the long run, the economic transformation needs of the Middle East are highly complementary to China's industrial advantages, and there are still huge structural opportunities for prepared enterprises.