Brent rose 1% on Friday, October 23, 2026, to $114.72 a barrel, its highest level in more than five months, after Tehran warned it would strike oil facilities, undersea cables and data centers in the Gulf if the United States and Israel resume bombing Iran, according to The Guardian.
Crude was trading near $72 in February, before the war between the United States and Iran began, and escalated to $126 in late April. This week Iran's Revolutionary Guard claimed to have hit four commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, and the US State Department ordered the departure of some diplomats and family members of government employees in Saudi Arabia. Al Jazeera describes the shift in the board: before the conflict, a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas moved through that passage, and now the strait and the Gulf's energy infrastructure are central points of the dispute. For Mexico, a net importer of gasoline and diesel, a Brent sustained above $110 raises the import bill and puts pressure on goods inflation.
Richard Hunter, an analyst at the brokerage Interactive Investor, attributed the jump to reports that Washington is weighing resuming military strikes after the midterm elections rather than seeking a diplomatic exit, and described a conflict now in its eighth month. Susannah Streeter, of Wealth Club, noted that Houthi attacks on Saudi facilities and Ukrainian bombing of Russian diesel refineries add to the tension. Al Jazeera reports that Iran counts seven oil tankers burned or damaged in the strait area and that its government estimated in April at $270 billion the direct and indirect damage from US and Israeli attacks.
The calendar has a date: the November 3 midterm election in the United States, before which analysts consulted by Al Jazeera consider an offensive unlikely. For Mexico, the level of Brent and the duration of the conflict will define the cost of fuels and the behavior of imported inflation at the start of 2027.
This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.