Pharmaceutical supply chains get tangled in war with Iran

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Hill

03/29/26 2:00 PM ET


As President Trump’s war in Iran rages on, it’s posing a growing threat to the pharmaceutical supply chain and risks spiking the prices of many drugs, particularly those that depend on petrochemicals. The war in Iran and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz have caused energy prices to jump and disrupted supply chains for a range of industries.

While the Middle East is not a major pharmaceutical producer like China or India, there are still products that originate from the region, and many drugs rely on petrochemicals to be made. “If the instability really persists, you’ll probably see lead times, transportation costs that can impact direct items that we need for our medicines, including the key starting materials into active pharmaceutical ingredients,” Gerren McHam, vice president of external affairs at the API Innovation Center, told The Hill.

The U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) issued a risk assessment report of the Middle East conflict, finding that the impact is currently limited. The region is responsible for only 0.3 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) production and 0.6 percent of oral solid dose production, with most of this concentrated in Jordan and Israel.

There are, however, a handful of drugs that those two countries have a significant hand in. Jordan produces about half of the world’s amoxicillin oral suspension and the same amount of API for etomidate, a fast-acting anesthetic. Seventy-three percent of API for flumazenil, a medication used to reverse the effects of benzodiazepines, is produced in Israel and Jordan.

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5805149-iran-war-pharmaceutical-supply-chain/

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Jordan produces about half of the world’s amoxicillin oral suspension

And THAT is huge.

I know Teva is Israel's big pharma (mostly generics) company with manufacturing globally. But I expect some impact to them as well.

[OC375]

1. War Resistance

Countries are probably going to start rethinking manufacturing and warehousing to be more resilient to global disruptions. JIT deliveries of anything presume few disruptions, and if something takes 3 months to get to you... Well, when you pause it, it can also take 3 months to begin arriving again, also assuming no other disrupted industries are competing for the same dock/ports to offload cargo. It also presumes general peace and safe passage everywhere on the seas, which is abnormal and relatively rare historically.

Short term hardships aside, global trade will fundamentally change in ways way beyond competing tariffs and boycotts.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. We saw similar happen during COVID

and changes were and still are underway after dealing with that.

In the past, there was more thought put into risk and mitigation with the addition of some redundancy. But then in the quest to maximize profits, they chose to accept "single points of failure" as "the cost of doing business".

[nitpicked]

3. I suspect some will have to revisit "economic order quantity" and "safety stock"

Remember those ideas?

[WestMichRad]

4. Many if not most pharmaceuticals are manufactured using organic solvents and other materials...

… sourced from oil. Material and production costs are inevitably increasing as the price of oil rises, and manufacturers aren’t going to eat those inflated costs, regardless of where they’re made.

[LeftInTX]

5. Teva is pretty big in the US