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The United States and Israel’s war with Iran has spilled over into the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints, prompting a surge in oil prices.

Shipping through the strait, which carries one-fifth of the oil consumed globally as well as large quantities of gas, has ground to a near halt amid Iranian attacks on oil tankers in the region.

A commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Monday that the strait was “closed” and that any vessel attempting to pass through the waterway would be set “ablaze.”

At least five tankers have been damaged, two personnel killed and about 150 ships stranded around the strait, which separates Iran and Oman.

Oil prices rose above $79.40 per barrel on Monday, after hitting $73 per barrel on Friday amid rising tensions in the lead-up to Saturday’s joint US and Israeli attacks on Iran.

“Traffic is down at least 80 percent,” Michelle Bockmann, a senior maritime intelligence analyst at Windward, told Al Jazeera, adding that the shipping industry had already been grappling with a “huge spike” in freight costs for routes out of the Middle East and the Gulf.

Cormack McGarry, the director of maritime intelligence and security services at Control Risks, said that mariners received a message from Iran via the international distress frequency on Saturday that the strait was closed. 

“Every ship in the area would have heard that… and it was enough for most ships to pause.”

Vessel tracking service Kpler showed that limited traffic continued in the strait – primarily ships flying the flag of Iran and its major trading partner China – on Sunday.

Bockmann said it was possible that some ships had passed through the strait after switching off their Automatic Identification System to avoid detection.

McGarry said that a total shutdown of the strait by Iran would mean it was “tightening the noose around its own neck”.

“If they attack shipping, they are encouraging the Gulf states to join the war, and it’s a big step for Iran to go there,” McGarry said.

“The idea they could affect a long-term sustained closure of the strait is completely unlikely,” he added. “I’m more worried for regional supply chains.”

Still, most commercial operators, major oil companies, and insurers have effectively withdrawn from the corridor, according to Kpler. Insurance premiums had already reached a six-year high ahead of the war.

“There has definitely been an escalation overnight, with pressure on energy infrastructure in the Gulf and Qatar pre-emptively pausing LNG production,” Rachel Ziemba, a senior adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Al Jazeera.

“With tankers unwilling to come into the Gulf, it sends a message of what is at stake.”

US not immune

Iran had ramped up oil exports to multi-year highs in February in anticipation of the US-Israeli strikes, Kpler said.

The Gulf states, too, had been front-loading their oil supplies, helping offset supply problems in the short term, said Ziemba.

The majority of the crude oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz goes to Asia, with China, India, Japan, and South Korea accounting for nearly 70 percent of shipments, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Apart from oil, energy products facing supply pressures include jet fuel and liquefied natural gas.

Some 30 percent of Europe’s supply of jet fuel originates from or transits via the strait, while one-fifth of the global supply of LNG passes through the waterway.

Even though the US is no longer dependent on Middle Eastern oil, and it can take weeks for pump prices to be affected, it is not immune to disruptions.

“The situation is very fluid,” David Warrick, an executive vice president at the supply chain platform Overhaul, told Al Jazeera.

As companies reroute their ships, including around the Cape of Good Hope, near the south of Africa, they are facing longer delivery times and additional costs.

“With war risk insurance and additional emergency contingency insurance, it’s adding on thousands of dollars,” Warrick said.

“This is prime time for sourcing for raw materials and planning for holidays… and any disruption at this time is not really good for supply chains,” Warrick said.

There could also be winners from the disruption.

Being a net producer of energy, a rise in prices will benefit US oil producers, Ziemba said.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed more than 50 people. It says the strikes are a response to Hezbollah rockets and drones fired into Israel to protest the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader.

An unexploded US kamikaze drone was found on farmland in Western Iraq on Monday. The low-cost drones have reportedly been used in US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

The long-running confrontation between the US and Iran entered a new phase on Saturday when joint US-Israeli air strikes targeted Iran, marking a moment of open military hostilities.

As US President Donald Trump signals that operations could last four to five weeks, we look at whether Washington can sustain a new war in the Middle East, and what it might ultimately cost.

What is Operation Epic Fury?

On February 28, Trump confirmed in an eight-minute video posted on Truth Social that the US had taken part in what he described as a “major combat operation” inside Iran.

The Pentagon later said the mission was named Operation Epic Fury.

Trump said the objective was to “ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon”.

“We’re going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally obliterated,” he added.

The US military said that it had struck more than 1,250 targets in Iran since operations started on Saturday. In a separate statement, the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) said it had struck and destroyed 11 Iranian ships.

The operation reportedly involved air strikes, sea-launched cruise missiles and coordinated attacks on nuclear-related facilities, as well as on senior figures linked to Iran’s defence establishment.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had led the country since 1989, was killed when his Tehran compound was struck and heavily damaged in the first wave of US-Israeli strikes.

On Monday, Trump promised to pursue the war for as long as necessary, suggesting it could extend over several weeks. As of Monday, the Iranian Red Crescent said that 555 people had been killed across 130 locations in Iran.

How much has the US already spent in Israel and the Middle East since 2023?

