The Feed — Political Takes, Live

A senior administration official said Washington and Tehran had agreed overnight to halt strikes and allow vessels to move freely through the Strait of Hormuz, framing it as a pause secured by pressure rather than a renewed peace.

Araghchi said that once obstacles are removed the Strait of Hormuz would return to its pre-war capacity within thirty days under Iran’s management — a timeline his ministry presented as both a commitment and a demand.

Brent gave back the weekend’s war premium, sliding toward four-month lows in the mid-$70s as traders priced the halt and the reopening of Hormuz, with the 2026 glut reasserting itself.

Kaine argued that a ceasefire does not retire the constitutional question, and pressed for the war-powers resolution to reach the floor precisely because halts can be reversed.

Number 10 welcomed the easing in oil as a relief for households, while acknowledging that the cheaper fuel underwriting the government’s week is on loan from a Gulf settlement it cannot steer.

Pezeshkian’s office cast the halt as evidence that restraint can still be reciprocated, while warning that any further strikes would end Tehran’s willingness to keep the accord alive.

The President said the strikes had forced Iran to back down and warned that Tehran “will no longer exist” if attacks resume — rhetoric mediators fear leaves little room for a face-saving climbdown.

Officials in Doha said the standing committee written into the framework was working to sequence a verified halt and the reopening of the Strait, calling the coming week decisive for the settlement.

Both monarchies welcomed the halt after a weekend in which projectiles crossed their airspace, urging that mechanisms be attached so Gulf states are not made the theatre of a war they did not start.

The Prime Minister told colleagues the de-escalation had pulled the Hormuz premium back out of the pump price, buying the government another week without pretending Westminster had earned it.

The Chancellor’s team said falling fuel costs were welcome but warned that an oil dividend granted by world markets can be revoked by them on a single tanker incident.

Burnham’s backers said the leadership count was still inching toward the eighty-one names a contest requires, with the calmer Gulf removing the immediate pretext to move.

Badenoch said a government whose stability rests on a foreign ceasefire it cannot influence is a government living week to week, and pressed for a domestic plan on energy resilience.

The Kentucky Republican said the war-powers resolution should be voted on regardless of the ceasefire, arguing members must be on the record about an open-ended campaign before it can resume.

The Secretary of State said the halt vindicated the administration’s approach and that a war-powers vote now would only constrain mediators trying to lock in the Hormuz reopening.

A federal judge blocked parts of the President’s executive order limiting voting by mail, a decision the administration is expected to appeal as the fight over the midterms’ mechanics moves to the courts.

The White House nominated Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, to lead an agency without a Senate-confirmed director since the Obama administration, teeing up a hearing on the year’s enforcement surge.

Both benchmarks fell as the risk premium drained, with desks noting the market is front-running a reopening that has not fully happened — leaving it exposed to any incident in the Strait.

Goldman’s team said cheaper oil eases the headline but does not undo a quarter of disrupted flows, and kept its warning that a confidence shock layered onto a slowing world economy is the textbook setup for stagflation.

Bank analysts reiterated that the 2026 glut caps spikes rather than abolishing them, with Brent seen grinding lower through the week so long as Hormuz transit counts climb and the halt holds.

UNCTAD said the cleanest signal on normalisation would be tanker crossings and insurance rates, not rhetoric, and warned import-dependent emerging economies remain the most exposed to a relapse.