Fears oil prices could surge in US after Iran strikes
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here High oil and petrol prices are a near certainty, experts say. The big question now: how long will the fossil fuels price spike last? Oil prices are expected to rise by about $US5 ($7.72) a barrel when markets open on Sunday night local time, according to experts. An oil tanker is loaded at Saudi Aramco's Ras Tanura oil refinery and oil terminal in Saudi Arabia. (Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters/File via CNN) "We are looking at $US80 oil on the open," said Andy Lipow of Lipow Oil Associates. US oil hasn't closed above $US80 a barrel since January and has largely hovered between $US60 and $US75 a barrel since August 2024. Relatively tame oil prices have lowered petrol prices to below $US3 a gallon (about $1.22 a litre) in many parts of the country, a major source of price relief for inflation-weary consumers. It's unclear if any major spike in oil prices will be sustained for a long period. Oil prices have risen about 10 per cent since Israel's surprise attack on June 13 and then fell on Friday after US President Donald Trump announced a two-week deadline on whether to strike Iran. Oil tankers have in the past been attacked in the Strait of Hormuz. (AAP) "One shouldn't necessarily assume that just because the price of oil goes up, it's going to stay there. It doesn't," said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist for the accounting firm RSM. The direction oil prices take is likely to depend on whether Iran's parliament decides to block the Strait of Hormuz, a key trade route that accounts for about 20 per cent of the world's crude oil. On Sunday, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his country had "a variety of options" when deciding on how to respond to the US attacks; and a prominent adviser to Iran's supreme leader has already called for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows the Fordow enrichment facility in Iran after the US strikes. (Maxar Technologies) Bob McNally, president of consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group and former energy adviser to president George W Bush, said that should Iran cut off the world's oil supply by closing the strait, it would risk more military force from the US and its allies. Iran could also attack infrastructure in the Persian Gulf that treated and exported oil and gas. "It's possible they will decide the only thing that can dissuade President Trump is the fear of an oil price spike," he said. "They have to actually create that fear." Appearing on Fox News, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on China to prevent Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz, adding that closing it would do more damage to other economies than the US economy. China buys a third of all oil that comes from the Persian Gulf, while the US buys less than 3 per cent. "I encourage the Chinese government in Beijing to call them about that, because they heavily depend on the Strait of Hormuz for their oil," Rubio said. Rubio added that closing the strait would hurt other countries' economies more than the US economy. Meanwhile, American consumers may soon feel a price shock at the pump. "It takes five days or so for stations to pass along the prices they see in one day. If oil markets do surge today and then tomorrow, it could start showing up at the pump in a matter of hours," said Patrick De Haan, vice president of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, a fuel tracking platform. According to Lipow, should the Strait of Hormuz be affected, the price of oil could rise to $US100 ($154.50) a barrel, which would raise petrol and diesel prices by about US75 cents a gallon (about 29c a litre) from recent levels. Meanwhile, US trade policies combined with the Israel-Iran conflict "strongly suggest inflation will be moving faster and higher over the next 90 days," according to Brusuelas. Many mainstream economists argue that the low inflation of the spring represents a calm before the summer storm, when they expect prices to rise because of Trump's tariffs. oil
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The Advertiser
3 hours ago
- The Advertiser
Iran issues stark warning: we will end this war
Iran says the US attack on its nuclear sites expanded the range of legitimate targets for its armed forces and called US President Donald Trump a "gambler" for joining Israel's military campaign against the Islamic Republic. Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson for Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya central military headquarters, said the US should expect heavy consequences for its actions. "Mr Trump, the gambler, you may start this war, but we will be the ones to end it," Zolfaqari said in English at the end of a recorded video statement. Iran and Israel traded air and missile strikes as the world braced for Tehran's response to the US attack on its nuclear sites over the weekend, which Trump suggested could lead to the overthrow of the Iranian government. "It's not politically correct to use the term, "Regime Change," but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!" Trump wrote on Truth Social. Commercial satellite imagery indicated Saturday's attack on Iran's Fordow nuclear plant far underground had severely damaged or destroyed the site and the uranium-enriching centrifuges it housed, but its status remained unconfirmed, experts said. In his latest social media comments on the US strikes, Trump said: "Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran." "The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!" he wrote on his Truth Social platform. Trump earlier called on Iran to forgo any retaliation and said the government "must now make peace" or future attacks would be "far greater and a lot easier", fuelling global concern about further escalation of conflict in the Middle East. The US launched 75 precision-guided munitions including bunker-buster bombs and more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles against three Iranian nuclear sites, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, told