Renewed US Strikes on Iran Push Oil Above $90 and Send Treasury Yields to Their Highest Since January 2025

A new round of American strikes on Iran, and Iranian retaliation against United States assets across the Middle East, affected every major asset market on Tuesday. The effect ran through inflation expectations rather than through risk aversion.

The Financial Times reported that the escalation pushed oil prices higher and drove Treasury yields to the day's highs as investors positioned for further inflation. Russia's RIA Novosti described the same move from the producer side, attributing the rise in crude directly to the new escalation between Washington and Tehran. The Hindu's running coverage reported that Iran said 11 people died in the American strikes on its territory and that Tehran continued attacks on American interests around the region.

The market moves illustrate the scale of the shock. Brent crude rose to $91.28 a barrel on Monday, up 0.87 percent, according to Trading Economics data, and market accounts of Tuesday's session described futures trading above $95 at one point after United States Central Command announced new attacks and two tankers were hit while leaving the Strait of Hormuz. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to about 4.80 percent. The S&P 500 closed at 7,686.14, down 0.3 percent. Gold fell 1.86 percent to $4,358.74 an ounce, Trading Economics data show.

The combination is unusual and revealing. A war premium in energy normally raises the price of monetary metals, because it implies a higher price level. It did not this time, because the same event raised the expected path of the policy rate. Traders now put the odds of a September increase above 65 percent, up from roughly a third before Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh spoke at Jackson Hole, and Fed Governor Michael Barr said he would support a hike if inflation does not ease convincingly. A firmer dollar and a higher real yield are the immediate cost of holding an asset that pays nothing.

The Austrian school reading of this episode is that the oil supply shock is not the underlying cause of the vulnerability. Years of cheap credit left the economy's capital structure dependent on a low discount rate, and a barrel of oil at $90 exposes the projects that were only viable at a lower price. The Federal Reserve now faces the choice it had deferred: validate the higher price level and let inflation expectations drift upward, or tighten monetary policy into an economy whose debt-service costs rise every quarter.