Brent crude, which is considered the international benchmark price point for oil, reached nearly $120 per barrel on Monday morning before plummeting to below $90 in the afternoon as President Donald Trump gave another positive update on the war in Iran.
The rapid drop in U.S. crude late in the day came as President Donald Trump said the war, which has lasted for over one week, is “very far ahead of schedule” after initially predicting a four-to-five-week operation. Following Trump’s latest comments on the Iran conflict, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 also climbed. The Dow initially fell around 900 points early on Monday before closing the day up 261 points, while the S&P 500 turned a 1.5% fall in the morning into a gain of nearly 1% by the closing bell.
“I think the war is very complete, pretty much,” Trump told CBS News in a phone interview. “They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no air force,” Trump said. “Their missiles are down to a scatter. Their drones are being blown up all over the place, including their manufacturing of drones.”
“If you look, they have nothing left. There’s nothing left in a military sense,” he added.
Snippets of Trump’s interview were posted by CBS News Senior White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang just after 3:15 p.m. ET, which was roughly the same time that the steep drop in Brent crude and the rise in the markets began.
Trump also told CBS News that he is considering taking control of the Strait of Hormuz, the vital passage between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, where around 20% of the world’s oil typically traverses each day. Since the conflict in Iran began, tankers have been mostly halted from passing through the strait and into the open ocean. Trump said on Monday afternoon, however, that ships are once again moving through the strait and added that the Iranian regime would be completely obliterated if it threatens ships.
“If they do anything bad, that would be the end of Iran, and you’d never hear the name again,” Trump said.
If tankers are prevented from passing through the Strait of Hormuz for more than two weeks, oil could reach $150 per barrel, some experts warned, according to the Associated Press. Gas prices in the United States have surged since Trump’s Iran operation began. The national average for gas has climbed to $3.47 per gallon since last week, according to AAA. Before the recent rise, gas prices in the United States had mostly fallen since Trump took office last year.
Trump has not said when exactly “Operation Epic Fury” would end, but during remarks to Republican lawmakers in Doral, Florida, later Monday afternoon, he said that the U.S. military “will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.” U.S. forces have decimated the Iranian navy and military capabilities, and the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
Seven U.S. troops have been killed since the United States launched its major military operation on February 28.
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