Oil Prices Surge as Iran’s Strikes on Gulf Expose Scope of the Energy War

The full scope of the energy war unfolding across the Middle East became clear over the weekend when Iran launched simultaneous strikes against five Gulf nations, even as its own oil facilities burned following Israeli airstrikes. Global oil prices crossed $100 per barrel, a threshold that marked a turning point in the global economic impact of the conflict.
Israeli forces struck oil storage and fuel distribution facilities in and around Tehran, killing four workers. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded with threats to push oil to $200 per barrel and warned Gulf states to distance themselves from Israel and the United States — or become targets of Iran’s expanding military campaign.
Saudi Arabia intercepted 15 drones, Bahrain’s desalination plant was hit, and two civilians died in a residential strike in Saudi Arabia. A seventh US service member died from wounds sustained in an Iranian attack, deepening American entanglement in a conflict that had already stretched across Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, and now the Gulf.
Iran’s clerical establishment simultaneously named Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader in the first hereditary transfer of the position in the Islamic Republic’s history. The appointment was described as a decisive vote by the clerical body, though it was condemned internationally as the emergence of a dynastic system in a state founded to oppose it.
The United States pledged not to strike Iranian energy infrastructure and predicted short-term supply disruptions. However, with energy warfare now spanning multiple countries and Iran controlling roughly four percent of global oil output, the full economic consequences of the conflict were only beginning to be felt.