Brent has risen 4.5% in two sessions after the U.S. struck Iranian positions accused of preparing to mine the strait itself, not just harass shipping, and that distinction matters for how far the Canadian energy trade can run.

Monday's tanker attacks and the first direct US-Iran exchange in a month reopen a risk premium markets spent August pricing away. The mechanism runs straight through Canadian energy, the loonie, and tomorrow's Bank of Canada decision.

WTI jumped over 3% Monday after the first American strike on Iranian territory in a month. Gold barely moved. That gap tells Canadian portfolios exactly what kind of shock this is, and what it is not.

A hold at 2.25% is the consensus call for September 2. The weekend's US-Iran exchange revives the same energy-price mechanism that pushed headline inflation to a war-era peak in May.

The weekend's first US-Iran military exchange in a month caught portfolios positioned for calm. Kahneman and Tversky mapped exactly why quiet weeks make the next shock feel unprecedented.

Constructive Oman-Iran talks pushed oil to a one-month low this week. A new US-Iran exchange over sanctions erased the move within two days.

A cross-desk read of Thursday’s close shows Canada’s currency reacting to Ottawa’s tariff fight with Washington, not to the easing Strait of Hormuz premium that pulled crude lower.

WTI peaked near $87 on August 21 and has fallen more than six percent since, even as the U.S. sanctions campaign against Iran grew tougher. The market is pricing military risk and economic risk very differently.

WTI has fallen for three straight sessions since Washington's sweeping new Iran sanctions, because the sanctions spared Iran's trading partners and a parallel Hormuz corridor deal is progressing. Canadian energy and inflation now cut in opposite directions.

Bessent's sanctions campaign is the broadest financial pressure on Iran since the war began, and oil markets read it as diplomacy, not supply disruption. The chain that would flip that reading runs through Beijing.

The Treasury unveils its sanctions package today. The chain that actually matters runs through Beijing, not Tehran, and the market is already pricing that in.

Daily crossings through the Strait of Hormuz fell from 19 to 3 over the past week as President Trump threatened to bomb Oman, the neutral party brokering a shipping deal, introducing a new failure mode for the crisis.

A genuine Strait of Hormuz escalation and a fresh 19 year high in long yields hit the tape on the same afternoon. Only one of them moved gold.

A vessel struck overnight, Iran's language just got sharper, and Trump has widened the threat to a third country. Oil is up, but nowhere near March's peak. That gap is the story.

Monday's decline was 0.17%. The instinct it triggers in clients sitting on a year of record gains is not nearly so small.

Statistics Canada's July inflation surprise and the Geopolitical desk's Hormuz toll deadline were written up this morning as two unrelated stories. They are the same mechanism, a few hours apart.