By Ed Ballard
President Trump has postponed his threat to "obliterate" Iranian power plants by five days, but detail on talks is thin.
Brent crude, the international benchmark, was recently down 10% at $101 a barrel. The decline points to cautious relief as the risk of tit-for-tat attacks on power plants and other infrastructure, such as desalination facilities, recedes.
"The snowball effect would take the entire GCC with it," Rystad Energy analyst Aditya Saraswat said, referring to the Gulf Cooperation Council, which comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Whether this de-escalation endures will depend on whether the belligerents are really making progress toward agreeing terms of a cease-fire and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
-- One question on the mind of Saraswat's mind is whether the U.S. insists that transactions involving oil shipped through the strait are cleared in dollars, averting the possibility of trades being cleared in the Chinese yuan.
-- Some oil refiners in China pay for Iranian oil in the Chinese currency, with Tehran using the proceeds to buy products in China. The U.S. would want to avoid a situation where other oil-importing countries clear transactions in yuan to get oil through the Strait, Saraswat said.
-- "This is the downside which the U.S. would like to avoid, on top of macroeconomic conditions and recessionary impacts and so on," he said.
This item is part of a Wall Street Journal live coverage event. The full stream can be found by searching P/WSJL (WSJ Live Coverage).
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 23, 2026 09:06 ET (13:06 GMT)
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