United States Disables Tanker Near Kharg Island as Oil Passes 85 Dollars on Fifth Day of Iran Strikes

The military confrontation between the United States and Iran moved directly onto Iran's oil-export infrastructure, the channel through which the conflict most immediately reaches world markets. Iranian state media said American forces struck the area around Tehran for the first time in the current wave of attacks. The United States said it fired a missile into the funnel of a Curaçao-flagged tanker sailing toward Kharg Island, Iran's principal crude-loading terminal in the Persian Gulf, after the vessel ignored what it called multiple warnings.

Washington paired the strikes with a reimposed naval blockade of Iranian ports near the Strait of Hormuz, and the two sides give sharply different accounts of the damage. Iranian outlets reported that air defenses were activated over Tehran and that Iran's army targeted United States facilities in Jordan and disabled a ship attempting to run the blockade. The New York Times reported that both governments appeared to be hardening their positions, even as a senior Iranian official said Tehran should fear neither war nor negotiations, language that suggests openness to a settlement.

The market response has been concentrated in crude. Brent has risen more than 10 percent since Sunday to trade near 85 dollars a barrel, touching as high as 87. Hormuz transits fell by more than half over one recent weekend as shippers avoided the waterway. Roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil moves through that strait.