Oil tops $100 as US and Iran trade tanker strikes at Hormuz

US Central Command said its forces destroyed five more Iranian oil tankers after missile attacks on a Navy warship². The BBC reported that four of the vessels hit were in the Gulf of Oman and linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, with another struck nearby¹. CENTCOM said one of the ships, the M/T Riesco, sank in the Gulf of Oman⁶. The US strikes were aimed at vessels intending to transit the strait².

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said its own strikes were retaliation for the US attack on five Iranian oil tankers, and that it had targeted US vessels and eight oil tankers in the Persian Gulf⁹. Iranian forces also attacked a US base in Jordan and ten ships near the Strait of Hormuz³. Tehran said the strait remains under its strong control, and treated the US attacks on tankers and commercial vessels as aggression⁸.

Why it matters to investors

Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose to $99.46 as CENTCOM confirmed the sinking⁶. It cleared the round number soon after: oil hit $100 a barrel for the first time since July¹, and Reuters reported crude topping $100 with equities sliding as tensions escalated⁷.

The physical market is tightening at the chokepoint itself. Six commodity vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, down from nine a day earlier and below the ten-day average of about twelve⁴. Al Arabiya reported the same count from the same tracking data⁵. The shortfall is in transits rather than in a formal closure, which is the distinction Tehran itself has drawn in describing its hold on the waterway⁸.

The pass-through to policy is immediate. The euro edged higher ahead of the European Central Bank’s decision on Thursday, with markets widely expecting a hike amid inflationary pressure⁷.

What to watch

Transit counts are the cleanest daily read on whether the disruption is easing or deepening⁴. A sustained shortfall against the ten-day average keeps a supply premium in the crude price without any formal closure of the waterway⁵.

The second variable is the exchange itself. Both sides have now hit shipping in consecutive rounds^2,9, and Iran has extended its targeting to a US base in Jordan³. Tehran’s framing – that the strait remains under its control rather than shut – points to interdiction rather than closure⁸.

The third is the width of the theatre. The US strikes reached vessels in the Gulf of Oman as well as ships bound for the strait^1,6, while Iran’s response ran from the Persian Gulf to Jordanian territory^3,9. Markets have so far read each round through the crude price rather than through the shipping data⁷.