Iranian Defence Minister warns the US against "playing with fire", saying those who initiate a confrontation cannot control its escalation or consequences, and that Iran will respond decisively to aggression, IRIB reports

Rhetoric of this kind from Iranian officials through state media is a recurring feature of periods of elevated tension with Washington, and the historical pattern is that the words themselves rarely move anything durably unless they accompany a physical event. The established transmission channel is the crude risk premium: front-month Brent and WTI tend to add a geopolitical bid on escalation headlines, with the size of the response scaled to whether the rhetoric implies any threat to actual supply or to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and with freight and insurance costs on Gulf routes the more sensitive tell than flat price. Past episodes of this kind have tended to fade within sessions when no kinetic follow-through materialises, while the instances that sustained repricing were those involving strikes on energy infrastructure, tanker seizures, or attacks on shipping. The distinction worth drawing is between deterrent posturing aimed at a domestic and regional audience, which this framing resembles, and signalling tied to a specific trigger such as a sanctions move or a military strike. Worth watching is whether rhetoric escalates into specific threats against vessels or facilities, any movement in tanker rates and war-risk premia, and whether US officials respond in kind, since tit-for-tat verbal exchanges have historically been the precursor phase in episodes that later turned physical.