Trump Says U.S. Will Hit Iran's Pickaxe Mountain Nuclear Complex 'Very Heavily'

What Happens Next

• →Brent crude prices spike 15-25% within weeks as traders price in potential Iranian retaliation targeting tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which handles roughly 20% of global oil transit.
• →Gulf Cooperation Council states — particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE — accelerate procurement of advanced air defense systems (Patriot, THAAD) and expand bilateral security agreements with the U.S. to hedge against Iranian retaliatory strikes on regional infrastructure.
• →Iran disperses and conceals surviving nuclear enrichment capabilities into smaller, harder-to-detect facilities, complicating future IAEA verification and reducing the viability of any negotiated inspections framework for years.

Near-term: Brent crude rises 15-25% and global shipping insurers dramatically raise war-risk premiums for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, increasing energy import costs for Asia-dependent economies such as Japan, South Korea, and India. Long-term: The precedent of a U.S. strike on a deeply buried nuclear facility reshapes global nonproliferation strategy — states pursuing nuclear hedging invest heavily in deeper underground construction and decentralized enrichment, eroding the effectiveness of military-based counterproliferation as a credible deterrent.