The war has entered that familiar and dangerous phase in which everyone claims to want peace, while acting as if escalation remains the more useful instrument. Washington speaks of talks. Tehran speaks of rights. The markets, more lucid than the politicians, hear only one thing: uncertainty. That uncertainty is no longer theoretical. It now has a geography, the Strait of Hormuz, and a price, visible every morning on oil screens, freight routes and fuel bills. The immediate picture is brutally simple. The fragile ceasefire is nearing expiry, yet there is still no clear agreement on whether meaningful peace talks will even take place. The United States says its team is ready to head to Islamabad. Iran publicly casts doubt on the prospects and rejects the idea that it has already yielded on the key issues Trump has advertised as nearly settled, above all the nuclear file and the future of enriched uranium. In other words, the diplomatic theatre continues, but the substance remains absent.

At sea, the situation has deteriorated further. The US Navy seized the Iranian-flagged cargo vessel Touska after what Washington described as an attempt to breach the American blockade. Tehran denounced the action as piracy and threatened retaliation. At the same time, the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively shut, after a brief and confusing reopening collapsed within hours. Tankers turned back, ships reported gunfire and harassment, and risk warnings from maritime authorities intensified. That matters because Hormuz is not merely another strategic chokepoint. Before the war, roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and LNG moved through it. When that artery is obstructed, the consequences are not regional, they are global. Brent has rebounded sharply on the renewed tensions, after traders briefly allowed themselves the luxury of believing in de-escalation. The market has understood what diplomacy still refuses to admit: an unstable passage is, in practice, a broken passage.

The economic consequences are already spreading beyond crude itself. The first shock is energy. The second is transport. The third is inflation. Airlines are cutting routes, grounding aircraft and warning that jet fuel costs are becoming intolerable. Several carriers across Europe, North America and Asia have already reduced capacity, while European officials are examining emergency options to manage jet fuel supply risk. This is how a regional war mutates into a wider economic tax on mobility, logistics and consumption. And that is before the second-round effects begin in earnest. Higher oil and fuel prices do not remain confined to the energy complex. They pass through freight, aviation, fertilisers, food, industrial margins and household purchasing power. A world economy already weakened by fragile growth and overstretched public finances is now being asked to absorb an external shock with distinctly stagflationary overtones. Slower growth, higher costs, worse policy trade-offs: the old nightmare is back, wearing a new uniform.

The American position, meanwhile, looks increasingly contradictory. Washington wants negotiation, but it also wants coercion. It wants a ceasefire, but keeps expanding the pressure architecture around Iran. It wants the Strait reopened, while maintaining actions that Tehran predictably treats as proof that the United States cannot be trusted. This is not a strategy in the classical sense. It is an escalation managed by improvisation. And improvisation, when attached to naval blockades and nuclear disputes, is rarely a reassuring doctrine. Tehran, for its part, has learned the central lesson of this war. It does not need to defeat the United States militarily to damage it politically and economically. It only needs to keep uncertainty alive in Hormuz, maintain selective pressure on shipping, and demonstrate that Washington cannot restore normality on demand. That is enough to keep oil elevated, allies nervous, and the White House trapped between retreat and overreaction.

So where does this leave us? In an unstable limbo. Not peace, certainly. Not a full war either. A ceasefire without trust. Negotiations without convergence. Shipping without security. Markets without conviction. The likely next phase is not resolution but attrition. More threats, more tactical incidents, more claims of progress, and more episodes in which the world economy pays for the gap between what leaders announce and what reality permits. The conflict may yet avoid a formal collapse of talks. But even if diplomacy survives on paper, the damage is already done: energy security has been weakened, inflation risks have been revived, and global trade has been reminded that the age of frictionless flows is over. The ceasefire may still exist. The crisis certainly does.