A treaty is a way to conclude some wars. This one ended with a press conference and a question mark. On May 5, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, standing at the White House, told reporters in his own words, "Epic Fury, as the president notified Congress, we're done with that stage of it," but he wasn't announcing peace. He was announcing the end of one phase — the air campaign that started on Feb. 28 with the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader — and the start of something more difficult to define. Ten days later, President Donald Trump is back from Beijing, the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed, Brent is just past $108 per barrel, and the world's third largest oil importer is doing some number crunching in their head.

The figures for this week are not what New Delhi or Mumbai would have liked to see. Brent crude futures rose to $108 per barrel on Friday and were headed for a weekly increase of about 8% amid fears risks in the Strait of Hormuz have not abated in the wake of deadlock negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. In the May report, the International Energy Agency, which has been sounding increasingly pessimistic about the oil market throughout its 10 weekly reports, noted that crude and fuel flows through the Strait were reduced by about 4 million bps in March and April, warning that the world oil market could stay materially undersupplied through October if the conflict is resolved next month. The head of the agency has said that this was the '“greatest global energy security challenge in history,”' a statement that does not lend itself to easy hyperbole inflation.

The crux of the story and why the cease-fire did not change that.

It's time to pause and reflect on what really occurred. On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes against Iran, Operation Epic Fury, which destroyed various military bases and nuclear facilities and killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. In response, Iran attacked Israeli cities and American military bases in the Gulf, in the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain with missile barrages resulting in casualties and damage to infrastructure. In four days Iran did the very thing every Pentagon war-game had cautioned against. It closed the Strait of Hormuz and enforced the closure by mines, swarm boats and with a very real threat to shoot down any tanker that refused to take the hint.

Analysis of the military situation since then has been forthright. The Quwa review of the campaign conducted using CSIS, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Soufan Centre came to the conclusion that the US achieved only tactical damage to Iranian visible military infrastructure, failed to reach underground infrastructure, failed to remove the threat to the Strait of Hormuz, failed to stop the proxy networks, failed to drain reconstitution capacity or failed to achieve the political outcome it desired. Iran is known to have fired more than 500 ballistic missiles and 2000 drones by the end of Day 4 of the war from an underground tunnel network that it is possible to damage with air power but not disarm. As one Iranian commentator quoted by Iran International said disarmingly, “The deterrence they did not count on that much – the closure of the Strait of Hormuz – became their most valuable card.” Now, the regime's “most valuable card” is the security of the Strait of Hormuz, which they tie to the future of Iran.

There is no more to the story than that sentence. The bombs were frozen during the cease-fire of April 8. It was not able to open the strait.

The price of it — and to whom

There is a column of figures most readers will not have added up anywhere else, behind the geopolitical theatre.Even the Pentagon's own tab is going in the wrong direction. According to the office of its comptroller, it has already cost $29 billion (an extra $4 billion from the estimate given by senior Pentagon officials to Congress 2 weeks ago), and, as Harvard economist Linda Bilmes has estimated, the total taxpayer cost of the conflict will be a trillion dollars or more once equipment replacement and base repair costs are factored in. Capital Economics has estimated a drop of 10-15% in the economics of the Gulf countries if the war continued for more than three months. The losses of global GDP were estimated to be $590 billion to $3.5 trillion.

The Trump-Xi meet: a deal that did not result in a deal

Trump's visit to Beijing and the joint statement that ensued were the big diplomatic move of the week. The White House readout said that Trump and Xi Jinping agreed that the Strait of Hormuz “must remain open” and that “Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.” On Air Force One, Trump was even more explicit with reporters, stating that "On Iran, he feels strongly that they can't have a nuclear weapon — said that very strongly — and he wants them to open up the strait," that Iran had been losing nearly $500 million a day due to the US naval blockade.

Beijing's own readout, however, did not mention Iran by name, but rather said that the two sides had only “exchanged views on major international and regional issues including the Middle East situation” and warned the US off Taiwan in language several Asian commentators interpreted as being harsher than usual. The most tangible gesture was a Chinese pledge to "consider purchasing additional American crude oil", a clear side-deal which does nothing to ease the logjam in the narrow Strait of Hormuz.

