Hormuz Stalemate Raises Risk of $120 Oil

For months now, traders and market analysts have had to weigh two opposing scenarios for oil prices—the ongoing war and severely disrupted oil flows at the Strait of Hormuz and hopes that a U.S.-Iran deal would free up millions of barrels of oil and refined products trapped in the Persian Gulf. For five and a half months of negotiations, threats, Iranian attacks on tankers, U.S. blockades on Iran’s oil exports, and numerous pledges of “strong responses” from both sides, oil prices have spiked and crashed so many times that...