Iran's war of words with Washington just escalated alongside a sharp squeeze on global oil. Responding to President Trump's warning that any Iranian move to stymie oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would bring US retaliation "twenty times harder," senior security official Ali Larijani wrote on X that Iran "doesn't fear your empty threats" and cautioned the president "not to get eliminated yourself," per an AP translation. His comments followed fresh Iranian strikes on Israel, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain, where a hit on a residential building killed a 29-year-old woman and injured eight people.
The tensions center on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital choke point between Oman and Iran that has seen ship traffic collapse from a typical 60 vessels a day to just two in the past 24 hours, with more than 150 ships now stuck, including close to 100 oil tankers, per the Hill. Iran's Revolutionary Guard says it will indefinitely block oil exports to "the hostile side and its partners." With US crude prices topping $90 a barrel and the average US gas price hovering at $3.54 per gallon, Trump has called the price spike a "very small price to pay" for addressing Iran's supposed nuclear threat—a strategy that some lawmakers, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski, are openly questioning. "I'm starting to think they didn't game this one out," she said last week of the administration, per Punchbowl News.
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