US Defence Secretary Hegseth met Israeli PM Netanyahu during an unannounced visit to Israel on Monday, amid discussions over potentially resuming major military operations against Iran, Axios reports

US Defence Secretary Hegseth met Israeli PM Netanyahu during an unannounced visit to Israel on Monday, amid discussions over potentially resuming major military operations against Iran, Axios reports.

Unannounced visits at this level between Washington and Jerusalem have historically preceded, rather than followed, a shift in military posture toward Iran; the pattern in comparable episodes is that the diplomatic flurry comes first, with kinetic action or its deferral settling the question of whether oil's risk premium holds. The transmission channel here is well established: crude reprices on supply-disruption probability through the Strait of Hormuz and on freight and insurance costs for Gulf cargoes, while gold and the dollar absorb the haven bid and regional assets widen. The distinction that matters for the tape is between signalling designed to extract concessions and genuine operational coordination; talk of resuming major operations sits at the more serious end of that spectrum, and past rounds of Israel-Iran escalation have shown the market tends to fade the premium quickly when strikes stay contained and reprice durably only when energy infrastructure or shipping is actually hit. Axios-sourced reporting on Israeli security deliberations has a reasonable track record, though single-outlet attribution on war planning warrants caution until corroborated. Worth watching: any movement of US carrier or air assets in the region, Iranian proxy rhetoric, and whether back-channel contacts with Tehran continue in parallel, since the coexistence of military planning and negotiation has been the norm rather than the exception in this theatre.