Brent is up around 10% since talks with Iran collapsed and Hormuz traffic has slowed to a crawl. Across Europe and the United States, states are treating energy, munitions and deterrence as supply chains to be secured rather than markets to be trusted. The common thread is the pricing of risk.
The US military launched a fresh wave of strikes on Iran on Wednesday as President Donald Trump threatened to hit bridges and power plants next week absent talks, and Tehran threatened to block additional trade routes.
President Donald Trump threatened strikes on Iranian civilian targets as the United States resumed its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran fired on US bases in the region, sharply widening a confrontation that days ago centred on passage tolls.
Donald Trump says he has reinstated a US blockade on Iran in the Strait of Hormuz and will bill ships for safe passage, days after fresh strikes and an Iranian attack on a vessel in the waterway.
After a third consecutive night of strikes on Iran, Trump has floated a tolling scheme in the Strait of Hormuz that he says could raise nearly $200 billion a year. The war is becoming a US-run chokepoint that reprices global energy trade and puts every Gulf-dependent ally on notice.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Monday they struck US bases in multiple Middle Eastern countries in retaliation for American attacks, as Washington reported degrading Tehran's capacity to hit Hormuz shipping and Britain proscribed the IRGC.
President Trump said the US will 'keep' and 'probably run' the Strait of Hormuz after overnight airstrikes on Iran, turning a weekend exchange of fire into an open contest over the passage that carries a large share of the world's seaborne oil.
Iran has extended its retaliatory strikes to Oman, widening a Gulf-wide escalation as US-Iran talks to end the war remain unresolved and the Strait of Hormuz standoff resets to square one.
Six US soldiers died in a drone strike on Kuwait's Port Shuaiba as the United States bombed targets inside Iran and Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz again — a conflict now grounding Gulf aviation and rattling global markets.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says new US sanctions targeting a financier linked to Iran's Supreme Leader and Iran's shadow exchange houses violate the no-new-sanctions clause of the June 17 ceasefire memorandum, even as fighting itself has quieted since last week's strikes over Strait of Hormuz ship attacks.
The US-Iran ceasefire framework announced on June 15 promised an end to fighting on every front, including Lebanon. A week on, Hizballah's brinkmanship, jittery Gulf capitals, a slump in Hormuz shipping traffic and dueling claims about who actually won all point toward a truce that is thinner than the headline suggests.
The threatened 'big attack' is now a sustained campaign: US forces struck Iran for a second consecutive day, an Iranian official warned Gulf states that Tehran has 'no red lines', and the ceasefire's collapse is driving oil prices higher.