[MARKET ANALYSIS] Oil prices climbed after US struck targets in Iran for the first time in over a month, while Iran retaliated on US bases in Jordan

Direct US strikes on Iranian soil paired with Iranian retaliation against US regional assets is the escalation template that has historically produced the sharpest crude risk premia, and the stated target set here, missile launchers staged against the Strait of Hormuz, goes to the single channel that matters most for oil: the threat to transit rather than to production. Past Hormuz-adjacent episodes have tended to gap crude at the open and then retrace a large share of the premium within sessions when actual flows through the strait prove uninterrupted, with freight rates and war-risk insurance on Gulf loadings the cleanest real-time tell of whether the threat is being priced as physical or rhetorical. The intercepted missiles and absence of reported damage fit the pattern of calibrated retaliation that has previously allowed both sides to de-escalate, but follow-on strikes have on prior occasions come in waves separated by days, so the premium rarely clears on the first all-clear. The cross-asset configuration is the established one for this setup: crude bid, industrial metals sold on the growth and China demand channel, and gold's direction here hostage to the rates leg rather than the geopolitical one, which is itself an unusual pairing worth noting. The watchpoints are tanker traffic and insurance quotes through the strait, any move on Iranian export infrastructure rather than military targets, and whether the retaliation cycle extends or stalls.