The Question This Week Is "Does Trump Go Back To The Well On Bombing Iran?"
By Benjamin Picton, Senior Market Strategist at Rabobank
Hormuz diary, day 79. The strait remains functionally closed and global crude and refined product stocks are rapidly drawing down. President Trump has returned from Beijing after much bonhomie with no concrete commitments from China to help get shipping moving again, though the American side has claimed that China wants the strait to re-open with no tolls imposed and has committed to buy at least $17bn of US agricultural products annually.
Trump is running out of patience, and has told Iran that “the clock is ticking” before US strikes resume. Asia is running out of fuel.
Iran has established a new protocol for allowing ships to pass the strait. Araghchi says the strait is “open to all commercial ships”, the IRGC says that Chinese ships are being allowed to pass, Iranian state TV said that “more than 30 ships” had been allowed to pass between Wednesday and Thursday, and that that number is set to accelerate. Nobody seems to know how many of the 30 ships were not Chinese.
George Prokopiou’s Karolos ran the strait with its tracking system switched off, carrying a cargo of 1 million barrels of Iraqi crude bound for India. A Panamanian-flagged vessel managed by Japanese refiner ENEOS snuck through on Friday, and several other ships also passed through Hormuz into the Gulf of Oman.
Bond markets are no longer taking this all in their stride. Yields on US 10s rose 24bps last week, 10-year Gilt yields lifted 26bps. Last week’s hotter-than-expected April US CPI reading of 3.8% conspired with PPI ex food and energy of 5.2%, and strong payrolls data the week before to see the 5y-5y inflation swap creep up to 2.47%. The OIS curve says rate hikes, Kevin Warsh’s ascension as Fed Chair notwithstanding. Gundlach says the Fed can’t possibly cut. Bloomberg says traders are eyeing a tipping point towards a new era of higher yields. A graph of the 10-year says that the tipping point came all the way back in 2022 for those who were paying attention. CPI has now been above target for more than five years. Inflation can-kicking in the 1970s gave us the Volcker Shock later on.
The S&P500 closed down 1.25% on Friday. Futures are -0.7% this morning. Asian stocks are getting battered. The DXY is bid and high beta FX is being offered. Even the hitherto immortal Aussie housing market is beginning to creak as auction clearance rates hit their lowest levels since the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. The headwind of higher rates and lower real incomes is now compounded by tax changes aimed at discouraging investors. Has Australia picked up on the end of neoliberalism zeitgeist to shift from a Thatcherite home-owning democracy to Xi Jinping-style common prosperity where “houses are for living in”? Is there no-one left to buy after government became the liquidity of last resort through first home buyer co-ownership programs last year?
While markets fret over the outlook, the question this week is “does Trump go back to the well on bombing Iran?” Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is the definition of insanity; Oscar Wilde said that consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper says the Iranian military industrial base is 90% degraded and Scott Bessent says that Iranian crude is going to have to go back to the well as the US blockade brings shut-ins ever closer. The CIA says Iran still has 70% of its pre-war missiles and can hold out under blockade for months. Who is talking their own book? Is the US government as faction-ridden as the Iranian government is supposed to be?
In the meantime, escalation risks mount. A drone struck close to the UAE’s Barakah nuclear plant over the weekend and Saudi Arabia reportedly intercepted three drones directed at its own territory. Ukraine is stepping up attacks on targets deep inside Russia even as Russia pounds Ukrainian territory. Ukraine mounted its largest attack on the Moscow region in more than a year, targeting high-value military assets, oil facilities, Moscow’s main airport, and a sanctioned semiconductor factory. Zelenskyy saying there has been a “shift in the balance” on the battlefield.
As we sit here in 2026 Russia’s ‘Special Military Operation’ originally been planned to conclude within weeks is now in its fifth year. In uncomfortable similarity, the US’s 4-6 week ‘targeted military campaign’ is now in its 12th week. Finding common ground in peace negotiations continues to prove elusive in both cases, making stalemate the path of least resistance. Central banks and many governments continue to base forecasts on a near-term resolution in Iran that sees the Strait of Hormuz fully re-open to shipping. Seemingly everybody has a Schlieffen Plan where they will be home by Christmas.
Financial markets are no different. While markets might be waiting for the restart of a bombing campaign in Iran to send physical crude prices and prompt spreads sharply higher (and stock prices sharply lower), for physical supply chains in Asia getting back to the (oil) well becomes more pressing by the day. Hot war is certainly bad, but a grinding stalemate would be disaster enough.