Why Did the Iran War Restart? | Macro Mondays, July 13, 2026

Donald Trump declared the ceasefire with Iran over the weekend and initiated heavy attacks on the IRGC, then posted approximately ninety minutes before recording that the US wants to control the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC is assessed to have disrupted the memorandum of understanding deliberately, viewing control of the strait as leverage to secure money and preserve their institutional position, a dynamic Mikro Ushun Holst traces through game theory logic. The Omani transit corridor, previously an alternative route, is now effectively closed following IRGC attacks.

Despite the renewed escalation, oil prices have not exceeded the prior peak set on Thursday, and Andres Denneau notes he has called the Iran war over roughly three or four times already. Tanker flow data from Rory Johnston shows West to East flow out of the Strait of Hormuz has been better than widely reported, with dark transits continuing through June and most of July, suspected to involve Abu Dhabi. A large volume of oil that flowed out during the first two weeks of the ceasefire is still in transit and will arrive in Asia and elsewhere over the next four weeks. The current regional shortfall is estimated at four million barrels per day, and the US and China filled a void of approximately eight million barrels per day through April and May by drawing on strategic reserves, providing an estimated three to five months of buffer before that policy mix reaches an end date.

Denneau puts the oil price equilibrium at around eighty dollars and considers one hundred dollars unlikely. Refined products such as jet fuel and diesel are identified as the more acute problem because refiners cannot be relocated the way crude routing can be adjusted. US crack spreads are at record highs as refiners have shifted marginal capacity toward jet fuel rather than gasoline and diesel. The Strait of Hormuz closure is delaying what had been an imminent drop in gasoline prices by at least a few weeks, preventing the full pass-through of oil price disinflation to consumers at the pump.

Andreas is predicting a US headline inflation print of 3.7 percent and a core print of 2.7 percent, approximately 0.2 percentage points below consensus, against a prior print of 4.2 percent and a consensus expectation of around 3.9 percent. European June inflation data already available looked benign outside of energy, and nowcasting across all CPI categories points to a broadly soft US report. The FOMC minutes released the prior week were characterized as the most hawkish Federal Reserve message since the 2022 hiking cycle, but Andreas frames this as a forecasting error rather than a policy error because Fed members changed their inflation outlook rather than their reaction function. A soft inflation print would, in his view, massively reprice the front end of the US yield curve. Kevin Warsh currently has political breathing space on rate cuts because of the Iran-related energy disturbance, though pressure to cut is expected to emerge eventually.

Andreas describes hyperscalers spending all of their free cash flows on semiconductors as the defining story of 2026 and likely 2027. Underlying spot prices for memory chips are still accelerating, up approximately 20 percent since recent updates from Micron and Hynix, and a Taiwanese semiconductor player quoted expectations of 30 to 40 percent price hikes from major players in the third quarter. Hynix communicated a solid order book through 2031, which Andreas characterizes as a large divergence from bearish portfolio manager expectations. He predicts the memory trade peaks in late 2027 or early 2028 and holds approximately 9 to 10 percent of his portfolio in memory stocks and over 25 percent including other semiconductor names. He dismisses Michael Burry's mean reversion argument on memory as lazy analysis. ASML reporting on Wednesday is flagged as the only gate in Europe on AI momentum and a global bellwether, with the caveat that ASML always carries risk around how much it is truly selling into Asia.

A basket of critical and strategic metals exports out of China shows the US-China trade relationship is as frosty as it has ever been, with data through June 1 showing no reversal following the Beijing ceasefire. Andreas believes the ceasefire was driven by a shared need to address the Strait of Hormuz situation rather than genuine trade normalization, and that the US is likely routing purchases of restricted Chinese metals through third-party countries. China holds a significant card by potentially buying large amounts of oil ahead of US midterms to move prices. The decoupling bet in metals is characterized as a long-term trade regardless of who governs the EU or the US, with the EU described as having essentially adopted the Trump playbook on strategic supply chains. A modest position in the metals decoupling theme was initiated the prior week, but adding significantly is contingent on a soft inflation report and a shift in Federal Reserve rhetoric that produces observable dollar weakness.