Taken from CNBC’s Daily Open, our international markets newsletter — Subscribe today
Hello, this is Leonie Kidd writing to you from London. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.
The last 12 hours have been marked by a major escalation in attacks on energy infrastructure in the Middle East. A sharpening in rhetoric from Tel Aviv, the White House and Tehran is doing nothing to calm the situation.
Central bankers are staying cautious, with the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan holding rates steady, while today’s decisions from the Bank of England and European Central Bank are also expected to be uneventful amid concerns of inflation driving higher.
Strikes on core energy sites on both sides of the Iran war have caused significant market volatility. Israel’s attack on Iran’s South Pars gas field — which U.S. President Donald Trump said he had no prior knowledge of — prompted a swift retaliation from Tehran, which launched missile strikes on Qatar’s Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas terminal. Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said an “eye for an eye” approach is now in effect, as “a new level of conflict has begun.”