Since Trump's come back, it has not been quiet out of the Pentagon. The IndiaBlooms tracker on Saturday said the US president is mulling new strikes on Iran following high-stakes negotiations with China, while Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers that the administration would “have plans to escalate if necessary” and two key Middle East sources told The New York Times that “intensive preparations” for strikes could start as early as next week. The Iranian counter proposal, which Trump called "TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE" called for compensation on war damages, recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the strait, relief on sanctions, the release of frozen assets -- terms that no U.S. administration ever was going to accept.

The Indian ledger, in simple numbers

This is the column you don't have a lot of headline space for; put it on the page in one paragraph. Until now, approximately half of the crude India has imported through the Hormuz. Since the closure of the Hormuz Strait, the country has lost more than 40% of its crude oil flows and oil marketing companies are losing at the rate of up to ₹1,000 crore a day as the government continues to keep the pump prices artificially low to protect consumers. In the first four months of 2026, foreign portfolio investors have already withdrawn over $20 billion from Indian stocks, exceeding the record year of withdrawals in 2025. The rupee has hit an all-time low level. The oil price shock has largely driven the slowdown in India's GDP growth forecast by Fitch's BMI, which has revised India's GDP growth to 6.7% in 2026/2027 from 7.7% in 2025/2026. Reserve Bank Governor Sanjay Malhotra has cautioned that a hike in pump prices and monetary tightening may still be inevitable.

LPG is the most vicious pinch-point. India is the biggest importer of cooking gas and 60% of India's LPG demand is met through imports, with the bulk of the imports coming through the Hormuz Strait. It was the first fuel to feel the impact of the crisis, and queues and delivery delays ensued. The IEA indicated that Indian crude imports were down 760 kb/d during the month of April. Perhaps, in a poetic way, Modi's April call to citizens to view fuel saving as an act of "patriotism" meant that there was no other but to physically destroy demand, as supply would not be made available in time.

A sober reading from the analyst's chair is what will provide hope to the bull market.

One week of Beijing and a new Modi-Mohamed Bin Zayed energy deal has been tempting to tell a tale of recovery. It would be too early. Pay attention to the insitutional analysis, itself. According to the Soufan Centre, Iran's remaining capabilities put Tehran in a position to wage a war of attrition long after any ceasefire has been signed. One Iran-watcher cited by Iran International this week drew the realistic bottom line as a gradual return of market flows to about sixty per cent of pre-war levels by late 2026 and flatness into 2027. In fact, even if - and it is still an optimistic assumption - that Hormuz is reopened in June, the IEA itself is projecting that global oil supply will decline by 3.9 mb/d on average in 2026.

The uncomfortable, but unavoidable strategic affairs view is that which must be placed on the table. India wasn't the one who started the war and it's being asked to bear an unduly heavy burden of the costs while having virtually no bargaining power with the principals. As much as was advertised, there is only so much pivoting to Russian crude oil; some of it is coming through Atlantic Basin barrels, but transport economics and western sanctions are putting the brakes on. The 30-million-barrel ADNOC storage agreement inked in Abu Dhabi on Friday is useful, but will only provide less than a fortnight's margin of cover when it is fully drawn. The two strategic reserve caverns at Chandikhol and Padur are listed for the Phase-II, which was approved in 2021. On the government's latest estimates, the country's strategic crude stocks are sufficient to meet just nine to 10 days' consumption needs. China's is more than one hundred. Japan's is more than two centuries old. A press conference does not fill that void.

The tougher question is whether anyone in policymaking circles believes the institutional architecture that was designed for the past era — global insurance markets, IEA coordinated drawdowns, OPEC+ spare capacity, the assumption that there are mines that Hormuz is a public good — is suitable for the era of a regime that can use a 21-mile waterway as a strategic weapon with mines, fast boats and patience. The truth, in the light of the past seventy-seven days, is no. Until then, the calculus for India is not anything to do with what barrels to purchase next month. It's a question of whether the nation develops the storage assets, alternative supply routes, rupee-rouble plumbing for the settlement, or domestic refining-and-petrochemical capabilities that would be necessary in a world in which chokepoints remain closed for quarters at a time.

Eventually, Hormuz will reopen. Markets return to normal, ceasefires become permanent, governments are rebuilt. But the message of Operation Epic Fury isn't that air power can finish a regional war on time. That even the most expensive air campaign in modern memory could not force open a strait that a determined adversary decided to close – and that the consumers who paid for that lesson – in cooking-gas queues, rupee weakness and lost growth – were not the ones who made the call to launch it. That's what New Delhi (and all capitals downstream of Hormuz) should be talking about out loud.