Iran Deputy Oil Minister says Iran we will respond immediately and appropriately to US threats against energy facilities

Rhetoric of this kind from Iranian oil officials has tended to surface whenever the US raises the prospect of strikes on energy infrastructure, and the historical pattern is escalation in language well ahead of escalation in barrels: actual sustained disruption to Gulf supply has been rare relative to the frequency of such threats. The transmission channel in past episodes has been the geopolitical risk premium in front-month crude, freight and war-risk insurance rates on Gulf loadings, and options skew rather than any immediate change in physical flows. The distinction that matters is between threats to Iran's own export infrastructure and threats to transit through the Strait of Hormuz, since the former trims a single country's supply while the latter implicates a large share of seaborne crude and products and has historically drawn a much larger premium. Deputy ministerial comments sit below supreme leader and IRGC statements in the hierarchy of signal; follow-ons worth noting are whether senior security officials echo the framing, any movement in tanker traffic or naval deployments, and whether US counterparts escalate their own language. Iranian crude already trades under sanctions at a discount through alternative channels, so the marginal risk is less to declared exports than to regional infrastructure.