Trump Says He Is Close to Deciding on a Massive Strike Against Iran as Oil Tops $100

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President Donald Trump has said he is close to a decision on what he described as a massive attack on Iran, one that would be bigger than anything the United States has carried out so far in a war now in its sixth month. Speaking to Axios, Trump said he was weighing the option and that preparations were in place should he choose to proceed. He did not indicate when a final decision would come.

His remarks landed on a day of compounding pressure. Oil prices climbed above 100 dollars a barrel on Thursday for the first time since 26 May, leaving crude roughly 40 per cent higher than it was in February, before the war began. The immediate trigger was not Trump’s language about Iran but events several hundred miles to the south, in the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Houthi movement had opened a new front against Saudi Arabia.

On 20 July the Houthis declared a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia, telling shipping companies by email that vessels were banned from loading or unloading at Saudi ports. Two days later the group’s military spokesman, Yahya Saree, said its forces had struck two Saudi oil tankers, the Encelia and the Layla, with ballistic and cruise missiles and drones for violating that decision. Saudi authorities confirmed that the Encelia, a products tanker that had left Yanbu, caught fire after being hit and that its crew were safe.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency placed the strike about 70 nautical miles southwest of the Saudi coastal city of Al Shuqaiq. No casualties or pollution were reported, but the commercial reaction was immediate: at least seven vessels changed course to avoid the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow entrance to the Red Sea through which a substantial share of Europe-Asia trade and energy shipments passes.

Trump said the United States would hold Iran responsible for the Houthi attacks. Washington, European governments and United Nations experts have long identified Tehran as the principal foreign backer of the group, supplying components and expertise for its drone and missile programmes, which Iran denies. The president also said Iran remains interested in negotiating but argued that the government there had not yet endured enough pain to accept terms he would regard as acceptable.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivered an unusually stark assessment. He told the Security Council that the crises in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea risked drawing the Middle East into an ever-widening circle of confrontation, that the situation was getting out of control, and that it was teetering on the edge of the unimaginable. He pointed to thirteen consecutive nights of American strikes on Iran, the renewed Houthi attacks on shipping and deepening suffering in Gaza as crises now feeding one another.

Guterres also noted that the fighting had broken the interim truce established under a memorandum of understanding the United States and Iran signed in June, and he called for immediate steps to prevent further deterioration. Iran has meanwhile rejected calls for a ceasefire, according to reporting from the region, leaving little visible diplomatic track at a moment when both sides are describing their positions in absolute terms.

The energy geography explains much of the market’s anxiety. Roughly 20 million barrels of oil pass daily through the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint between Iran and Oman through which most Gulf exports must travel. The Red Sea route past Bab al-Mandab carries a portion of Saudi crude and refined product, and threats to both waterways at once narrow the options available to exporters and their buyers.

For shipping companies the calculation is more mundane and no less costly. Diverting around the Cape of Good Hope adds roughly ten days to two weeks to a voyage between Asia and Europe, along with fuel, crew and charter costs, while war-risk insurance premiums rise for any owner still willing to transit the southern Red Sea. Those costs work their way into freight rates and eventually into the prices of goods far from the conflict.

In Washington, the political ground beneath the campaign is shifting. On Thursday the House adopted a non-binding war powers resolution calling on the president to end hostilities against Iran, 214 votes to 208, with four Republicans joining Democrats. Hours later the Senate fell two votes short of advancing a binding companion measure, rejecting it 47 to 49. Neither outcome constrains the administration, and both were understood as symbolic, but they registered the erosion of the president’s support on Capitol Hill as lawmakers in both parties press for an explanation of how the war ends.

That erosion is one reason the coming days matter beyond the immediate military question. Trump has framed escalation as the route to a negotiated settlement, on the argument that sufficient pressure will bring Iran to terms. Critics of that approach, including some within his own party, contend that each round of strikes has so far produced retaliation rather than concessions, and that a larger attack risks widening the war without making a deal more likely.

For now the region is caught between two escalating fronts and a diplomatic process that has stalled. A single decision in Washington, and the Houthi movement’s choice about whether to enforce the blockade it has declared, will do more than anything else to determine whether oil above 100 dollars proves a spike or the start of something longer.