Brent Oil Touches $110 as Iran Escalates Hormuz Attacks and Wall Street Sells Off

Brent crude touched $110 a barrel for the first time since May as Iran widened its attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, Houthi missiles flew at Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine vowed to resume strikes on Russian refineries — a war-driven energy shock that helped drive the Nasdaq to its worst week since June.

Brent crude futures touched $110 a barrel for the first time since May on Friday before easing to close at $109.86, a gain of 3.7%. U.S. West Texas Intermediate rose 3.5% to settle at $101.41 — and WTI finished the week up more than 10%, its sharpest climb in months. The surge came as Iran escalated attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, Houthi militants fired on Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine signaled it would resume strikes on Russian refineries after a U.S.-brokered energy ceasefire collapsed.

The Hormuz escalation is the sharpest driver. At least nine tankers and cargo ships have come under attack since Sunday, and Iran sank the Singapore-registered container ship GFS Pride on Wednesday, according to U.S. Central Command. BBC Verify, collating incident reports to Britain's Maritime Trade Operations agency, counted 12 vessels attacked between Oct. 5 and 11 — the largest weekly toll since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began, up from 10 the week before, with six struck on a single day last Sunday. Crude exports through the strait have slipped to 9.4 million barrels a day, roughly 70% of the prewar average, according to the energy researcher Kpler.

The war is spilling across the region. Saudi Arabia intercepted several missiles over the Red Sea on Friday, including one aimed at the oil export terminal at Yanbu, and destroyed three drones over Riyadh and the south. An Aramco administrative building in Dhahran was hit on Tuesday, and a Houthi strike on Riyadh's international airport on Oct. 10 killed 12 people and injured more than 300. President Donald Trump told Newsmax he would not use nuclear weapons against Iran and did not foresee sending ground troops, while acknowledging reports that Washington was weighing use of the non-nuclear GBU-43/B, the "Mother of All Bombs."

Ukraine is adding a second supply shock. The energy truce Trump tried to broker has unraveled, with the Kremlin continuing to strike Ukrainian infrastructure. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv would resume attacks on Russian refineries in retaliation — a campaign that has already helped push U.S. diesel to an average of $6.33 a gallon, more than 70% above a year ago, according to AAA. U.S. crude inventories also fell by more than 8 million barrels as Hurricane Isaias shut in Gulf Coast production.

The energy spike landed on a market already wobbling over the cost of the AI boom. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite tumbled 573 points, or 2.1%, to close at 26,140 — its worst week since June — while the S&P 500 and the Dow fell 1.1% and 0.3%. CoreWeave, an AI cloud provider that finances much of its buildout with debt, slid nearly 12% on Friday and about 24% for the week, and Micron, AMD, Broadcom and Intel all dropped. Investors were also rattled by a report that Anthropic's backers were weighing a $1.5 trillion valuation, down from an earlier $2 trillion target.

Iran, for its part, appears to be waging an information campaign timed to America's midterms. State-affiliated outlets have published articles emphasizing the war's toll on oil prices and the U.S. economy, and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has targeted U.S. officials over rising costs — an effort, analysts told Al Jazeera, to raise the political price of the conflict for the White House before next month's vote.

Sources: CNBC | BBC News | CBS News | Al Jazeera