Global oil benchmarks surged past 2022 levels this morning following reports that U.S. Central Command had successfully printed a briefing on Iran strike options. Traders are hastily pricing in the likelihood that the incoming president will maintain focus long enough to authorize a targeted regional conflagration.
VIENNA — The smell of stale espresso and the rhythmic hum of Bloomberg terminals settled over the OPEC secretariat's press room on Tuesday. Brent crude leapt to its highest price since 2022 following reports that U.S. Central Command has finalized a portfolio of short and powerful military options against Tehran, formatted specifically for an audience of one.
We initially modeled crude at eighty dollars a barrel, but that assumed the Pentagon was using standard text-heavy bullet points. Once we learned the Iran strike options were presented as a series of high-contrast glossy photographs, we had to adjust our forecasts for a near-certain regional war.
The market rally comes despite reassurances from Washington that the briefing on Iran's nuclear facilities was kept strictly under three pages. Traders in London and Singapore spent the afternoon desperately shorting shipping conglomerates, quietly calculating whether the Strait of Hormuz could remain operational if the CENTCOM slide deck featured too many capitalized verbs.