This phone call was longer than normal. On a Jerusalem evening in April, the Israeli prime minister put down his corruption trial brief, headed into a back office and called Washington. When he lowered the receiver, the small band of ministers that operate Israel's National Security State had already been held in down the corridor huddles. The Situation Room in Washington was being readied for what few in the West Wing would like to make public: a meeting Tuesday. A U.S. carrier group was moving somewhere over the Indian Ocean. Oil traders in Singapore, Mumbai and London awoke 48 hours after that call to find Brent up north of $108 a barrel and a basic premise, that the second round of the Iran war is not a question of if anymore.

The tale that is being told this week out of the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem is intentionally sparse. A “security limited” cabinet was held. In the room were the defence minister, the foreign minister, the finance minister and political hardliners who have been ensuring the survival of this coalition. The shorthand version of what was discussed also is the giveaway: contingency planning, target lists, deconfliction with the Americans, and what Tel Aviv expects in return if Iranian missiles fly. For 10 days, Israeli military officials have been stating publicly that the IDF is ready to go back to battle "at any time. That's no idle chatter. It's a message that's directed straight at Tehran, and the holdouts in the Trump cabinet that still hope a deal can be salvaged.

That's why we're here again, because of the shape that deal is. Trump's negotiators have outlined terms for what looks like a surrender document: Iran agrees to give up its 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity, retains a single declared nuclear facility under international monitoring, and foregoes any compensation for damages from the February strikes, and presumably waives through a reopened Strait of Hormuz. Tehran's counter shot is very similar: sanctions relief, the return of frozen assets, reparations for war damage, and an explicit recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait. There is no bluffing from either side. There's no apparent place for either side to climb down from. A senior Iranian parliamentary spokesman has already hinted that, if it occurs, the next stage of enrichment will not be limited to 60 per cent. Weapons-grade is 90% pure. That's the number that ends careers in Washington.

Most commentators are reading Trump's tweet from earlier this week the wrong way: the clock is ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won't be anything left of them. It is not bluster. It is the face of a process that the Pentagon has already named, which is public facing. Two US officials told American broadcasters last week that the military is planning to phase out the February campaign, known as "Operation Epic Fury," and launch a new one, "Sledgehammer. The name changes are important for one particular legal reason. The War Powers Resolution allows the president sixty days of fighting until Congress has to approve continuation. If there's a new operational name, associated with a new declared objective, it resets that clock. In the West Wing, lawyers have been playing with this for weeks. The hardware is ready: an aircraft carrier strike group, refuelling tankers, command and control platforms, and the bunker buster stockpile that made it through the Fordow run in June 2025.

The difference between these two is China. Trump came back from Beijing with a “no deal,” in the words of one aide. Contrary to the White House's hopes, Xi Jinping did not pressure the Iranians to give up the uranium stockpile. Rather, the Chinese authorities have reiterated their desire to have the Strait of Hormuz re-opened on terms that are quite unlike the ones Washington desires. The total reliance in Asia on the Strait is incredible, as some 84 percent of the crude oil and 83 percent of the LNG that passes through the Strait is for Asian importers, the big numbers of which are China, India, Japan and South Korea. Israeli hawks would no doubt have wished for such a failure in Beijing, as well as a lack of a negotiating track. The message Netanyahu was sending his own supporters and to Washington in the cabinet meeting was that his "eyes are open" about Iran and that the diplomacy is more or less a dead end.

Now, the economics is the principal voice. Brent crude is up from about $72 per barrel at the end of February to a high of more than $114 earlier this month, and is now trading around $108 a barrel. The International Energy Agency, no stranger to forecasting doomsday scenarios, has said the current disruption was the biggest supply shock in global oil market history and that even if a ceasefire is signed next month, the market will be materially undersupplied through October. Tanker traffic through the Strait is at a fraction of the normal single digits of transits per day on bad days versus a peacetime level of about 120. Gas at the pump in America has gone past $4.50 per gallon, where it stood prior to the war. North American jet fuel is up about 95 percent. Bangladesh is on the brink of growth in the recession zone. Pakistan is rationing. Japan has already drawn on its strategic reserves, and will use 80 million barrels, 15 days worth of national demand. This is not the kind of war that is normal. It is a tax on all economies that purchase energy, and it hits the hardest on those who cannot take the shock because they lack the dollar reserves or refining capacity.

