June 26, 2026. Iran put a projectile into a ship in the Strait of Hormuz this week, hours after the Revolutionary Guard went on the radio warning that no vessel crosses without Tehran's blessing. It was the strait's first real test since the ceasefire reopened it. While Iran squeezed the one chokepoint it still holds, Baghdad spent the same week opening every other way out.

In the north, the state-run North Oil Company put Basra crude back onto a line that runs to Turkey, lifting the northern route to about 340,000 barrels a day on a road Iran cannot reach. The Kirkuk to Ceyhan pipeline has finished testing and set a two-week window for trial pumping. Gulf Keystone restarted production at its Shaikan field on June 24, the first international operator back online since Iran-backed drones shut the Kurdish fields.

The biggest move is the one the prime minister carries to Washington. In mid-July, Ali al-Zaidi meets President Trump to sign a deal with the US investment firm TI Capital to rebuild the 850-kilometre Kirkuk to Baniyas pipeline, carrying Iraqi crude to Syria's Mediterranean coast, alongside security guarantees that bring Exxon and Chevron back to the oilfields.

None of this is new ground. In the 1980s Tanker War, hundreds of ships burned in these same waters, and Iraq's answer was to run its oil overland, around Iran. The map has not changed. Only the names on it have.

On the money, the official rate sits at 1,300 to the dollar while the street trades nearer 1,450, and the central bank has denied a rate change for the second time this month. You do not build export routes, scrub the banks, and digitize every border to keep a currency on a programme rate. The gap closes one way. The only open questions are when, and how high.

For 40 years the strait decided when Iraq got paid. In July, Baghdad starts taking that back.