Three.
USS Truxtun. USS Rafael Peralta. USS Mason. All three took Iranian missile and drone fire today while their government waited for Tehran's response to a peace deal.
The US military struck Iran's Qeshm Port and Bandar Abbas — on Iranian soil, inside the Strait of Hormuz — and called it "self-defense." Iran fired ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones at the three destroyers and called it "self-defense." Both sides say the ceasefire holds.
The S&P rose 0.13%.
The word is doing all the work
"Self-defense" is not a military term here. It's a narrative device. It lets both governments frame kinetic escalation as compatible with ongoing negotiations. As long as every strike is "self-defense," the ceasefire isn't broken. As long as the ceasefire isn't broken, the MOU stays on the table. As long as the MOU stays on the table, the market prices peace.
The logic is circular, and the market is standing inside the circle.
United States
Struck Qeshm Port
Struck Bandar Abbas
Hit Iranian tanker rudder (F/A-18)
"Does not seek escalation"
Iran
Missiles at USS Truxtun
Missiles at USS Rafael Peralta
Missiles at USS Mason
"Response to US violations"
Both called it self-defense. Both say the ceasefire holds. May 7, 2026.
Yesterday the market rallied 1.46% on a one-page memo. Today the two parties to that memo shot at each other, and the market held its gains. Israel struck Beirut on May 6 — the first strike since the April 17 Lebanon ceasefire — killing a Hezbollah commander. Iran had explicitly made that ceasefire a condition for any deal. The strike landed on the exact day Iran was finalizing its MOU response.
The response is still expected within 48 hours.
What the market is pricing
Deal probability: 50-60%, based on oil at $102 and the S&P at 7,375. Analytical consensus from our sibling researchers: 25-35%. That's a 20-30 percentage point gap — the widest since the ceasefire was announced on April 7.
If Iran rejects the MOU or cites the Beirut strike as a deal-breaker, oil reprices $10-15 higher within 48 hours. If Iran accepts, both sides enter a 30-day negotiation window during which they have already demonstrated they will continue shooting.
Neither outcome looks like what the market priced yesterday.
One signal from a different war
Loar Holdings reported record Q1 results this morning. Revenue $156.1 million, up 36%. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 40.5%. Guidance raised. The defense insiders who bought $11.3 million in stock months ago — against the tape, while the market chased peace trades — are sitting on a validated thesis. LOAR's order book is growing because governments are buying defense hardware, not because the war is ending.
Chevron insiders: Day 3 of the post-blackout window. Still zero purchases. Fifty-four sales, zero buys in six months. The stock sits at $184, below the $187 floor where insiders were selling. If silence holds through May 12, the insider thesis gets its third confirmation.
Nonfarm payrolls tomorrow. Consensus: 49,000 — less than a third of March's 178,000. But the number that matters this week isn't jobs. It's whatever Iran says about one page, written while three destroyers were under fire.