How the US–Iran War Hit Pakistan: Fuel, Prices and PSX

On the morning of Saturday, 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran.

That evening, a litre of petrol in Pakistan cost Rs 258.17. Diesel was Rs 275.70. Brent crude had closed the day before at $72.48 a barrel.

Most of us went to sleep thinking it was someone else's war, far away. It was not. Within five weeks, petrol in Pakistan had reached a price no one had ever paid before.

What happened to fuel prices, step by step

Read the first and last rows again. Petrol is Rs 128 more per litre than on the day the war started. That is almost 50% more. Diesel is up Rs 121, or 44%.

The Rs 458 price lasted one day. The next day, the government cut petrol by Rs 80 by giving up part of its levy. Diesel stayed above Rs 520. But the damage was done in another way: that one day showed every Pakistani how fragile things really are.

Then there was hope. A ceasefire began on 8 April. On 17 June, the Islamabad Memorandum was signed in our own capital, and by late June petrol had fallen below Rs 300. For a few weeks, it felt like the worst was over.

On 8 July the ceasefire collapsed. Prices climbed again. And from 17 July, OGRA started changing prices every single day instead of every two weeks, so now the increases come quietly, a few paisa or a rupee at a time, and nobody makes headlines out of them.

Why fuel matters so much in Pakistan

In some countries, an oil shock means people drive a little less. In Pakistan, it touches everything, because almost everything here moves on fuel.

• We import most of our oil, and most of it comes from the Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz. That narrow strait was the centre of this war.
• We pay for it in dollars. So we get hit twice: once when oil goes up, and again whenever the rupee weakens.
• Diesel moves our food. Every truck that carries wheat, vegetables, milk and cooking oil from the fields to the cities runs on diesel. Tractors and tubewells on farms run on diesel too.
• Petrol moves our people. Millions of Pakistanis get to work on motorcycles. Rickshaws, vans and buses carry the rest.

When fuel goes up, it is not one price that rises. It is the price of the ride to work, the bread, the vegetables, the school van, and the delivery charge, all at once.

What it has done to ordinary lives

Here is what Rs 128 more per litre looks like for real people, based on the price on the day the war began and the price today:

• A motorcyclist riding 20 km a day to work uses about 11.5 litres a month. That is roughly Rs 1,480 more every month, the cost of a few days of groceries for a small family.
• A small car driven 30 km a day uses about 56 litres a month. That is about Rs 7,100 more every month, a real hole in any salaried family's budget.
• A loader or truck owner running on diesel pays Rs 121 more for every litre, and that cost does not stay with him. It reaches the shopkeeper, and then it reaches you.

You can see it in the official numbers too. Inflation in September 2026 was 10.3%, almost double the 5.8% of a year earlier. Transport costs rose 27.4% in a single year, the steepest rise of any category.

In March, the government closed schools for two weeks, sent half of its staff to work from home, moved offices to a four-day week, and cut fuel allowances on official cars by half. When a country has to close classrooms to save fuel, you know how serious it is.

But the real story is not in the statistics. It is the father who now leaves the bike at home twice a week and takes a crowded van. It is the mother who buys half a kilo less of everything. It is the student who skips a class because the fare went up again. None of this makes the news. All of it is happening.

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The stock market: where we were, where we are, and where we could have been

Where we were

Before the war, the Pakistan Stock Exchange was having one of its best runs ever. On 30 June 2025, the KSE-100 index stood at 125,627. By 27 February 2026, the last trading day before the war, it had climbed to 168,062. That is a rise of about 34% in eight months. In January it had even touched an all-time high above 191,000.

People who had never invested before were opening accounts. There was a real feeling that things were finally moving in the right direction.

What we became

On Monday, 2 March 2026, the first trading day after the strikes, the KSE-100 fell 16,089 points in a single day, closing at 151,973. That is a 9.6% drop, the largest one-day fall in the exchange's history. Trading had to be halted.

During the ceasefire, the market recovered strongly and was back around 181,000 by the end of June. When the fighting restarted in July, it fell again, losing more than 6,400 points in a single session.

On 16 October 2026, the KSE-100 closed at 166,420. Almost eight months after the war began, the market is still below the level it was at before the first missile was fired, and about 13% below its January high.

What could have been

Nobody can know this for sure, so treat this as an estimate, not a fact.

Before the war, the index was growing at more than 3% a month. Suppose it had slowed down to just 1% a month, a third of that pace, from 27 February. It would be at about 181,000 today, roughly 15,000 points higher than where it is.

That is not a fantasy number. In late June, when the Islamabad Memorandum made peace look possible, the market was right there. It shows what calm could have been worth.

The same goes for fuel. In January and February, with Brent near $70, petrol in Pakistan was between Rs 253 and Rs 266 a litre. Without the war, it is fair to think it would be somewhere in that range today, not Rs 386. For a family with one motorcycle, that is about Rs 1,400 a month. Over a year, it is more than Rs 16,000, money that could have gone to school fees, medicine or savings.

Where this leaves us

Pakistan did not start this war. We are not part of it. Yet in the space of a few months, we paid the highest fuel price in our history, saw the biggest one-day stock market crash we have ever had, and watched inflation climb back into double digits.

The prices today are lower than the worst days of April. But they are still far above where they were before 28 February, and with daily revisions, they now rise so quietly that it is easy to stop noticing. Our salaries notice. Our kitchens notice.

If you want to follow what happens next, we update today's petrol and diesel price every day and track Brent crude every 15 minutes. You can also see the full petrol price history, including every month of 2026.