Talks go on and on as US, Iran trade shots and oil prices bubble upward

(Originally published June 2 in “What in the World‘) The U.S. and Iran continue to trade fire despite ongoing talks to extend their now largely fictional “ceasefire.”

On Monday, the U.S. bombed Iranian drone and radar sites after Iranian forces shot down a U.S. drone. U.S. forces then intercepted two Iranian missiles fired on American forces in Kuwait.

News of the reviving conflict, combined with Israel’s expanding offensive in southern Lebanon, helped push oil prices up more than 4% to over $95, the biggest increase in over a month. The price of benchmark Brent crude had receded to almost $92 a barrel on optimism that Trump could broker a peace deal with Iran. While the U.S. Navy has helped more than 70 commercial vessels—some of them presumably oil tankers—navigate the Strait of Hormuz in the past three weeks, the Strait remains virtually closed to the roughly 100 oil tankers that used to pass through it daily before Trump’s war began.