Words are cheap, but the price of oil is brutally honest.
Donald Trump’s claim that the war could be over “soon” will grab headlines.
But traders don’t trade on soundbites. They trade on risk.
That explains the sudden urgency from the commander-in-chief.
Ten days ago, he warned that the war could last four to six weeks.
Now, he’s boasting that it could be over “very soon.”
“Not this week,” he added at a news conference in Florida, but objectives are “pretty well complete”.
He listed battlefield successes – boasting 5,000 targets had been hit.
The president said he would “live with” the outcome of a report on a strike on a school.
But he tried to pin the blame for the attack, which claimed dozens of lives, elsewhere.
Trump said many countries, including Iran, use Tomahawks, a “generic” weapon.
The UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and Japan are the only other countries with Tomahawks.
Unless he’s suggesting one of them carried out the strike, he has effectively implicated the US.
Read more: Evidence challenges Trump’s claim
Trump’s ‘epic’ problem
Nevertheless, he appears poised to declare victory and find an off-ramp.
But his newfound optimism lands in a space where politics and markets collide.
US crude surging to $119 per barrel, then dropping a record 4% on talk of an ending.
It’s a problem for Trump that Iran had already acknowledged by mocking the military codename: “Operation Epic Fury.”
“Operation Epic Mistake,” the country’s foreign minister posted, alongside a graphic of oil prices.
Read more from Sky News:
Inside the frontline ghost town
Erdogan’s clear message on Iran war
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard says it will “determine the end of the war”.
In a statement, it said Tehran would not allow the export of “one litre of oil” from the region if US and Israel attacks continue.
Trump posted on Truth Social: “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”
For a trader sitting in London, Houston or Singapore, the question is not what Trump says but what happens on the ground.
In times of conflict, the price of a barrel speaks louder, and more truthfully, than a presidential promise of peace.
