Why I’m not ‘Panican’ over oil markets

Published March 13, 2026 7:08am ET



Not quite a fortnight into Operation Epic Fury against Iran, and markets still haven’t decided whether President Donald Trump has launched us into World War III. But that hasn’t stopped liberals and their media stenographers from praying that oil markets collapse amid the U.S.-Israel strikes against the Shia Islamic theocracy and its fledgling nuclear program.

A week-plus into the military efforts, overnight March 8-9, premarket trading mass hysteria spurred Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, and West Texas Intermediate, a domestic American benchmark, both to nearly $120 per barrel. That was an Iranian regime boast after it consolidated control over the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil shipments traverse.

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