Oil prices fall amid mixed signals on US-Iran peace deal

Japan’s stock market surges to record high on hopes of an end to Israel-war-on-Iran" class="entity-link entity-event" data-entity-id="38678" data-entity-type="event">US-Israel war on Iran.Oil prices have fallen sharply amid tentative hopes for a deal to end the Israel-war-on-Iran" class="entity-link entity-event" data-entity-id="38678" data-entity-type="event">US-Israel war on Iran.Brent Crude, the primary benchmark for global oil prices, fell about 5 percent on Sunday as US President Donald Trump gave mixed signals on the prospects for a permanent end to the conflict.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4After San Diego shooting, Muslim Americans aim to turn grief into actionlist 2 of 4Inside a Beirut barbershop shaped by war and crisislist 3 of 4Cuba thanks China for rice shipment amid worsening humanitarian conditionslist 4 of 4Ecuador’s Noboa pledges to extradite criminals in State of the Union speechend of listBrent futures for July stood at $98.47 a barrel as of 01:05 GMT, down about 9 percent from a month ago but still up by more than a third compared with before the start of the war.Japan’s benchmark stock index, the Nikkei 225, surged more than 3 percent in morning trading, hitting an all-time high after closing at a record peak on Friday.Trump said in a social media post on Sunday that negotiations with Tehran were proceeding in an “orderly and constructive manner”, but he had instructed officials “not to rush into a deal”.“Both sides must take their time and get it right. There can be no mistakes!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.Trump’s remarks came after he raised hopes for a breakthrough on Saturday by announcing that a deal had been “largely negotiated,” with the terms including the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.“Fundamentally, there is no change to the underlying picture, where 10-11 million barrels per day of crude oil continue to be shut-in for every day the Strait of Hormuz remains shut,” June Goh, a senior oil market analyst at Sparta in Singapore, told Al Jazeera.“However, markets are expecting a gush of 100 million barrels of crude oil from the stranded ships to flow out once the deal is in place.”