White House prepares plans to use weapon dubbed "mother of all bombs" on Iran, CBS reports, citing sources

Contingency-planning leaks of this kind are a recurring feature of US-Iran escalation cycles: the Pentagon maintains standing strike options against Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure, and reports that a specific munition is being readied typically surface as signalling as much as operational intent, a form of coercive pressure short of an order. The pattern in past episodes is that the story itself, not any confirmed deployment, is the event; markets have historically treated such reports as a probability marker on the escalation ladder rather than a fait accompli, with the first-order transmission running through crude via risk premia on Gulf supply and, if conflict materialised, through freight and insurance costs on Hormuz transit rather than immediate physical disruption. The distinction worth drawing is between planning chatter attributed to unnamed sources, which has often faded without follow-through, and corroborated force movements such as carrier group repositioning, air defence deployments or diplomatic drawdowns, which in prior escalations were the tells that mattered. The Pentagon's response, neither confirming nor denying, is the standard formulation and carries no informational content on intent. Worth watching are official statements, allied force posture in the region, and any Iranian retaliation or proxy activity, the channels through which comparable episodes have previously either de-escalated or broken into open conflict.