reporters. The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said no increases in off-site radiation levels had been reported after the US strikes. Rafael Grossi, the agency's director general, told CNN that it was not yet possible to assess the damage done underground. A senior Iranian source told Reuters that most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordo had been moved elsewhere before the attack. Reuters could not immediately corroborate the claim. Tehran, which denies its nuclear program is for anything other than peaceful purposes, launched a volley of missiles towards Israel in the aftermath of the US attack, wounding scores of people and destroying buildings in Tel Aviv. But it has not acted on its main options for retaliation, to attack US bases or choke off the 20 per cent of global oil shipments that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Attempting to strangle the strait could send global oil prices skyrocketing, derail the world economy and invite conflict with the US Navy's massive Fifth Fleet based in nearby Bahrain. Oil prices jumped on Monday to their highest since January. Iran says the US attack on its nuclear sites expanded the range of legitimate targets for its armed forces and called US President Donald Trump a "gambler" for joining Israel's military campaign against the Islamic Republic. Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson for Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya central military headquarters, said the US should expect heavy consequences for its actions. "Mr Trump, the gambler, you may start this war, but we will be the ones to end it," Zolfaqari said in English at the end of a recorded video statement. Iran and Israel traded air and missile strikes as the world braced for Tehran's response to the US attack on its nuclear sites over the weekend, which Trump suggested could lead to the overthrow of the Iranian government. "It's not politically correct to use the term, "Regime Change," but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!" Trump wrote on Truth Social. Commercial satellite imagery indicated Saturday's attack on Iran's Fordow nuclear plant far underground had severely damaged or destroyed the site and the uranium-enriching centrifuges it housed, but its status remained unconfirmed, experts said. In his latest social media comments on the US strikes, Trump said: "Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran." "The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!" he wrote on his Truth Social platform. Trump earlier called on Iran to forgo any retaliation and said the government "must now make peace" or future attacks would be "far greater and a lot easier", fuelling global concern about further escalation of conflict in the Middle East. The US launched 75 precision-guided munitions including bunker-buster bombs and more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles against three Iranian nuclear sites, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, told reporters. The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said no increases in off-site radiation levels had been reported after the US strikes. Rafael Grossi, the agency's director general, told CNN that it was not yet possible to assess the damage done underground. A senior Iranian source told Reuters that most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordo had been moved elsewhere before the attack. Reuters could not immediately corroborate the claim. Tehran, which denies its nuclear program is for anything other than peaceful purposes, launched a volley of missiles towards Israel in the aftermath of the US attack, wounding scores of people and destroying buildings in Tel Aviv. But it has not acted on its main options for retaliation, to attack US bases or choke off the 20 per cent of global oil shipments that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Attempting to strangle the strait could send global oil prices skyrocketing, derail the world economy and invite conflict with the US Navy's massive Fifth Fleet based in nearby Bahrain. Oil prices jumped on Monday to their highest since January. Iran says the US attack on its nuclear sites expanded the range of legitimate targets for its armed forces and called US President Donald Trump a "gambler" for joining Israel's military campaign against the Islamic Republic. Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson for Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya central military headquarters, said the US should expect heavy consequences for its actions. "Mr Trump, the gambler, you may start this war, but we will be the ones to end it," Zolfaqari said in English at the end of a recorded video statement. Iran and Israel traded air and missile strikes as the world braced for Tehran's response to the US attack on its nuclear sites over the weekend, which Trump suggested could lead to the overthrow of the Iranian government. "It's not politically correct to use the term, "Regime Change," but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!" Trump wrote on Truth Social. Commercial satellite imagery indicated Saturday's attack on Iran's Fordow nuclear plant far underground had severely damaged or destroyed the site and the uranium-enriching centrifuges it housed, but its status remained unconfirmed, experts said. In his latest social media comments on the US strikes, Trump said: "Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran." "The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!" he wrote on his Truth Social platform. Trump earlier called on Iran to forgo any retaliation and said the government "must now make peace" or future attacks would be "far greater and a lot easier", fuelling global concern about further escalation of conflict in the Middle East. The US launched 75 precision-guided munitions including bunker-buster bombs and more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles against three Iranian nuclear sites, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, told reporters. The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said no increases in off-site radiation