It was only a weekend before the lull was shattered. On Wednesday, American and Saudi warplanes started bombing Iranian-backed militia buildings in seven Iraqi provinces, Jordanian air defenses began shooting Iranian missiles from the sky and the Revolutionary Guards were on board oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz a series of events that have transformed a hesitant ceasefire into what now appears to be the most serious escalation of the conflict since it flared up again five months ago.

The immediate cause was a series of drone attacks on Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, where the kingdom's oil facilities are merely below the surface of each crisis in the region. Meanwhile, Riyadh stated that its air-defence systems had shot down the drones before they could cause "serious damage," and traced them back to militia bases within Iraq that are linked to Tehran's network of armed Shiite groups. Soon, American planes began flying with Saudi planes, which were under the CENTCOM flag and were attacking what the Pentagon described as "terrorist logistics and weapons sites" in the east of the country within hours. It was the first time Saudi Arabia has officially taken responsibility for offensive operations across Iraqi soil since the start of the war and that's more important than the number of casualties. Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, a state-backed alliance of pro-Iran militias, claimed at least twenty fighters were killed and thirty-two others injured, including its headquarters in Baghdad. The strikes were an "attempt on Baghdad's independence," as the presidency put it, and the government also canceled a trip by the prime minister to Jeddah, a minor but revealing example of how a delicate diplomatic bridge between Iraq and the Gulf countries can break down.

Tehran wasn't sitting on its hands. Ballistic missiles were fired at American troops in Jordan by the Revolutionary Guards, the first such attack since the conflict subsided over the weekend. Five incoming missiles were detected by Jordanian batteries and none of them hit their target, Washington said. An Iranian official soon clarified that it had been a "miscalculation" to blame the Saudi strikes on Iran, though the motivation behind the statement was mostly diplomatic than substantive, as militias aligned with Tehran run the show much of the time. Adding to the mix, Iran's Guard navy said it had intercepted and boarded three tankers for failing to obey a "warning to an unsafe and illegal route" in the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for about one-fifth of the world's seaborne oil trade.

That assertion came at the same time as Hormuz diplomacy was seeming to come together, albeit slowly. Somewhat loosely patterned on the “voluntary-fee” system that Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have in the Strait of Malacca, Oman had offered a proposal for “joint management” of the strait, collecting fees from passing ships for navigation and environmental protection. Despite Tehran's regard for Oman as a valued neighbor, a fifty-fifty deal would not be in Iran's interests, said a senior Iranian official this week in an interview with Reuters. Iran is seeking to have a strong hand over the entire inbound route and part of the outbound one; the Omani project is designed to deny it just that thing. Washington, on the other hand, has said that it would never impose any tolls or fees.In the meantime, Washington has said it won't impose any tolls or fees and that the strait should be a free international waterway. The difference between these two isn't a superficial one; it is the whole issue in miniature hence a temporary ceasefire that has already fallen apart at the very most fragile point.

The economic impact was felt in hours after the strikes. Investors priced in a new risk premium on Gulf supply, with both the West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude rising by about four per cent in a single session to eighty-two and eighty-eight dollars per barrel, respectively. As a fifth of the world's oil trade and a similar percentage of LNG travels through Hormuz, a partial disruption of the area quickly spreads to refining margins, shipping insurance costs and ultimately pump prices in import-dependent economies from Europe to South Asia. On top of that, with loose coordination with Tehran, Houthis in Yemen have threatened to start a new toll for vessels using the Red Sea's Bab el-Mandeb strait, creating a double squeeze on global shipping. Insurers have already started to reprice the risk of transiting the Gulf and a number of shipping lines that have gingerly begun to return to the Red Sea as talks have been ongoing are now considering the added cost of taking the route around the Cape of Good Hope, which can extend voyages by 10 to 14 days and millions of dollars.

Unlike any one strike, it is the multiple fronts that make this moment special. Iraq is back to being a proxy battleground between Washington's blessing of its new prime minister and Tehran's entrenched militia allies. Saudi Arabia is no longer in the defensive phase and is directly retaliating. Jordan has now turned into a live theater for shooting down missiles. The Strait of Hormuz, which provides the pivot of the world energy market, is still a battleground, not a settled chokepoint. A White House meeting between the American and Israeli leaders was expected to yield clarity on reinvigorating the interim deal with Iran last month, which was mediated by the two parties. Instead, the area received missiles flown over Jordan, boarders on the tankers in Bandar Abbas and a reminder that in this conflict, serenity is the new rarity. The new operating premise for markets and governments is that any delay is temporary, and the next flash point is just a few days down the road it might be at the Hormuz port, the Red Sea or another base of an Iraqi militia.