Don’t worry. Donald Trump’s not going to kill off an “entire civilization” tonight. Nor tomorrow night. Nor any night before November 3.

“I want to make it clear to everybody that… we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections,” Trump said Thursday, in a social media post plainly aimed at allaying market concerns tied to multiple reports suggesting the US could resume major combat operations against the Guards in the coming days or weeks.

In the same message, Trump claimed for the however-manyth time that his envoys are engaged in “productive discussions” with the IRGC, an ad nauseam contention the Guards habitually dispute. Trump was keen to highlight Iran’s parlous economic plight and reiterated, in all-caps, that the country won’t get a nuke.

He also put a number on the amount of oil that made it through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday evening: 22 million barrels, “with not one barrel coming from, or going to, Iran!”

If true (and by all accounts it is in fact the case that oil, if not refined products, is getting through at rates close to pre-war levels), that’s quite the feat. And it speaks to the notion that, as discussed in the linked article above, Trump may be able to wait the Guards out as hyperinflation takes hold in Iran.

Whatever the case, Trump’s post was well-received by bonds, which rallied as oil retraced some of the day’s advance. About 45 minutes after Trump clarified the timeline on his next attempt to throttle the rabid badger he and Pete Hegseth cornered earlier this year, Scott Bessent managed another respectable auction.

Thursday’s 30-year reopening boasted non-dealer bidding of 93.2%, indicative of strong end-user demand for an offering that sported the highest yield for any long bond sale in 26 years. Dealers were left with 6.8%. Recall that last month’s long bond sale saw the lowest dealers on record, just 2.2%.

As an aside, note the outlier on the chart: The infamous November 9, 2023, debacle that saw dealers stuck with nearly a quarter of a sale that tailed by more than 5bps.

If I thought he was this savvy, I’d suggest Trump’s social media post was aimed at influencing the auction. After all, Thursday morning’s price action reinforced the notion that, all bigger-picture fiscal concerns aside, the daily swings in bond land are still very much tethered to crude. A resumption of major combat operations in the Gulf would suggest triple-digit oil’s here to stay for a while longer.

Whatever the case, all three of this week’s Treasury supply events came and went without incident, with Wednesday’s 10-year sale standing out as particularly strong. That’s a major relief at a time when, as one observer indelicately put it, “the world’s safest instruments act as if they have no bid most days.”

Meanwhile, in that other gulf, 25% of regional oil production was suspended as of Thursday morning in anticipation of Hurricane Isaias. You needn’t fret too much, though: Worse comes to worst, Trump can always nuke it.