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Crude oil breached $100 a barrel for the first time since May, pulling US stocks lower against the backdrop of escalating Middle East tensions.
President Donald Trump supplied the catalyst in direct terms: Washington is weighing a "massive attack" on Iran.
The move reprices the geopolitical risk premium that energy markets had been gradually unwinding since spring. The Trump warning and what it prices Trump's language was specific.
The formulation of a "massive attack" is pointed terminology: the kind of statement that shifts probability distributions on Middle Eastern supply disruption and sustains a bid in crude that softer diplomatic language would not support.
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