Brent Crude, the global oil benchmark, settled near $77.54 a barrel on 22 June, down about 8 per cent on the week and roughly 36 per cent below the conflict's peak1. The price had held near $80.59 on 20 June through the IRGC's declaration that the Strait of Hormuz was closed, then fell as Trump's threats peaked. For households this means petrol and heating costs easing, not the spike a sealed strait would normally trigger.
A closure threat on the world's most important oil chokepoint usually drives prices up. This one drove them down. Through Trump's maximal rhetoric and the paper closure of Hormuz, traders treated the Switzerland roadmap and the resumed transits as the real signal and the closure declaration as theatre, and front-ran a return to normal supply.
The risk the market is not pricing is not a blockade but a stumble the 60-day timetable cannot absorb: a mining incident, a logistics failure, or a diplomatic breakdown that turns the declaration into something enforced. Until that happens, the benchmark is betting on normalisation, and every completed transit makes the bet look safer.
