United States forces destroyed five Iranian oil tankers on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday (September 8 and 9) around the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, and Iran said it hit back with attacks on ten vessels the same day, the largest declared wave of strikes on shipping between the two countries since the war began six months ago, according to CNN Brasil. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the strikes answered two ballistic missile attacks by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on an American warship in the previous two days. Washington released videos of the tankers burning before they sank and said no Americans were hurt.

With the destruction, the United States announced a new policy in the Gulf: it will attack Iranian tankers whenever gunfire threatens its warships. "Iran keeps trying to hit US Navy ships, and every time they do it or try to do it, they will lose tankers," Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters during a visit to Colombia. The state news agency Agência Brasil called the sequence the biggest wave of attacks between the two countries since the conflict began.

Fuel prices pressure Brazil

For Brazil, the escalation arrives mainly through fuel prices. Brent, the international benchmark, moved back above US$ 100 a barrel, a level it had not seen since July, and average US retail diesel hit a record above US$ 5.94 a gallon, according to CNN Brasil. Brazil still imports part of the diesel it consumes, so a higher barrel feeds into freight costs and inflation in a presidential election year. The government has already moved to shield consumers: Agência Brasil reported that new measures to hold fuel prices down will cost an estimated 7 billion reais a month. This week Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company, raised the price of gasoline sold to distributors by 0.63 real, though a tax cut should keep pump prices stable, according to G1 and UOL.

Retaliation and a second front

The IRGC said it fired on two US ships and eight tankers trying to cross an area of the strait that Iran has declared off limits, and launched ballistic missiles at a base used by US forces near Al Azraq, in eastern Jordan. Iran says it is widening the forbidden zone around the strait and using more modern and powerful missiles against American vessels. Jordanian air defenses intercepted 18 of the 20 missiles, and the remaining two fell in uninhabited areas with no casualties, according to the government in Amman. The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency (UKMTO) logged reports of merchant ships hit and left unable to navigate on both sides of the strait, and UOL reported that an explosion was heard near southern Iran. Iranian state media threatened tankers anchored in Kuwait and Bahrain, and a liquefied natural gas tanker was damaged at the port of Khor Fakkan, in the United Arab Emirates, according to a maritime security source cited by CNN Brasil.

The attacks, resumed at the end of August, ended a month of relative calm in a war that began in February, when the United States and Israel bombed Iran amid concerns over Tehran's nuclear program. Iran says its nuclear activities are peaceful, and the United Nations nuclear agency referred the country to the Security Council, as reported by Folha de S.Paulo, which also covered US strikes on Iranian tankers near the island of Kharg, in the Persian Gulf, on Tuesday (8). In Washington, President Donald Trump insists the conflict will end soon after the November midterm elections, which will decide control of Congress.

"I think the war will end immediately after the election because they cannot resist any longer. They are desperate to try to influence the election," Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

Inside the administration, the assessment differs: according to the Wall Street Journal, Vice President JD Vance and Rubio himself privately warned Trump that the war could stretch to the end of his term, in January 2029, a report Reuters could not immediately verify. The war and rising fuel costs have already pushed Trump's popularity to record lows. Meanwhile, traffic through Hormuz, which carried a fifth of the world's oil before the war, remains nearly frozen: only seven vessels crossed the strait on Wednesday, half the average of the previous ten days, according to preliminary ship-tracking data. Washington keeps a blockade on Iranian ports and says it has managed to escort tankers through, although independent monitors say it is increasingly hard to measure how much oil leaves the region. A second front is also open: the Iran-aligned Houthis of Yemen attacked four Saudi cities on Tuesday, leaving 73 people injured and fires at oil installations that could be seen from space. Valor Econômico reported that oil kept rising with the conflict while Asian bonds fell.