The statistics are chilling for India, who is sitting at the table in the most vulnerable position. About 85 percent of domestic use is met from crude imports, which constitute between one-quarter and one-third of the import bill. National crude stocks have fallen by approximately 15 percent since February, from some 107 million barrels to approximately 91 million, according to commodity tracker data leaked from government data. Already, the rupee has fallen below 92 to the dollar at one point in March under the weight of imported inflation and a net equity capital outpouring of about $3 billion seeking safe haven dollars. Indian refiners are rushing to buy Russian Urals, West Africans and any spot cargo not requiring transit via Hormuz. New Delhi lowered excise on petrol and diesel by 10 rupees per litre to prevent retail prices surpassing the political cap, and also removed export duty on the fuels to ensure availability of supplies in the domestic market. The macro situation is simple: For India, each $10 increase in Brent prices on the import card comes at a cost of between $13 billion and $15 billion per year, and fiscal space for further duty reductions is narrowing by the week.

This is where the dialogue in strategic circles in New Delhi, Singapore and Riyadh has grown uncomfortable. A major debate, now put forward by defence economists and analysts who live in the Gulf region, is that the second war on Iraq isn't a uranium war at all. The 400 kilograms is buried under bombed-out concrete near Isfahan. The IAEA has not yet had access. Last week, Trump himself acknowledged that it would be more for public relations than for any immediate threat. What Washington and Tel Aviv are really going for and what Tehran's leadership is really defending is something bigger, namely who will set the rules by which Gulf hydrocarbons get to Asian markets, who will police the chokepoint, and who will determine when a regional power is “allowed” to keep enrichment facilities on its own soil. That puts the Gulf monarchies in a uncomfortable corner. The UAE and Saudi Arabia have also participated in strikes, but both countries' citizens and their non-oil economies would not be able to weather a year of sea-lane closure easily. Permanent "low-level warfare" in the Gulf is what the drone attacks on the nuclear power plant in Abu Dhabi this week demonstrated.

A sober reading is here that is lost in the cable-news drumbeat. No unipolar resolution Tehran capitulates, ships its uranium to a third country, opens the Strait. A negotiated reset, providing Iran a face-saving enrichment ceiling, easing some sanctions, allowing Hormuz transit and maintaining regional powers' airspace would have been the least costly scenario for all the importing economies in Asia. That window has seemed to be closed. If “Sledgehammer” really is in the planning stages, what goes instead is a longer campaign with more targets (ballistic missile sites, IRGC command nodes, regime infrastructure and not just nuclear facilities and almost certainly Houthis and possibly Hezbollah retaliation). The IEA's modelling that there will be undersupply well into autumn is the best case scenario. The downside scenario is a $130 handle for Brent and Asian central banks depleting their foreign currency reserves to prop up their currencies.

A more serious warning in this week's events is hard for most governments to state publicly. The notion that the Gulf would be a reliable supplier as long as the U.S. military kept an eye on the situation and Iran was a manageable but useful spoiler is quietly scrapped. In its place is a hub-and-spoke energy security structure in which Asian importers are required to put in place measures to protect against the alliance they once relied on to safeguard their tankers. Whether or not the members of Netanyahu's small security cabinet knew they were doing so, that is the message that Netanyahu was sending out of Jerusalem this weekend. If the strikes occur, they will be brief, taking place only for days at a time. The economic and strategic reshuffle that they will cause will take 10 years to settle.

Example of an image for layout: example image of a series of commercial oil tankers at anchor near the Strait of Hormuz at dawn, obtained from an online archive of public domain or Creative Commons images (U.S. Navy public affairs imagery or Wikimedia Commons would have appropriate images available, with no copyright restrictions on their usage).