levels had been reported after the US strikes. Rafael Grossi, the agency's director general, told CNN that it was not yet possible to assess the damage done underground. A senior Iranian source told Reuters that most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordo had been moved elsewhere before the attack. Reuters could not immediately corroborate the claim. Tehran, which denies its nuclear program is for anything other than peaceful purposes, launched a volley of missiles towards Israel in the aftermath of the US attack, wounding scores of people and destroying buildings in Tel Aviv. But it has not acted on its main options for retaliation, to attack US bases or choke off the 20 per cent of global oil shipments that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Attempting to strangle the strait could send global oil prices skyrocketing, derail the world economy and invite conflict with the US Navy's massive Fifth Fleet based in nearby Bahrain. Oil prices jumped on Monday to their highest since January. Iran says the US attack on its nuclear sites expanded the range of legitimate targets for its armed forces and called US President Donald Trump a "gambler" for joining Israel's military campaign against the Islamic Republic. Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson for Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya central military headquarters, said the US should expect heavy consequences for its actions. "Mr Trump, the gambler, you may start this war, but we will be the ones to end it," Zolfaqari said in English at the end of a recorded video statement. Iran and Israel traded air and missile strikes as the world braced for Tehran's response to the US attack on its nuclear sites over the weekend, which Trump suggested could lead to the overthrow of the Iranian government. "It's not politically correct to use the term, "Regime Change," but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!" Trump wrote on Truth Social. Commercial satellite imagery indicated Saturday's attack on Iran's Fordow nuclear plant far underground had severely damaged or destroyed the site and the uranium-enriching centrifuges it housed, but its status remained unconfirmed, experts said. In his latest social media comments on the US strikes, Trump said: "Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran." "The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!" he wrote on his Truth Social platform. Trump earlier called on Iran to forgo any retaliation and said the government "must now make peace" or future attacks would be "far greater and a lot easier", fuelling global concern about further escalation of conflict in the Middle East. The US launched 75 precision-guided munitions including bunker-buster bombs and more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles against three Iranian nuclear sites, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, told reporters. The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said no increases in off-site radiation levels had been reported after the US strikes. Rafael Grossi, the agency's director general, told CNN that it was not yet possible to assess the damage done underground. A senior Iranian source told Reuters that most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordo had been moved elsewhere before the attack. Reuters could not immediately corroborate the claim. Tehran, which denies its nuclear program is for anything other than peaceful purposes, launched a volley of missiles towards Israel in the aftermath of the US attack, wounding scores of people and destroying buildings in Tel Aviv. But it has not acted on its main options for retaliation, to attack US bases or choke off the 20 per cent of global oil shipments that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Attempting to strangle the strait could send global oil prices skyrocketing, derail the world economy and invite conflict with the US Navy's massive Fifth Fleet based in nearby Bahrain. Oil prices jumped on Monday to their highest since January.
The Age
4 hours ago
- The Age
Can this ugly elf make China cool again?
The shift may be in large part because global views of the United States have taken such a nose-dive since President Donald Trump's second term began. Morning Consult said that American favourability had fallen far faster than enthusiasm for China had risen in that period. Given the 'alarmingly isolationist turn of the US,' said Ying Zhu, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University who studies American and Chinese soft power, China looked 'stable and steady in comparison'. But China has also been trying to build its soft power in its own right, alongside its economic and military might. China's leader, Xi Jinping, has said that the country should work to 'reshape' the international conversation in China's favour. Broader appeal in pop culture, or as a travel destination, would bolster its claim to being an alternative to the United States for global leadership. Within China, that effort has been successful. Many Chinese now turn to homegrown brands and stars instead of the Western ones they once idolised. Labubu dolls have sold out so quickly that some Chinese have taken to smuggling in dolls bought overseas to resell them. Last week, a human-size Labubu sculpture sold at an auction in Beijing for $US150,000. There are signs some overseas fans of Labubu are engaging more with other Chinese products. On Reddit, users swap tips for ordering dolls or outfits on AliExpress and other Chinese e-commerce platforms. They express concern about American tariffs on Chinese imports. Loading After Sue Aw, 30, visited Shanghai last year from Australia in part to find Labubu dolls (they were sold out), she now wants to visit China again later this year. She wanted to see other cities, and to buy more of Chinese clothing brands she had discovered. Her friends in Australia have also 'definitely seen China in a more positive light after the level of craze' around Labubu, she said. But for other Labubu lovers, the doll's Chinese origins seem unimportant, or even pass unnoticed. (In fact, while Pop Mart is a Chinese company, the