US stocks fell and oil prices surged Monday morning as tensions over the Iran war heated up again, after President Trump announced the US Navy had seized an Iranian cargo vessel and Tehran sent mixed signals on resuming talks.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq had slumped 0.2% and 0.4%, respectively, as of 9:45 a.m. Eastern Time, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average traded roughly flat.
Brent crude oil prices jumped 3.9% to $93.89 and West Texas Intermediate rose 4.5% to $86.29. National average gasoline prices dipped slightly to $4.04 a gallon – still over 30% higher than prices before the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran in February.
Traders feared rising tensions in the Middle East after Trump on Sunday announced that the US Navy had blown “a hole in the engineroom” of an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that attempted to skirt the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian ship “is under US Treasury Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity. We have full custody of the ship, and are seeing what’s on board,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
In a post earlier Sunday, Trump said Iran had fired bullets in the strait at foreign vessels, calling it “A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement!”
After Iran refused to join another round of peace talks in Pakistan, Trump reiterated his threat to bomb the nation’s power plants and bridges, which critics have claimed would constitute a war crime. However, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said continuing the conflict “benefits no one” — and Trump told The Post on Monday that he was willing to meet his the Middle Eastern country’s leaders in person.
“We’re supposed to have the talks,” Trump told The Post. “So I would assume at this point nobody’s playing games.”
A temporary ceasefire between the US and Iran is slated to expire this Wednesday if no peace deals comes through.
Wall Street is coming off huge gains last week, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hitting fresh all-time highs following a ceasefire between Iran and Lebanon.
Iran said last week that the Strait of Hormuz – a vital maritime route for 20% of the world’s oil – was fully reopened, though traffic reportedly remained restricted.