According to Brown University’s 2025 Costs of War report, since October 7, 2023, the US has provided Israel with some $21.7bn in military aid.

In addition to that, the American taxpayer has funded US operations in support of Israel in Yemen, Iran and the wider Middle East at a cost of $9.65bn to $12.07bn.

That brings total US spending connected to the conflict to between $31.35bn and $33.77bn, and counting.

Which weapons systems are being used in the Iran war?

According to CENTCOM, Operation Epic Fury has involved more than 20 weapons systems across air, sea, land and missile defence forces.

CENTCOM says more than 1,000 targets inside Iran have been struck, using more than 20 different systems across the air, sea and land, as well as the missile defence force.

“The focus of the United States and Israelis now is to blunt or degrade – as quickly as they can – the offensive capabilities of the Iranians to keep wreaking havoc. You want to stop these attacks, or at least diminish them as much as you can,” Kevin Donegan, a former CENTCOM operations director, told Al Jazeera.

Some of the weapons systems include:

Air Power:

The campaign has relied heavily on US air assets, including:

• B-1 bombers
• B-2 stealth bombers: used to strike key nuclear and military infrastructure
• F-35 Lightning II & F-22 Raptor: advanced stealth fighters
• F-15 fighter jets: extensively used; three were lost in an incident over Kuwait on March 1
• F-16 Fighting Falcon, F/A-18 Super Hornet, and A-10 attacker jets: all confirmed for strike and support roles
• EA-18G Growler: used for electronic attack and suppressing enemy air defences
• Airborne early warning and control aircraft (AWACS): providing command, control and battle-space management.

Drones and long-range strike systems

Unmanned systems and rocket artillery are also part of the operation:

• LUCAS drones: This operation marks the first combat use of these “low-cost unmanned combat attack system” one-way drones, which were reverse-engineered from Iranian designs
• MQ-9 Reaper drones: active in surveillance and precision strike roles
• M-142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS):  ground-based rocket artillery
• Tomahawk Cruise Missiles: launched from naval assets.

Missile defence systems

• Patriot interceptor missile systems and THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense): used to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles and drones
• Counter-drone systems.

Naval power projection

• Two carrier strike groups, led by the USS Gerald R Ford and USS Abraham Lincoln: providing massive sea-based power
• P-8 Poseidon: conducting maritime patrol and reconnaissance
• Cargo and tankers: C-17 Globemaster, C-130 Hercules, and various aerial refuelling tankers are maintaining the logistics flow.

How much could the Iran war cost the US?

Predicting the total cost of an ongoing military campaign is difficult. According to experts, it is too early to say how much the new war might end up costing the US.

“The Pentagon has not published that information, and so we can only speculate…, but there’s a lot of moving pieces, and we can speculate on the cost of the individual weapons; we can speculate on the cost of the operations, the naval operations,” Christopher Peble, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, told Al Jazeera.

Reports by the Anadolou news agency estimate that the US may have spent roughly $779m during the first 24 hours of Operation Epic Fury.

The pre-strike military build-up, including repositioning aircraft, deploying more than a dozen naval vessels and mobilising regional assets, is estimated to have cost an additional $630m.

According to the Center for New American Security, it costs approximately $6.5m a day to operate a carrier strike group, such as the USS Gerald R Ford.

There are also costs associated with equipment losses.

At least three US fighter jets were shot down in Kuwait, in what US officials described as a friendly-fire incident.

But experts suggest the bigger concern may not be the financial sustainability, but the inventory.

“It is sustainable with respect to the cost. I mean, we have a trillion-dollar defence budget in the US and a request to go to $1.5 trillion, which I find appalling, but which the president is committed to,” Preble said.

“So, a trillion dollars goes a long way. The question is about the actual inventory of weapons in the US arsenal, especially interceptors – things like Patriot missiles or SM-6s, standard missiles that are used as interceptors for ballistic missiles.”

Preble warned that high interception rates cannot continue indefinitely.

“It is reasonable to speculate that the pace of operations right now, in terms of numbers of interceptions, could not continue indefinitely, certainly, and perhaps could not continue for more than several weeks,” he said.

He noted that similar concerns arose during the 12-day conflict with Iran in June, when there was speculation that both US and Israeli forces were running low on interceptor stocks. While some supplies may have since been replenished, interceptors are also earmarked for other theatres.

“Some of these interceptors were intended to be sent to Ukraine to deal with Russian strikes. Some are used in Asia, in the Indo-Pacific. They would be important in the event of a contingency there,” he said. “So, there would be some concern with removing those weapons from that theatre.”

Manufacturing replacements is not instantaneous.

“A Patriot missile or an SM-6… is a very complicated piece of equipment,” Preble added.

Tehran’s historic Golestan Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has sustained major damage after US-Israeli strikes on Iran. UNESCO has expressed ‘concern’ over the protection of heritage sites across the Middle East amid the escalating war.

US First Lady Melania Trump has presided over a UN Security Council meeting focusing on children in conflict days after dozens of children at a school in Iran were reportedly killed after Israel and the United States launched attacks.