Oil Prices Climb as Iran Uses Energy Leverage in Unprecedented Military Campaign

Iran deployed energy as a weapon of war in an unprecedented fashion over the weekend, threatening to push global oil prices to $200 per barrel while simultaneously striking Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait — all as global crude crossed $100 per barrel for the first time in years.
The campaign was a direct response to Israeli strikes on oil storage facilities near Tehran, which killed four workers and left the capital shrouded in thick, black smoke. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards made their strategy explicit: attack Iranian energy infrastructure and face the economic consequences, both through market manipulation and through physical strikes on Gulf energy assets.
Saudi Arabia intercepted 15 drones, Bahrain’s desalination plant was hit, two Saudi civilians were killed, and a US service member died from wounds sustained in an Iranian attack — the seventh American killed in the conflict. Reports of Russian targeting intelligence being shared with Iran raised the geopolitical stakes dramatically.
Iran’s clerical assembly added political dimension to the military campaign by appointing Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader. His selection — historically unprecedented in the Islamic Republic — was seen as cementing the influence of hardline factions within the Iranian establishment at a moment when those factions appeared to be driving the country’s military strategy.
The United States pledged not to strike Iranian oil infrastructure and predicted only brief supply disruptions, arguing that the market impact would be limited. But with Iran explicitly leveraging energy as a military and economic tool, and with oil already above $100, the world was witnessing a new and dangerous chapter in the history of resource warfare.