Day 153 brief — Iran's intercepted missile salvo on US bases fractures the pause; US and Saudi Arabia strike militias in Iraq as Brent jumps ~7%

Day 153 broke the calm that had defined Day 152. The five-day interruption in US strikes on Iranian soil — the longest since the campaign resumed on July 7 — technically held, but the war re-ignited around it. On July 28 the IRGC fired several ballistic missiles at a US air base and a CENTCOM facility in Jordan in what the US called an 'attempted surprise attack'; Jordanian and US air defenses intercepted five missiles and reported no American casualties, though Bloomberg said the salvo 'punctured days of calm' and raised the risk of a return to full-blown war (CNN, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera). A day later, after more than thirty IRGC-directed drone attacks in seventy-two hours — some aimed at eastern Saudi oil facilities — the US and Saudi Arabia struck Iran-backed militias in eastern Iraq, the first Saudi strikes inside Iraq of the war; the Popular Mobilization Forces reported at least 20 fighters killed (NPR, Jerusalem Post, Euronews). The tape reversed with the fighting: Brent jumped about 7% to roughly $89.4, snapping a three-day losing streak, and Bab el-Mandeb transits fell back toward 11 vessels from Monday's 28-vessel rebound as the Houthis resumed attacks and signaled they may charge for Red Sea passage (Forbes, Trading Economics, DeepDraft, Times of Israel). Oman's two-corridor Hormuz plan advanced but frayed — Iran rejected an equal split and Washington called mandatory transit fees 'illegal.' Per §3.5.3 the diplomacy is real but the fracture is the fact. Direction turns escalating; seven-day risk critical; spillover critical; the thirty-day ceasefire probability slips to 14.