The US-Iran deal is close enough to touch and still not signed — and the gap between those two facts is the whole story of Day 105. The bullish case is real and specific: mediator Pakistan says a “final, agreed-upon text” has been reached; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News a signing could come “this weekend or Monday” and would bring “economic relief and help reduce energy prices”; a senior administration official put the odds at 80% and said Vice President Vance would attend, likely in Europe; and Iran’s Foreign Ministry says an “understanding has been reached on the majority of issues.” Against all of that sits a single unresolved problem: the two governments are describing different deals. The US account is reopen-Hormuz-plus-full-nuclear-dismantlement — removing Iran’s enriched uranium, lifting the naval blockade, with economic incentives for compliance. Iranian media — Mehr’s reported 14-point draft and the state agency IRNA — describe a memorandum with “no new commitments” on nuclear weapons, adding US force withdrawal, release of frozen funds and reconstruction. President Trump has publicly rejected the Iranian version. That is why 80% is not 100%: the same signing ceremony is being sold to two domestic audiences as two different agreements, and someone has to blink before pens move.
Friday night turned the abstraction concrete. Iran launched multiple one-way attack drones at commercial ships transiting the strait; CENTCOM said it downed all of them and that “traffic flow through the strait continues unimpeded — the international trade corridor remains open for transit,” while Iranian media claimed the military had stopped a tanker from passing. Both statements cannot be fully true, and that is precisely the point: the single fact the entire reopening trade rests on — whether ships are actually moving through Hormuz — is now directly contested by the two parties to the deal. The IRGC’s June 11 closure decree remains nominally in force on top of it. For a market pricing an imminent reopening, this is the gap between a claim and a count: CENTCOM asserts open, Iran asserts stopped, and neither is a neutral source. Until minesweepers and uncontested VLCC transits confirm flow physically, “open” is an assertion, not a measurement.
Crude is voting for the deal anyway. Brent settled $87.33 Friday (−3.4%), an eight-week low, dipping below $86.50 intraday — the lowest since early March; WTI settled $84.88 (−3.2%). Prices fell about 6% on the week, though they remain more than 20% above where they sat before the February 28 war began. Notably, the Friday-night drone incident did not reverse the slide — the market is weighting an 80%-likely signing over a live kinetic event, which tells you where sentiment sits. If the deal is signed, the reported mechanics are a reopening of Hormuz without tolls and a return to prewar shipping within roughly 30 days, alongside sanctions relief. The honest caveat, repeated because it matters: a signature is the start of a normalization clock, not the end of the shortage. Mines must be cleared, idled fields restarted, drone- and missile-damaged facilities repaired, and Gulf cargoes still take about two months to reach end markets. The market a reopened strait returns to is also structurally smaller — the EIA now forecasts global oil demand falling 1.1 mb/d in 2026.
The shortage map holds at 19 active + 18 watch across 32 countries, with no reclassifications today — but Kenya is the pin to watch this weekend, and not because of Hormuz. Kenya’s EPRA pricing cycle expires today (the May 19–June 14 window), and the regulator’s new schedule is due today or tomorrow. It is a genuinely two-way call: the lagged pricing formula prices May cargoes that landed at Mombasa during the crisis peak, which structurally indicates another increase on top of a record Nairobi diesel price of Ksh242.92 — but global crude just hit an eight-week low and a deal could cut landed costs into July, giving the regulator cover to hold or trim. Underneath sits a country with no strategic petroleum reserve, VAT relief that expires July 14, a finite PDL stabilization fund (~Ksh5bn drawn last cycle), and a matatu-operators’ strike threat that reactivates if diesel rises. Elsewhere the map is quiet: Ecuador’s band increase took effect yesterday, Australia’s aviation pin holds its corrected red basis into the July 1 double cliff, and today’s new-location scan surfaced no confirmable fresh physical-shortage pin — the Philippines and South Korea jet-fuel stress is real but already inside our framework, with no new decree to record.
Forward calendar: the possible signing this weekend or Monday — the event that would reframe the entire board; Kenya’s new EPRA schedule today/Monday; GlobalPetrolPrices and IATA jet prints Monday; the EU pipeline-gas ban takes effect June 17; EIA WPSR Wednesday June 17; the July 1 Australia double cliff (Qantas hedge + excise expiry). For the matrix and analyst outlook, see the Risk Analysis page.