US-Iran War: Strikes Pause After 13 Nights as Blockade Holds and Oil Nears $100
The first quiet night in nearly two weeks has settled over the Gulf after 13 consecutive nights of US airstrikes on Iran, even as Washington insists its naval blockade remains in full force and Brent crude hovers near $100 a barrel.
For the first time in nearly two weeks, the skies over Iran stayed quiet on Friday night. After thirteen consecutive nights of American airstrikes and Iranian retaliation, the latest chapter of the 2026 Iran war has entered an uneasy pause — though officials on both sides are careful to call it a lull, not an ending. The US military says its naval blockade against Iranian ports remains in full effect regardless of the quiet skies, and fighting has continued to ripple outward: Houthi forces in Yemen fired missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia over the weekend, in retaliation for Saudi strikes on the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, even as the core exchange of fire between Washington and Tehran appeared, for now, to have stopped.
The war has moved in cycles of escalation and collapse since a ceasefire and 14-point memorandum of understanding, signed by the US and Iranian presidents in June, briefly reopened the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping. That truce did not last. On July 8, the interim deal collapsed after Iran was accused of striking multiple commercial vessels transiting the strait; the US responded with strikes on Iranian territory, and Iran hit back at American bases across the Gulf states. What followed was thirteen nights of near-continuous exchange — the most sustained air war the region has seen since the initial Israeli-American strikes on Iran in February, which killed the country's supreme leader and a swath of its senior military leadership.
Why This Lull Is Different — And Why It Might Not Last
Previous pauses in this conflict have been formal: a signed memorandum, a public declaration, a diplomatic handshake. This one is not. No agreement has been announced, and the US Navy has been explicit that its blockade of Iranian ports continues uninterrupted, a signal that Washington does not regard the quiet skies as a step back from its core military objective. Analysts tracking the conflict describe the pause as tactical rather than strategic — a chance for both sides to assess battle damage, resupply munitions, and gauge international reaction, rather than a genuine off-ramp.
That caution is echoed in diplomatic circles. Reports over the weekend suggested Pakistan, at China's urging, has floated the idea of brokering fresh negotiations between Washington and Tehran — a sign that regional and great-power actors alike see an opening, however narrow, to pull the two sides back from the brink. Whether that opening survives the week is an open question; the ceasefire signed in June also arrived amid similar diplomatic momentum, and it lasted barely three weeks before collapsing into the current cycle of strikes.
Every previous pause in this war has proven temporary. The difference this time is that neither side has even bothered to call it a truce.
The Blockade And The Strait Of Hormuz
At the centre of the conflict's economic stakes sits the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which, before the war, roughly a quarter of the world's seaborne oil trade and a fifth of its liquefied natural gas passed daily. The US blockade of Iranian ports, in place with interruptions since mid-April, has combined with Iranian retaliation against shipping to choke that flow to a fraction of its pre-war volume.
The scale of the disruption is difficult to overstate. Independent trade trackers have estimated that traffic through the strait fell from roughly 1,500 tanker transits a month before the war to as few as 180 in April — a collapse of nearly 90 per cent — while the International Energy Agency has put cumulative regional oil supply losses at more than 1.3 billion barrels since the crisis began. The World Trade Organization has separately estimated a 95 per cent reduction in vessels carrying crude oil to and from Persian Gulf ports, and a 99 per cent reduction in LNG carriers.
The Strait Of Hormuz, By The Numbers
| Metric | Pre-War Baseline | Reported Since Escalation |
|---|---|---|
| Share of world seaborne oil trade via Hormuz | ~25% | Flows reduced to a trickle |
| Share of world LNG trade via Hormuz | ~20% | Near-total disruption (WTO: -99%) |
| Monthly tanker transits through the strait | ~1,500 | As low as ~180 (April 2026) |
| Cumulative Middle East oil supply loss | — | 1.3+ billion barrels (IEA estimate) |
| Brent crude price | ~$65-70/barrel (pre-war) | Near $100/barrel (late July 2026) |
Sources: International Energy Agency; UK Parliament Commons Library; The Economist.
Oil Near $100 And The Return Of Inflation Anxiety
The most immediate global consequence of the war has been the oil price. Brent crude broke back above $100 a barrel this past week for the first time since May, a level that instantly revives inflation anxieties that many central banks had thought they were putting behind them. Gold, often a haven in moments of geopolitical stress, initially rallied on the news before easing as investors weighed the prospect that higher energy costs might force the US Federal Reserve into a more hawkish stance than markets had priced in.
That prospect is not hypothetical. Futures markets tracked by the CME's FedWatch tool have moved sharply in the past week: the probability assigned to a rate hike at the Fed's September meeting jumped from roughly 12 per cent to as high as 82 per cent in some estimates, as traders concluded that oil-driven inflation could force the central bank's hand even as it holds rates steady at its meeting on July 28-29. Treasury yields have moved in tandem, with the 10-year note briefly touching its highest level since January 2025.
The Fed is not alone in facing this dilemma. A trio of central bank decisions this week — the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan — will each have to weigh the same uncomfortable trade-off: energy-driven inflation pushing toward tighter policy, against fragile growth that would prefer looser policy. Markets widely expect the Fed to hold its benchmark rate in the 3.50-3.75 per cent range for a fifth consecutive meeting, but the size of the swing in hike-odds pricing shows how quickly that calculus can change.
Beyond The Gulf: A Widening Conflict
What began as a bilateral confrontation between the United States and Iran has, over five months, drawn in an expanding circle of state and non-state actors. Iran-backed Hezbollah has struck Israel from Lebanon, prompting Israeli ground operations there. Houthi forces in Yemen have repeatedly targeted shipping and, in the past week, Saudi Arabia directly. Iranian strikes have reportedly reached targets as far afield as the Caspian Sea, according to trade coverage of the conflict, while Gulf states including Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq have all been drawn into the crossfire at various points as hosts to American military assets that Iran has targeted in retaliation.
Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky added a further, seemingly unrelated thread to the week's news, saying Russia is seeking to bring 30,000 North Korean troops into its war effort — a reminder that the Gulf crisis is unfolding alongside, and in some ways interacting with, other major conflicts competing for the same finite pool of Western military and diplomatic attention.
What To Watch This Week
- Whether the lull holds: a second consecutive quiet night would be the longest pause in strikes since the ceasefire collapsed on July 8.
- The Pakistan-China diplomatic push: any formal proposal for renewed US-Iran talks would mark the first structured diplomatic opening since the June memorandum fell apart.
- The Fed's July 28-29 meeting: a hold is expected, but the accompanying language on inflation risk will be read closely for signals about September.
- Oil price direction: a further push toward or past $100 a barrel would deepen the inflation dilemma facing every major central bank simultaneously.
- Houthi-Saudi escalation: retaliatory strikes on Saudi Arabia risk opening a second active front independent of the core US-Iran exchange.
The Bigger Picture
Five months into this war, the pattern has become familiar: an escalation, a diplomatic opening, a fragile truce, and then a collapse back into strikes, each cycle a little more damaging to the region's shipping lanes and the world's energy markets than the last. The current lull may simply be the latest example of that pattern — a pause before the next round, rather than the war's exhaustion. What is different this time is the scale of the economic spillover. With oil brushing $100 a barrel and three of the world's most influential central banks meeting within days of each other, a conflict that began as a regional confrontation over nuclear capability and regime survival is now, unmistakably, a global economic event.