Five for the first time in months was the hard number the Pentagon hit Tehran with this week. The US military claims it sank on Tuesday alone 11 Iranian-flagged crude carriers, as it continues to cripple the country's war effort, tanker-by-tanker. Then within hours, Iran responded, not in words, but with a salvo of missiles fired across the desert towards Jordan, not so far that Israelites could not see them intercepting them in the night sky.

Central Command's report was accurate. The four were struck in the Gulf of Oman, while the fifth was targeted near Iran's Kharg Island terminal, which writes off the majority of the nation's crude exports. American officials claimed the strikes were in response to the two unsuccessful attempts by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to fire ballistic missiles at a US Navy warship in the previous two days. The US account said that the crew on the vessels were ordered off the ships before they were hit and there were no casualties among U.S. personnel on either ship in Iran's two strikes. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was clear about the new doctrine's reality in Colombia, saying that every single attack on a US vessel will be a blow to Iran's tankers.

This is not a new formula, it's a faster formula. The policy, in fact, was set out like a tariff schedule, by CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper, who said a week earlier that the IRGC's attempt to hit a carrier and a destroyer would mean the loss of three of their ships. In all, some 10 Iranian tankers have now been rendered inoperative in a single week, as part of Washington's estimate of Iran's multibillion-dollar shadow fleet, the aging, flag-hopping vessels Tehran has been using to transport sanctioned crude and finance the Guard Corps and its regional proxies.

In reply, Iran launched about two dozen ballistic missiles to strike Jordan, a nation that has sought to avoid a direct confrontation between Washington and Tehran, overnight. The kingdom's military claims to have shot down 18 of them using Jordanian air defenses, with two of the missiles landing in open desert, and no one injured. By regional standards it was a contained result but the target itself was targeted: Jordan has bases of the USA and importantly is close enough to Israeli territory that the intercepts were on view across the border, a signalling as well as a military measure. Further, Iran's Revolutionary Guard navy issued a warning to the crews of tankers off Kuwait and Bahrain to immediately leave their vessels, accusing both Gulf states of supporting the U.S. forces responsible for the tanker attacks.

There's a more significant economic narrative behind the missile numbers and it will endure beyond this week's headlines. Brent crude has been powering higher all summer on such news, trading near the high eighties and heading toward the century marker when the Strait of Hormuz is not as secure as ever. Some of the world's daily flow of oil goes through the strait, and ship owners have stated they won't just be towing their ships back there where both militaries consider it fair game.

The premiums for war-risk insurance have reached several per cent of the value of the hull at times, and they were only a fraction of a per cent before this war began, making just one tanker transit worth many millions of dollars. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has already cut oil supply projections by over 4 million bpd for the entire year because of precisely this type of disruption, and expects regional production to rebound to anything close to normal until early 2027.

Iran is taking the hit on the other side of the ledger, too. The rial has been eroding towards new record lows since the start of the summer, when the dollar is on the brink of collapsing as the result of sanctions enforcement, tanker losses, and an undefined war economy. The standoff is one that neither side can afford to hold on to, analysts at the Crisis Group have said, as it's "a truce that keeps breaking down" due to the "contradictions of the status quo. There was already a diplomatic sideshow that showed this, as South Korea tried to clarify on Tuesday that the Strait of Hormuz talks with France were not about troops but about possible logistical support for the freedom-of-navigation efforts by an Iranian official demanding an explanation of the reports to the contrary. It's a minor incident, but it reflects the degree of the worry: a missile exchange in the Gulf is now a reason for a denial in Seoul.

The change is that this is a new phase of the war from what it was in the opening weeks back in February when the symbolic language of battle was the focus.This is a different war from the opening weeks back in February when the symbolic language of battle was the focus, it's a new phase of war in terms of a change in emphasis and focus and is a war of the balance sheets. Washington is now ratcheting up its economic strangulation in naval attire; precision missiles are being fired at shadow fleet oil tankers to squeeze the oil revenue of the regime, not in the hope of an imminent military victory.

Tehran, meanwhile, seems to be hoping for a retaliation war that is sustainable, at least in the short term, against the Gulf and Jordanian targets so that its deterrent doesn't lose its edge and it doesn't open itself up to a war that is too overwhelming to finish. There are clear risks to both wagers. Every time a missile is shot down over Amman or Manama, it is one more that might have flown off course, and every disabled tanker raises the pressure on an Iranian economy already on its last gasp. Six months into open hostilities, neither side has yet been able to find the offramp; both have discovered alternative methods of making the other side pay for being on the road.