The United States and Iran held fire for a second consecutive day after 13 nights of US strikes. Oman-led talks over the Strait of Hormuz are advancing, but there is no formal ceasefire and major disputes remain unresolved.
Brent crude settled at $100.69 after threats to shipping and renewed US strikes on Iran. Luxembourg’s diesel and heating-oil prices have risen as governments and central banks confront another inflation risk.
The United States has launched retaliatory strikes against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard after an Iranian missile-and-drone attack killed two US service members in Jordan. One American remains missing and the confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz is intensifying.
The United States struck bridges, an airport and port facilities in southern Iran. Tehran retaliated against Gulf countries hosting US forces, damaging a Kuwaiti power and desalination plant.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard declared the Strait of Hormuz closed “until further notice” on Saturday after firing on the Cyprus-flagged container ship GFS Galaxy, leaving one crew member missing. Within hours, US forces began a third round of strikes on Iran this week — burying the ceasefire agreed in June and putting a fifth of the world's oil back at risk.
The United States carried out strikes on Iranian military sites after Washington blamed an Iranian drone for damaging a Singapore-flagged cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Bahrain, home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, then reported coming under Iranian drone attack — testing a ceasefire that President Trump had called the foundation of a lasting peace.
The United States and Iran held their first formal negotiations since this year's war, in Switzerland on Monday. Washington claimed Tehran agreed to readmit nuclear inspectors and won broad sanctions relief; Iran insisted it made no new commitments on its nuclear programme.
The signing of a 14-point US–Iran memorandum reopening the Strait of Hormuz has pulled crude back toward $80 a barrel — and in import-dependent Luxembourg, where the Ministry of the Economy fixes maximum pump prices, the relief is already visible on the motorway price boards.
New U.S. strikes in southern Iran were reported while negotiations continued, keeping attention on the Strait of Hormuz and the global fuel-price exposure that matters to Luxembourg.
On 9 May 2026 the UK Ministry of Defence confirmed Type 45 destroyer HMS Dragon is pre-positioning in the Middle East for a UK and France-led multinational Strait of Hormuz mission spanning more than 40 nations, set to begin once a sustained Iran-US ceasefire holds. France has moved the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Red Sea.
CENTCOM says US forces destroyed at least six Iranian small boats threatening shipping; the White House signalled it would reject Iran's latest peace proposal because Tehran had "not paid a big enough price".
Almost no commercial shipping is using the strait two months into the war. Reopening it has become the single largest economic question of 2026.
A barrage of missiles and drones hit the Fujairah Petroleum Industries Zone and a UAE-flagged tanker on 4 May, the first major attack on Emirati territory since the 8 April US-Iran truce.