Five months into the deadliest conflict in the Middle East in a generation, the region is facing four crises, all so intertwined they could roll back the fragile truce into a full-scale war. In the middle of it all is a man who few have ever seen in months.

Mojtaba Khamenei is the focus of intense speculation once again about his health, as he was hastily chosen as Iran's third Supreme Leader by the Assembly of Experts in early March following the death of his father Ali Khamenei in the initial round of US-Israeli strikes. This week, Israeli outlets citing sources within Iran each reported that he was rushed to hospital in "extremely critical" condition, even if it was not in any way unexpected news according to one source quoted by the Jerusalem Post. This isn't the first such report. But previous reports some of which came from a leaked diplomatic memo obtained by The Times of London suggested he had lost a leg and sustained liver damage in the attack that killed his father and that he was being treated in a guarded ward at a Tehran hospital in the strictest of confidence. Tehran has never admitted any of these. What it has done, is far more telling. In a rare self-revelation, President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged himself on state television that "direct interaction with the Supreme Leader is very difficult," a statement that acknowledges that the regime's new leader can only be fully-controlled from a distance, issuing written instructions from where he is. Unfortunately, it's impossible to tell from the outside whether that's just a lack of capability or a calculated attempt by a wounded leadership to avoid further targeting, but that's probably causing more problems for Iran's stability than a confirmed death would.

None of this can be understood without referring to what Israeli intelligence has openly boasted of. The assassination of the elder Khamenei was no accident and had been meticulously planned over several years by the Mossad, which had infiltrated Iran using smuggled-in precision weaponry, hacking into traffic surveillance around the Supreme Leader's compound and establishing a covert "influence operations" wing to quietly eliminate Iranian officials without ever using a gun. In fact, Mossad's own top official has been quoted saying that the agency is patient and that in any case, the clerical establishment will fall apart by the end of this year if Washington continues with the economic siege on Tehran. That is a staggering admission from an intelligence body and, more than anything, it reflects the boundaries of a purely military operation and its capacity for success.

In the interim, Tehran's navy and the Revolutionary Guard have maintained a constant high state of tension in the Strait of Hormuz as the leadership question has remained unresolved. The IRGC attacks on commercial ships have become regular, with tankers being hit by projectiles and mines being laid in waters that are once again home to a fifth of the world's seaborne oil. Iran says it has now reached an agreement with Oman regarding transit routes and fees through the strait, though Washington is unlikely to accept any deal that would involve payment to a sanctioned regime and maritime insurers have refused to accept any deal with Iran. The statistics speak for themselves: In the pre-war period, an average of 138 ships used to pass through Hormuz each day; that traffic has not yet been restored and more than 60 individual maritime incidents have been recorded since the war began.

Not a lot of this is taking place in a vacuum for Washington either. President Trump has been publicly denying throughout this week that the U.S. military is running out of ammunition, and even threatened to send the “leakers” behind the report of the lack of ammunition to jail at one point. But those reports, from CBS, CNN and Washington Post, paint a picture of a Pentagon that has depleted most of its arsenal of long-range precision missiles and air-defence interceptors, and that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is in a dispute with the President himself over the issue at Camp David. A figure of 2,200 advanced Patriot interceptors and 452 THAAD missiles have been estimated for the United States before the war, which are being closely eyed by Gulf allies that rely on American air defence. A superpower that can't replenish its forces quietly in the middle of a war that it started, is a superpower whose deterrence value is being put to the test, regardless of what its President says on social media.

Pakistan, whose role has subtly, and successfully, grown far beyond it's hosting of failed ceasefire talks in Islamabad this spring, enters this void. Its military chief has been flying between Tehran and Washington and has been working on a series of compromises on the nuclear front and just this week Islamabad signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia and Turkey for mutual defense in Mecca, saying an attack on any of the three was an attack on all. The deal, which was made in public to be a collective deterrence, not an anti-Iran or anti-Israel bloc, represents a shift in attitude by regional powers who are no longer willing to wait for the U.S. to provide security guarantees because of the two threats.

Iran is a stark warning to countries such as India which relies heavily on the flow of Gulf energy via Hormuz. During the course of this war, Brent has experienced a rollercoaster ride, ranging from around seventy dollars pre-war to over a hundred and nine, all the way back down again with any ceasefire rumours round the corner. The world is not witnessing the end of this war because of that volatility, combined with the vacuum in Tehran's leadership, the choke point of the Middle East, weaponed up Washington, and the realignment of geopolitical partners. It is experiencing its next, more unpredictable, chapter.So, the chart above does a good job of capturing the arc of Brent's swing through the war the closest single number to capturing how directly this conflict is impacting household and industrial energy costs everywhere, including India.