Trump Just Declared The Iran Ceasefire Over. The Dow Fell 600 Points And Oil Jumped 8 Percent In Hours.

Barely a day after a tanker was struck near the Strait of Hormuz in an incident MorrowReport covered yesterday, the fragile peace between the United States and Iran collapsed entirely. Speaking at a joint news conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Ankara, President Trump said plainly that the ceasefire is over. I do not want to deal with them anymore, he said, describing the Iranian government as scum. As far as I am concerned, it is over.

The declaration followed a night of American military action Trump described in blunt terms. We hit them very hard last night, he told reporters, adding that the US would probably hit them hard again tonight, and offering what he called a little warning before doing so. According to reporting cited by the Globe and Mail, US forces struck more than 80 targets inside Iran overnight, including air defense systems, command and control networks, and anti ship missile capabilities, in direct response to attacks this week on three commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The strikes represent by far the largest single US military action against Iran since the Versailles interim agreement was signed on June 18, and they arrived just weeks after that same agreement had already survived one serious breach when Iran hit US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain.

Markets reacted immediately and violently. Oil moved first and moved hardest. West Texas Intermediate crude jumped as much as 7.85 percent intraday, briefly trading near 76 dollars a barrel, before settling closer to 70.44 dollars by the end of the session, a 3 percent gain on the day. Brent crude followed a similar path, spiking above 78 dollars at points during the day, at one stage rising more than 5.7 percent, before closing near 74.16 dollars. The moves mark a sharp reversal from where oil sat just 24 hours earlier, when the market had barely reacted to the tanker attack itself because a supply glut from OPEC and the Gulf had grown deep enough to absorb that shock. A direct presidential declaration that the ceasefire is finished proved to be a different kind of shock entirely.

Equities fell across the board. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 600 points at its intraday low, a decline of roughly 1.1 percent, before paring some of that loss as the session wore on, ultimately closing down somewhere between 460 and 540 points depending on the exact print. The S&P 500 fell between half a percent and two thirds of a percent, and the Nasdaq Composite swung between small gains and modest losses as investors weighed the geopolitical shock against still resilient corporate earnings expectations. Energy producers were the one clear group of winners, with Chevron and ExxonMobil both rising more than 3 percent as higher crude prices flowed straight through to their outlook. Chipmakers, by contrast, extended a rough stretch that began with a disappointing earnings report from Samsung Electronics on Tuesday, adding a second source of pressure to an already jittery tech sector.

The Treasury Department added its own layer of escalation on top of the military action. Officials revoked the authorization that had allowed Iran to sell crude oil on the global market, a policy tool that functions as an economic complement to the military strikes and one that directly threatens the incremental normalization of Gulf shipping that had been underway since the ceasefire took hold. Bitcoin fell 2.2 percent to just above 62,000 dollars as risk appetite broadly soured, a decline that adds fresh pressure on a crypto market already dealing with three consecutive red quarters and stalled progress on the CLARITY Act in the Senate.

Gold, usually the asset that benefits most directly from exactly this kind of headline, did the opposite. August gold futures fell for a fourth straight session, settling down roughly 0.2 percent at 4,157.40 dollars an ounce, extending a broader retreat that has now erased more than 20 percent of the metal value since the Iran conflict first began in late February. The move reflects investors continuing to unwind safe haven positions built up earlier in the war, even as the news itself would traditionally argue for exactly the opposite trade, a sign of just how much geopolitical premium had already been priced out of gold before todays escalation.

The broader inflation picture is where all of this ultimately lands for anyone outside the trading floor. Rising Treasury yields on rate sensitive bonds in the UK and elsewhere reflected growing concern that renewed conflict will keep interest rates higher for longer across major economies, with markets now pricing roughly a 50 percent chance of a US rate hike by September. The International Monetary Fund most recent forecast, which still assumed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen later this month despite todays events, projects oil prices rising nearly 32 percent over the course of 2026 and global consumer prices climbing 4.7 percent, up from 4.1 percent in 2025, a signal that the disinflation progress central banks had been counting on has effectively stalled. The IMF separately expects normal commerce through the strait to return only by March 2027, a timeline that now looks considerably more uncertain than it did even yesterday.

For now, the market has settled into a familiar but uneasy pattern, sharp initial moves followed by partial recovery as traders wait to see whether Trump own threat to hit Iran again tonight actually materializes, and whether Tehran response escalates further or search for another off ramp. The Versailles interim agreement has technically not been formally terminated by either government, but a sitting US president standing at a NATO summit and calling it over is about as close to an obituary as a ceasefire can receive without a signature.

MorrowReport analysts will continue tracking developments overnight and their impact on oil, equities, and Fed policy expectations as this story develops.