Brent crude edges up as tit-for-tat strikes imperial return to normality in key waterway. Published On 29 Jun 202629 Jun 2026Oil prices have climbed following the latest flare-up in hostilities between the United States and Iran.Brent crude, the primary international benchmark, rose about 0.9 percent on Monday after tit-for-tat US and Iranian strikes over the weekend renewed doubts about a return to normal shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listBrent futures for August delivery stood at $73.21 a barrel as of 03:30 GMT, 127 cents higher than the day before the US and Israel launched their war on Iran on February 28.“Brent’s partial rebound this morning reflects a market that had perhaps run too quickly on ceasefire optimism,” Fabien Yip, a market analyst at IG in Sydney, Australia, told Al Jazeera.“Oil had nearly unwound its entire war premium, despite an MoU with no enforcement details and ongoing strikes. Thursday’s attack on a commercial vessel was a reality check, and this weekend’s tit-for-tat exchanges have compounded that,” Yip said.Asian stock markets were mixed on Monday morning, with losses in Tokyo and Seoul and gains in Hong Kong and Taipei.Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 was 0.7 percent lower, while South Korea’s Kospi was down 1.9 percent.Japanese and Korean stocks tied to the AI boom saw some of the biggest losses amid heated debate about whether tech firms’ massive investments in the emerging technology will pay off.Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group fell about 5 percent, while Advantest Corporation, a key maker of semiconductor testing equipment, slumped 3.7 percent.South Korean memory chip giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropped about 5 percent and 4 percent, respectively. Advertisement Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Inde …
