Iran Names a Price This Column Had as a Deal Days Ago

This column had Thursday's Hormuz story as a named route agreed with Oman; Saturday's UAE tanker claim and Iran's list of demands, chief among them a US withdrawal, say the route was never as settled as Tehran's own briefings implied. Trump told Axios he is "low-keying it" with Iran, a step back from confirming a deal that may not exist. The gap between Bloomberg's read on strained US munitions stockpiles and the White House's public patience is the number to watch this week, not another Hormuz denial. Away from the strait, Vincent Lai's column on Beijing's new offshore trust tax, a levy on assets held through foreign structures, reads against Hong Kong's own bond futures contract launch as the same instrument seen from opposite ends: capital Beijing can trace moves freely, capital it cannot gets taxed. The FT's guardrails piece treats erosion as a US-only story; Lai's numbers say otherwise. Kai Tanner's water utility piece covers a 12-state hacking campaign that ran fifteen weeks past a federal warning: publication without enforcement is not a defence. Watch whether Oman issues its own statement on the stalled deal by Tuesday.