Analysts are struggling to predict the extent to which Israel and Iran’s escalating conflict could influence oil prices.

Israel’s surprise attack on Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure on Friday has been followed by five days of spiraling warfare between the regional foes.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday called for an “unconditional surrender” from Tehran, warning Washington’s patience was wearing thin.

Energy markets are weighing the likelihood of direct U.S. involvement in the conflict, as well as the potential for major supply disruptions — particularly worst-case scenarios, such as Iran blocking the highly strategic Strait of Hormuz that links the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman.

John Evans, an analyst at oil broker PVM, said Wednesday that a “blanket of unease” had descended upon oil markets in recent days.

“Our market is settling into a world where missile exchanges are commonplace but the cynicism of it being normal has yet to set in because of how easily the situation could escalate,” Evans said in a research note.

Israel’s Bazan oil refinery complex sustained damage from an Iranian attack earlier this week, while an Israeli airstrike at the South Pars field, the world’s largest gas field, prompted Tehran to partially suspend production. The South Pars gas field is shared between Iran and Qatar.

“The situation is as fluid as the underlying commodity it mostly affects and while there is a fraternal ‘your guess is [as] good as mine’ in future price divination, positioning will continue to be at least defensively long,” PVM’s Evans said.

The chief executives of oil companies of TotalEnergies, Shell, and EnQuest told CNBC on Tuesday that further attacks on critical energy infrastructure could have serious consequences for global supply and prices.

International benchmark Brent crude futures with August delivery stood little changed at $76.43 per barrel at 12:48 p.m. London time. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures with July delivery, meanwhile, traded flat at $74.86 per barrel.

Per Lekander, founder of investment management firm Clean Energy Transition, described the situation for oil markets ahead of Israel’s attack on Iran last week as “bad,” given plentiful supply growth from OPEC and non-OPEC producers and soft demand.

“I was increasingly convinced we were heading for a 2014/2020 reset lower to $30-50 to get capex down and start a new cycle. In fact, the current conflict makes that outcome even more likely when [the] conflict is over as producers are now producing and hedging as much as they can,” Lekander said in a note.

“While this is going on it is a roulette. We have a $10 [per barrel] risk premium in the price which is fair given that there clearly are some interruptions (mainly Iran exports and some lower tanker loadings),” he added.

“We’re kind of stabilizing right now. I think we’re waiting for that next headline to come out and really, I think that anyone who does not think oil could go higher, I really think they are trading on hope and not reality,” Schork told CNBC’s “Access Middle East.”

“We are now facing the biggest threat to the oil markets since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and perhaps even greater than the 1974 Arab oil embargo,” he added.

Schork said there was a roughly 5% chance of oil prices climbing to above $103 per barrel within the next five weeks, with much longer odds of crude soaring as high as $160 per barrel by the end of summer, if flows out of the Persian Gulf are seriously disrupted.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran is staring down the possibility of seeing its most important nuclear facilities hit by a 30,000-pound American bomb.

White House officials on Tuesday told NBC News that U.S. President Donald Trump is considering a range of options including striking Iran directly, after the American leader repeatedly asserted that his administration would not allow Iran to continue its nuclear program or reach bomb-making capability.

Trump called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and wrote in a post on Truth Social that the U.S. has the ability to assassinate Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

“He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” Trump wrote shortly after declaring “total control” over Iranian airspace.

The rapidly escalating conflict, triggered by Israel’s surprise attacks on Iranian military and nuclear facilities on June 13, has sent oil prices surging and put a region on edge. Initially encouraging of diplomatic talks with Tehran, Trump’s statements have become increasingly threatening as populations across the Middle East brace for what comes next. 

But destroying Iran’s nuclear program — which Tehran asserts is for civilian energy purposes only — is no easy feat.

Iran’s most advanced and hardened nuclear facility, the Fordow plant in the country’s northwest, is a fortress. 

Built inside a mountain some 300 feet underground and reinforced by layers of concrete, the plant — which is the most likely target of a potential American strike — is impenetrable by any bomb except the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). The U.S. is the only country in the world that has this “bunker buster” weapon, as well as the only country with the aircraft capable of transporting and deploying it: the B2 Spirit stealth bomber. 

This is in part why Israel has been so eager for U.S. involvement in its offensive operations against Iran in addition to its defensive ones.

But a strike in itself would not be a one-and-done job, military experts say.

“So you have two challenges. You would have to drop two of these penetrators at the exact same site” and likely need multiple bombing rounds, according to David Des Roches, a professor and senior military fellow at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. 

“And then you would never be precisely sure how much of the facility you’ve damaged,” he added, meaning personnel may need to be deployed on the ground. 

“This leads me to believe that for those facilities, Israel will ultimately gain control of the air and then land forces on the ground, force their way into the facility by detonating the doors, and then go and place explosive charges, exfiltrate whatever intelligence they can get, and just detonate it from the inside,” Des Roches told CNBC.