Friday 22 May 2026 6:30 am
| Updated:
Friday 22 May 2026 6:24 am
The prolonged US-Iran war has rocked markets.
Good morning and welcome back to the City AM liveblog. Oil prices remain volatile and heightened as peace talks in the Middle East continue to run into stumbling blocks.Brent crude futures were up to $104 this morning following reports that Iran’s Supreme Leader was ordering for the nation’s enriched uranium reserves to remain in the country.This marked a major blow to hopes of a deal between the US and Iran, with the White House viewing dismantling Tehran’s nuclear program as a central demand.The pressure on the oil market made for some choppy trading in the FTSE 100 and global stock markets, even as oil prices were actually down for the week.There remains some hope a deal is in sight after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there were “some good signs” that a deal was on the horizon, though he added that he doesn’t “want to be overly optimistic”.Rubio said the US was dealing with a system that “itself is a little fractured”.Beyond Iran’s nuclear program, another dividing point rests on the Strait of Hormuz, which has been the biggest driver of surging oil prices after the narrow waterway – where around a fifth of the world’s oil supply flows through – has been blocked since the conflict began 12 weeks agoRubio said that any diplomatic deal would be “unfeasible” if Iran imposes a toll on the Strait of Hormuz.“No one in the world is in favour of the tolling system,” he said. “It can’t happen. It would be unacceptable.“It would make a diplomatic deal unfeasible if they were to continue to pursue that. So it’s a threat to the world if they were trying to do that, and it’s completely illegal.”Iran is understood to be weighing up the latest peace proposal sent to the regime from the US.We’ll be bringing you the latest on this and more.Here’s a few of our top headlines this morning
