The cease fire that never really worked is now working no more. According to word late Friday out of Washington, first from CBS, then confirmed, in broad terms, by the Wall Street Journal, the United States and Israel have drawn up plans for a joint bombing campaign against Iran's energy infrastructure with the strikes potentially running through the entire weekend and beyond. According to officials briefed on the issue, President Trump issued a decree during a cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday, and did not attempt to ease the message behind it this must be the impetus required to finally make Tehran give up.

Five months on from the beginning of the war in the region at the end of February, the main question on everyone's mind is, “how is it going to keep repeating?” One series of strikes becomes another, oil prices rocket, diplomats tread a tightrope to find a way out, a fragile truce is signed, and then, within weeks, it unravels and the region is at it again, and worse. The memorandum reached in mid-June briefly brought the price of Brent crude down to the pre-war levels of around $78 per barrel. But that quiet was short-lived, and just one month later they were back at it again. Iran's Revolutionary Guard also began to target tankers last week, through the Strait of Hormuz, which is used in normal times by virtually a fifth of the world's seaborne oil trade. West Texas Intermediate finished Friday at $84.67, Brent finished just above $90, traders are again reading into the prospect that this will be the summer for which oil markets will not recover and the July contract is trading at a premium to the June contract.

This moment is unique because of the target set. The first rounds focused on military sites and nuclear-related facilities missile factories, drone production facilities, Revolutionary Guard command posts. The new plan puts its focus on Iran's existing energy infrastructure: its power stations, refineries, and the physical pipelines that help the Iranian economy run from day to day, reports CBS. That isn't an escalation in degree, it's an escalation in kind. When they hit the electricity grid and refining capacity, they're doing the kind of campaign that's supposed to break civilian tolerance to continue the fight, and not just the military's ability to do so. Interestingly, the same source reports that officials were considering wrapping up the deal before markets open Monday, at least in part due to an awareness of how a longer assault on Iranian energy would affect the price of crude. There was never any agreement on a deadline, which speaks for itself as to the confidence of anyone in the room that it stays contained.

Trump has been very direct about his patience. He told reporters at Friday's cabinet meeting that "we'll be hitting them very hard" and at some point, Iran will "say we just can't take it anymore. It's not the words of a person hoping for a symbolically-fueled victory. It's the language of an administration that seeks to coerce capitulation and publicly, and there's no face-saving off-ramp in "surrender" as a goal.

More focus on the economic background is needed. Before the war, about 130 vessels used to pass through Hormuz each day, according to figures by the CRS, but in the last week, the number had dwindled to single digits, and more vessels were flying Iranian or Chinese flags. Israel, in turn, has conducted an unusual experiment during this war: its own defense budget has swelled to more than 177 billion shekels, far more than the 143 billion shekels allocated to it in the original budget, and Bank of Israel estimates have the war costing the country since 2023 at more than $57 billion in lost output. Yet the shekel has been appreciating against the dollar, the Tel Aviv 35 index keeps all-time records and Israeli defense exports have reached $19.2 billion last year, almost 30 percent higher. A significant portion of the costs have been picked up by Washington, through munitions financing and reloading of air-defence systems. It's an asymmetry, an ally whose markets are benefiting from the war, the rest of the region taking the blow, and it is no footnote. It changes the ones who have food on their plate to desire more and the ones who have no appetite to keep fighting, to want it to end.

There is a instinctive tendency to see this as a security issue in much of western commentary; strikes, retaliation, deterrence. The more apt one now is, however, economic coercion. Iran has long wielded the influence it has through Hormuz and Khamenei himself spoke of the "lever" of closing the strait as one that he was "pressing" onwards to continue. If this is the case, then Washington's response to the attacks is to see if it can pressure Tehran into giving up its own power plants and refineries, which sustain the nation's economy, and removing the capability to fund its resistance, which has been what months of military strikes on hardened dispersed nuclear sites have failed to do. The real question on the weekend is whether that bet pays off or simply pushes oil back to the $100-plus club that it enjoyed in March, threatening to squeeze South Asia and the Gulf states' economies, which are still used to burning the stuff as a source of power. How this actually works out will be the first and best test in the markets, rather than in any statement from the Camp David summit.