WS #12318

The US-Iran conflict is escalating sharply with new airstrikes reported in central Iran (Yazd, Ahvaz) and strikes on a bridge near Bandar Abbas, threatening the Strait of Hormuz. This is corroborated by multiple sources (NBC, Al Jazeera, OSINT accounts). The escalation is driving oil price risk and geopolitical uncertainty. Separately, a 7.4 earthquake in Chiapas, Mexico, and a Somali pirate seizure of an oil tanker near Yemen add to supply-side risks. On the corporate front, Meta is in early talks to rent computing power to Anthropic, a bullish signal for META's data center utilization. Dark pool alerts show large institutional orders in AMZN ($300M) and IREN ($227M). The prevailing US-Iran narrative is ESCALATING.