U.S. President Donald Trump sits at a table monitoring military operations during Operation Epic Fury against Iran, with U.S. flags visible behind him, in Washington, United States, on March 2, 2026.<\/p>\n
The White House via X | Anadolu | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Hello, this is Hui Jie writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.<\/p>\n
Less than 24 hours after I wrote that peace could be on the horizon, Washington and Tehran were back exchanging fire. Predicting the trajectory of this conflict is beginning to feel like a roulette with missiles. <\/p>\n
So the question now is simple: Who shot first?<\/p>\n
What you need to know today<\/p>\n The stop-start nature of the Iran war means that any attempt to project the conflict’s trajectory\u00a0usually ends in failure. <\/p>\n On Thursday, the U.S. and\u00a0Iran<\/a>\u00a0opened fire in the\u00a0Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, with each side accusing the other<\/a> of initiating the attack.<\/p>\n Besides the escalation, U.S. President Donald Trump insisted the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran remained intact, even as he claimed the U.S. had “completely destroyed” the Iranians involved in the exchange. <\/p>\n Iran, meanwhile, said U.S. forces targeted an Iranian tanker traveling from its coastal waters toward the strait. <\/p>\n Ceasefire or not, the renewed tensions continue to disrupt one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints. Shell CEO Wael Sawan warned investors that the oil market is facing a shortage of 1 billion barrels of oil<\/a>, and this will only worsen every day the conflict drags on. <\/p>\n Oil prices slipped<\/a> Thursday before rebounding in early Friday trading in Asia. International benchmark\u00a0Brent<\/a>\u00a0crude futures rose 2.29% to $102.35 per barrel while U.S.\u00a0West Texas Intermediate<\/a>\u00a0futures climbed 2.09% to $96.79 per barrel.<\/p>\n Other commodities are also back in focus. Market watchers told CNBC that the rallies in gold and silver<\/a>, which happened at the start of the year before cooling, could regain momentum if a U.S.-Iran peace settlement is reached.<\/p>\n Markets also pulled back<\/a> from their recent enthusiasm. The\u00a0S&P 500<\/a>\u00a0fell on Thursday, dragged lower by losses in\u00a0Amazon<\/a>,\u00a0as well as semiconductor stocks such as\u00a0Broadcom<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Micron Technology<\/a>.<\/p>\n Investors also soured<\/a> on Cloudflare<\/a>, with shares tumbling 18% after the company announced plans to cut one-fifth of its workforce. <\/p>\n Cloudflare said agentic\u00a0artificial intelligence<\/a>\u00a0has “fundamentally changed” the company’s work, adding that some positions “just aren’t the roles that we need for the future.”<\/p>\n Ceasefire or not, the Strait of Hormuz increasingly resembles less like diplomacy and more like a bar fight where nobody remembers who threw the first punch. Financial markets, unfortunately, do remember who pays for the broken furniture.<\/p>\n And finally…<\/p>\n