When two sides go to war, expecting a deal after the first negotiation was always going to be optimistic. We do not know what was said behind closed doors, but the US threat to close the Strait of Hormuz looks as much like a message to China as it does to Iran. At the very least, it raises the stakes well beyond the region itself. Discounted Iranian oil, increasingly settled outside the Dollar system, has become a quiet but important dynamic. Threatening that flow is not just

For investors, the war in Iran has been a disaster. Far from delivering a decisive blow through an extensive bombing campaign, Iran appears more entrenched than ever. It retains significant influence over the Strait of Hormuz, and that chokehold on energy could tighten further if tensions spill into the Bab al-Mandeb strait. Natural gas markets are under even greater strain, with LNG flows harder to reroute and increasingly vulnerable to shocks. Fertiliser prices are surging

You can’t win a game of chicken against someone with nothing to lose. Iran is facing an existential threat and has spent four decades preparing for asymmetric warfare. It appears to have neither the intention to de-escalate nor the incentive to stop targeting the Gulf’s exposed energy infrastructure. That reality seems to have finally sunk into financial markets last week. Oil prices are getting painfully comfortable above $100 a barrel. Equities are drifting towards correcti

It is fair to say that of all the available options for dealing with Iran, the current path must rank among the least attractive. Diplomacy was messy, containment imperfect, and strategic ambiguity uncomfortable. Instead, President Donald Trump appears to have kicked a hornet’s nest and now seems surprised that Iran can sting the world where it hurts. Iran does not need to win a conventional war to create significant disruption. It merely needs to make the environment unstabl