WS #10194

The dominant narrative remains the unraveling of the US-Iran MOU, which is now actively ESCALATING. Multiple corroborating sources (Al Jazeera, Axios, Raw Story, and numerous Bluesky posts) report that the US-Iran meeting scheduled for Friday in Switzerland has been postponed, with Iran's foreign ministry citing non-implementation of parts of the MOU. Simultaneously, Israel continues bombing Lebanon (Nabatieh and surrounding villages), directly violating the MOU's call for a permanent ceasefire on all fronts. Trump has criticized the MOU as 'unconditional surrender,' further casting doubt on the deal's viability. This escalation is driving a second-order effect: tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is dwindling again after a brief rush to exit, as shippers pull back amid collapsed talks. As a counter-signal, Iraq plans to increase southern oilfield production by 250,000 bpd to ~1.75 million bpd, with a target of 2 million bpd in coming days, which could partially offset supply concerns. Separately, a Bain Capital CLO tranche has defaulted in Europe for the first time since 2008, signaling stress in private credit markets. On the equity tape, mega-caps (TSLA +2.8%, AMZN/MSFT/GOOGL green) are carrying the market while semis fracture (DELL -5.1%) and crypto-adjacent names (COIN, MSTR, HOOD) are red on Kentucky regulatory noise.