US attacks fishing boats in the port of Kergan, Minab, reports Tasnim

If confirmed, a strike on assets in Minab, a port sitting on the Strait of Hormuz littoral, fits a class of Gulf escalation events where the transmission channel runs through freight, insurance premia, and the front of the crude curve rather than through any immediate physical supply loss. Past episodes of US-Iranian military exchange in the Gulf have tended to follow a recognisable sequence: attribution dispute, threat of retaliation from Tehran, then either tit-for-tat escalation against shipping or calibrated face-saving response, with tanker rates and war-risk premia the cleaner tell than spot crude alone. The distinction that matters is whether fishing vessels were hit deliberately as targets or as collateral, since the former implies a lower threshold for engagement and the latter a contained incident. Worth watching next are confirmation from the US side, any statement from Tehran on response, and movement in Hormuz transit pricing rather than headline crude reaction. Until corroboration arrives, the report carries the usual single-source discount attached to state-media conflict reporting.