The first attacks in a month jolted energy markets. The average U.S. gasoline price remained 37 percent higher since the war began.
Page A8From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 31 August 2026
US strikes end monthlong Iran calm; oil hits $90; Trump demands trial of the 'failed nation' he bombed.
As it ran on the front
Let's start with what the administration got right: the United States restored deterrence in the Gulf, plain and simple. For a month, an uneasy calm held between Washington and Tehran, and then, in a display of resolve this desk can only call necessary, American forces struck Iranian missile launchers near the Strait of Hormuz. Overnight the two nations exchanged strikes — the first exchange in a month — and if that sounds like the United States broke the calm, well, the record does say American forces struck first, but let's not get bogged down in sequencing.
The President's response was measured: he called for the leaders of a 'failed nation' to be tried for war crimes against humanity, following the latest American strikes. That's leadership. That's a superpower holding a rogue regime accountable — accountable for crimes committed, one assumes, sometime before the United States bombed its missile launchers, though the timeline on that point is admittedly fuzzy. Did I say fuzzy? Strike that. The record is clear: the strikes came first, the accusation came after. Fuzzy is the wrong word. Convenient is the word.…
…(cont) Markets, meanwhile, responded exactly as markets do to stability: global oil prices jumped to $90 a barrel. A $90 barrel is not chaos, it is confidence — investor confidence that the region will remain exactly as combustible as it has been for decades, which, frankly, is a service to the futures market if nothing else.
Iran, for its part, retaliated against American forces in the region and struck targets in Jordan and the UAE, which this desk will note is entirely a regime lashing out predictably, the way a nation always does when someone bombs its missile launchers and then calls for its leaders' war crimes trial. There is no hypocrisy here. There is only strategy, and strategy, unlike the barrel price, cannot be quoted in dollars.
The bottom line the administration wants you to take home is simple: America struck first, called it retaliation, and priced the difference into a barrel of oil. That is not an accusation. That is the wire.
“They bomb the missile launchers, then call the guy a war criminal for existing after the bombing, and the barrel price jumps ten bucks overnight — somebody's making money off both ends of that sentence, and it ain't you filling up at the pump.”
“The strikes ended a month of quiet because Iran forced our hand — did I say forced, I meant, the timeline's a formality, the point is America doesn't start wars, it finishes them, on a schedule that just happens to move oil to ninety a barrel.”
The receipts
Iran on Monday struck back at the U.S., carrying out attacks on American military assets at bases in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Jordan after U.S. forces fired at two Iranian rocket launchers over the weekend. Iran's Islamic…
President Trump publicly called Monday for Iran's leaders to be prosecuted for "war crimes against humanity" after trashing the Islamic Republic as a "failed nation."
The United States and Iran are trading attacks for the first time in weeks, just days after the war reached the six-month mark. US CENTCOM says it struck Larak Island where missile launchers were preparing to deploy mines into the Strait…
The renewed attacks were the latest sign that the war that began six months ago appears far from over.
Iran says it targeted U.S. bases in Jordan after CENTCOM announced strikes on rocket launchers on an Iranian island in the Strait of Hormuz.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.