Israel's Bromine Dominance: How Middle East Conflict Threatens the Global Supply of Memory Semiconductors

Summary

While global attention has focused on helium shortages stemming from the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, a far more critical and underreported vulnerability exists in the bromine supply chain, which is essential for manufacturing DRAM and NAND flash memory chips that power virtually all modern computing devices. South Korea, home to the world's dominant memory chip producers, sources 97.5% of its bromine imports from Israel, creating an extraordinarily concentrated single point of failure in the global semiconductor supply chain. Israel's ICL Group extracts bromine from the Dead Sea, but Iranian ballistic missile strikes on the Negev region have placed this critical infrastructure within direct range of attack, with impacts landing within 35 kilometers of ICL's production complex. Unlike many commodity shortages, this one cannot be resolved through market substitution or rapid capacity expansion, as bromine already processed for industrial uses cannot be repurified to semiconductor-grade specifications, and building new conversion infrastructure takes years. A successful disruption of Israeli bromine production would trigger an immediate and cascading global shortage affecting everything from consumer electronics to military systems, with no existing policy framework or alternative supply chain capable of absorbing the impact in the near term.