The numbers come first: a nearly two-week streak of U.S. airstrikes on Iran ended Friday without a new attack, after President Donald Trump received military strike plans and declined to give a green light, ordering forces to hold off instead, according to Axios.
That pause came even as the pressure to act remained intense. Iran killed American troops in Jordan last week — crossing Trump's stated red line for restarting all-out war — and Iranian attacks on commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz have effectively closed the narrow waterway again, cutting off oil supplies to global markets and pushing crude prices higher.
The U.S. military did retaliate with additional airstrikes following those troop deaths, but the response remained well short of the widespread campaign conducted early in the war. U.S. forces are still preparing for major combat operations to potentially resume, but Trump has not issued orders to move in that direction, Axios reported.
Trump, speaking to reporters Friday, said he retains three options: continue strikes, go bigger by 'knocking out everything they have,' or pursue a 'smarter strategy' of making a deal. He insisted Iran prefers the last path. 'They want to make a deal. I just don't think they're ready yet, but they do want to make a deal,' Trump said, adding that both sides are currently negotiating.
Omani officials traveled to Tehran on Friday for talks on a new arrangement that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Sources told Axios that an Oman-Iran agreement could be reached over the weekend.
The broader conflict, however, continues to widen. The U.S. surged special operations troops, bombers, fighter jets, and medics to the Middle East over the past week, according to the Wall Street Journal. Bahrain and Kuwait secretly sent fighter jets to bomb Iran, marking their first such attacks, sources told the Journal. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had struck Iran earlier in the war.
Houthis hit two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea this week, prompting Saudi Arabia to strike the Yemeni port city of Hodeida. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait — connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden — now faces its own potential blockade, layering fresh risk on top of the Hormuz closure and Ukrainian attacks on Russian fuel tankers in the Black Sea. Energy markets have felt all of it; stocks and bonds have moved lower in response.
Oil market analyst Rory Johnston wrote on X Friday that Trump may simply exit the Iran conflict and 'leave everyone else with the mess,' asking at what level of market stress — crude prices, pump prices, an equity rout — he would be forced to do so.
CEO Times read: Trump's decision to hold military action while Omani diplomats work a Hormuz deal reflects a straightforward cost-benefit calculation: a closed strait is a tax on every barrel of oil that reaches a global consumer, and prolonged war carries its own economic bill. The administration's leverage — demonstrated strike capability, regional coalition support, and credible escalation options — is precisely what creates space for a negotiated reopening. Capital rewards clear rules; the energy market will price a reopened Hormuz faster than any central bank can respond. The question is whether Tehran reads the same ledger.
