U.S. and Israeli officials say Iranian leaders are deeply suspicious of Trump's statements. The officials said Iranian leaders want to avoid a third surprise attack, reports Axios

Reports of mutual distrust between Washington and Tehran are a recurring feature of this conflict cycle, and the market-relevant distinction has consistently been between rhetorical friction and breakdown in an active negotiating channel: the former tends to hold a modest risk premium in place, the latter has historically re-priced it sharply. The specific detail here, Iranian fear of another surprise strike, points to prior episodes in this conflict where kinetic action arrived mid-diplomacy, which is precisely the setup that embeds a persistent premium in crude rather than a transient one. The transmission channel runs through Brent and WTI front-end spreads and tanker insurance and freight costs tied to Gulf transit, with gold and the traditional haven currencies as the secondary expression; equities have tended to fade such headlines quickly unless physical supply or shipping is actually interrupted. Axios-sourced official commentary of this kind has often functioned as signalling by one or both sides, intended as much for the counterpart as for the public, so the sourcing itself is part of the story. Worth watching next is whether this leaks precede or follow a negotiating round, any change in US or Israeli force posture in the region, and movement in Gulf shipping insurance rates, which have been a cleaner tell of genuine escalation risk than the headline flow itself.