character itself was designed by a Hong Kong-born artist raised in the Netherlands.) In Western markets, Pop Mart has collaborated with Disney and Marvel. Some Chinese social media users have joked that the doll is so popular in the United States — where wraparound lines have developed at malls — because people there don't know it is Chinese. For many Americans, the appeal of Labubu seems to be just as much, or perhaps more, about its ingenious marketing: its scarcity, its frequent use of 'blind box' packaging, in which buyers don't know which of several elves they will receive. Even so, the growing presence of Chinese companies worldwide is itself a form of soft power, said Huang Rihan, a professor at Huaqiao University in Fujian province who has studied China's messaging overseas. He pointed to how companies such as Pop Mart, Tencent or Alibaba have hired employees of different nationalities, in offices all around the world. Huang said that China's biggest soft-power successes had come from young Chinese entrepreneurs having the freedom to engage globally and experiment. Pop Mart's chief executive, Wang Ning, is just 33, and has said that he wants the brand to work with artists from around the world. 'In the realm of culture, I think the government should loosen its grip,' Huang said. Loading Indeed, a bigger challenge for China's soft power efforts may be how eager Chinese authorities are to claim them. Repeated official calls to boost soft power suggest a belief that trendiness can be manufactured if the government just tries hard enough. Sometimes that eagerness can be merely cringeworthy (a recent People's Daily article called 'What Makes China 'Cool'' declared: ''Cool' is a term rooted in youth culture, typically associated with what is fashionable') or propagandistic (China's cool, another article said, came from 'building a community with a shared future for mankind' — a slogan of Xi). Government involvement, whether real or perceived, can also be more directly off-putting. When a Chinese company promoted Wukong, the blockbuster video game, last year to overseas streamers, it instructed them to avoid topics such as 'feminist propaganda' or the coronavirus pandemic — terms that the government censors heavily.
Sydney Morning Herald
5 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Diplomacy can't deliver the quick wins Trump craves. But neither can war
The tumultuous '20s get ever more tumultuous. After the pandemic in 2020, the storming of the US Capitol in 2021, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Hamas's attacks on Israel in 2023 and the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024, now, at the midpoint of 2025, comes the US entry into the war against Iran. Wearing a crimson 'Make America Great Again' cap in the Situation Room of the White House, the US commander-in-chief oversaw his country's most significant military intervention in more than 20 years. Not since George W. Bush gave the go-ahead in 2003 for US forces to invade Iraq has a president made such a potentially consequential decision. The chaos of what happened after the fall of Saddam Hussein – which the brutal theocracy in Tehran revelled in fomenting – now hangs over America's latest Middle East adventure. But there is also the possibility that Trump could achieve a feat that eluded his predecessors: elimination of Iran's nuclear threat without heavy American loss of life. With so many unknown unknowns, it is too early to say. Already, the crisis has put on display so many hallmarks of Trump's leadership. The utter unpredictability of a president who signalled last week that a window had opened up for diplomacy. His readiness to gamble. His impatience with the slow pace of negotiated solutions – it took the Obama administration and its European Union, Chinese and Russian partners two years to conclude the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal which Trump withdrew from in his first term. There was the ritualistic trashing of European allies, who conducted talks with the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Geneva on Friday. 'Iran doesn't want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us,' he said as those talks came to an inconclusive end, even though the UK foreign secretary David Lammy had flown direct from Washington to Geneva carrying a message from the Trump administration to Iran's leadership. Lengthy diplomacy seems to bore this fabled dealmaker who boasted of ending the Ukraine war in a single day. Loading The crisis has demonstrated Trump's penchant for the dramatisation of world affairs. Always, he is centre stage. Each unfolding day is vested with the suspense of an episodic cliffhanger. Even when blood is about to be shed, a factor in his decision-making seems to be the sheer entertainment value of his actions. The flourishes he used in his speech to the nation following the B2 stealth bomber mission was classic Trump. 'We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before,' he boasted of his collaboration with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The 'great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines' had carried out 'an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many, many decades', he added, using the patois of a carnival barker rather than a statesman. Ahead of the US strikes, we were also reminded of his fixation with winning a Nobel Peace Prize, something his nemesis, Barack Obama, achieved, rather undeservedly, early on in his first term. 'I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between India and Pakistan,' he moaned on Truth Social, as he cited five conflicts in which his administration had purportedly played a mediating role. In full victim mode, Trump complained he would be overlooked for the prize 'no matter what' he accomplished. Hours after this self-pitying diatribe, he took America to war. Winning is so central to his thinking. Israel, after days of strikes on Tehran and the nuclear sites, clearly had the upper hand. In joining Netanyahu – who stroked Trump's ego afterwards by praising him for 'courageously leading the free world' – he felt he was joining the winning side.
