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Published : 13 Mar 2026, 10:58 AM
President Donald Trump said the US was going to be hitting Iran "very hard over the next week", shortly after issuing a partial 30-day waiver for purchases of sanctioned Russian oil, hoping to ease prices fuelled by the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Prices have been whipsawing on Trump's comments about the likely duration of the war, which has prompted Iran to attack vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for a fifth of the world's oil.
Trump has previously said the war is "complete", and also promised to guarantee the safety of vessels in the Strait. In a Fox News interview aired on Friday, Trump said the US would escort shipping there "if we needed to".
Benchmark Brent crude LCOc1 eased about 1percent to around $99.50 in early European trading on Friday, still up almost 40percent since the start of the war, with European and Asian shares under pressure.
After nearly two weeks of war, 2,000 people have been killed, most of them in Iran, but many also in Lebanon and a growing number in the Gulf, which has for the first time in decades of Middle East conflicts found itself on the frontline.
US forces have also suffered casualties. The US military confirmed that four of six crew members aboard a refuelling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq were dead.
Iran fired another barrage of missiles and drones at Israel while the Israeli military said it had launched strikes across Tehran and continued to attack the Iranian-allied Hezbollah militia across Lebanon and in the capital Beirut.
Iranian Press TV said a woman had been killed by an airstrike close to a rally in Tehran for Quds (Jerusalem) Day, one of many held across Iran in support of Palestinians living in Israeli-occupied territory. Iranian media said President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi had both attended the rally in a gesture of defiance.
The Israeli military said its air force had struck more than 200 targets in western and central Iran over the past day, including ballistic missile launchers, air defence systems and weapons production sites.
The prospect that the jolt to global energy supplies could endure had boosted oil prices about 9percent to $100 a barrel on Thursday, helping drive down US stocks.
With gasoline and diesel prices rising at pumps in the US and around the world, the US on Thursday issued a 30-day licence for countries to buy Russian oil and petroleum products currently at sea - where it is not uncommon for consignments to be sold or change their buyer.
The 32-nation International Energy Agency said on Thursday that the war was creating the biggest oil supply disruption in history. Average US retail diesel prices hit $4.89 a gallon on Thursday, the highest since December 2022, data from the motorist association AAA showed.
However, Trump, who has already declared that the US and Israel have won the war, said the US stood to make significant money from higher oil prices.
