Oil is the dog that has not barked since the Middle East blew up. If Iran had launched a full-blown missile strike at Israel at any earlier time in the last half century, the price of crude would be spiralling into the danger zone.

This strange calm may be because the world has yet to grasp the enormity of what is happening. Markets traded contentedly all through July 1914 after the Sarajevo assassination, sceptical because Europe’s great powers had gone to the brink so many times before and each occasion proved a false alarm. It was only after Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia that they began to discern an unstoppable chain-reaction.

A gas flame at the Salman Oil Field operated by the National Iranian Offshore Oil........

© The Sydney Morning Herald