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Israel has come good on its threats to attack Iran on Friday morning, with strikes in Tehran reported by AP and Al Jazeera. Secondary but unconfirmed attacks have also been reported across X (formerly Twitter) today, too.
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No surprise: Brent Crude jumped +7%, now nearly US$75/bbl. Gold popped +1.15%.
The attacks have also been confirmed by White House spokespersons.
What follows now will be closely watched by traders across the weekend. The news was enough to sink Asia stock markets red, though the ASX200 hadn’t responded too dramatically at 11.30am Sydney time.
Established defence stock Electro Optic Systems (ASX:EOS) did immediately jump +6.3%, to $2.53/sh.
So let’s ask the big question. Does this bring us closer to some World War 3 scenario? That depends, probably more than anything, on how entrenched the U.S. involves itself in this new arm of the Gaza conflict (or genocide, if you prefer).
If it stands by and leaves Israel to continue attacking whoever it likes, then there probably won’t be any reason for countries to start threatening each other with nukes.
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And with Trump & Co. in charge of the world’s largest economy and leading global deterrent force, it’s not clear how far the U.S. may go when it comes to statements vs. reality on the use of nuclear weapons.
(It’s also worth asking how mentally stable Benji may or may not be, right now.)
Still, that Hollywood scenario strikes this HotCopper finance journalist as relatively unlikely – surely, even with the White House ideologically poised as it is, both itself and Iran can see that a nuclear war would be senseless.
Of course, WW3 doesn’t necessarily need to be nuclear.
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