After stocks notched the first positive week since the U.S.-Israel war on Iran started over a month ago, Wall Street is weighing another round of threats and the latest deadline from President Donald Trump.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones industrial average fell 158 points, or 0.34%. S&P 500 futures were down 0.23%, and Nasdaq futures lost 0.14%.
U.S. oil futures rose 0.38% to $111.96 a barrel, and Brent crude climbed 0.93% to $110.04. The national average gasoline price reached $4.11 a gallon on Sunday, according to AAA, up from $2.98 before the war.
In Europe, which depends heavily on Mideast refiners for jet fuel, shortages forced Italy to limit supplies at several airports. That’s after several countries in Asia have already started rationing energy.
The U.S. dollar was up 0.03% against the euro and flat against the yen. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose one basis point to 4.356%.
The conflict has entered its sixth week, reaching the end of Trump’s earlier timeline for the war to last four to six weeks.
But Tehran shows no signs of relinquishing its grip over the Strait of Hormuz, even as it allows a growing trickle of tankers through, while Trump appeared to be emboldened by a daring rescue of a U.S. airman shot down over Iran.
In a social media post on Sunday, he threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants and bridges if the strait isn’t open by Tuesday, then demanded: “Open the F—in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
That appeared to push his deadline back from Monday, which was already delayed from an earlier deadline a week and a half ago.
Trump also told ABC News that if Iran doesn’t make a deal, “their whole country is gone.” He then told Fox News: “If they don’t make a deal and fast, I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil.”
And in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said that if Iran keeps the strait closed, “they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country.”
Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament, responded in kind: “Your reckless moves are dragging the United States into a living HELL for every single family, and our whole region is going to burn because you insist on following [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s commands,” he wrote on social media.
“Make no mistake: You won’t gain anything through war crimes. The only real solution is respecting the rights of the Iranian people and ending this dangerous game.”
Meanwhile, more than 2,000 Marines are in the Middle East, with thousands more troops on the way—as well as a third aircraft carrier.
Trump could deploy them to seize Kharg Island, from which 90% of Iran’s oil is exported, or other small islands near the Strait of Hormuz to weaken Iran’s grip on the narrow waterway that’s critical to the global oil trade.
For now, it’s unclear if the successful rescue of the F-15 airman after a harrowing operation makes a future ground assault more or less likely.
“On the one hand, the costs from this episode (four, as many as seven aircraft) may suggest the risks to such operations are simply too great to contemplate,” Gregory Brew, a Eurasia Group analyst focusing on oil and Iran, posted on X. “On the other hand, the admin may perceive the successful retrieval following operations inside Iranian territory as proof that such operations are feasible.”
