Cronje said the firm’s base case had always been a combination of what it called “strategic withdrawal” by the United States (US) and “controlled de-escalation” by Iran.

He argued that political pressure ahead of the November midterm elections made a prolonged war increasingly difficult for President Donald Trump. Cronje said weak consumer sentiment and the danger of persistently high oil prices were creating mounting pressure on the White House and the Republican Party.

He said Iran was also under pressure because disruption around the Strait of Hormuz threatened oil flows, revenues, and infrastructure, making a negotiated scaling-down of the conflict more likely than a wider regional war.

Cronje said much of the media coverage had overstated the risks of nuclear war, global recession, and a Third World War. He pointed to data showing that Iranian retaliatory launches against its Gulf neighbours, Israel, and US facilities had fallen sharply after the first 10 days of the conflict.

“Our advice to clients is this really isn’t a war in the way that Middle Eastern wars, the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Americans in Iraq after Kuwait, and then the Afghan conflict after 9/11 played out,” he said.

“This is not something that’s going to be settled on a battlefield. This is going to be settled through economic and political pressure.”

Cronje also argued that global economic forecasts had remained relatively stable throughout the conflict. He said forecasts for global growth in 2026 had started the year at 3.3% and by mid-April had only fallen by around two-tenths of a percentage point.

He added that financial markets had also remained resilient. The dollar index had only moved modestly higher during the conflict before easing again, while the rand remained about 10% stronger than a year earlier.

“At very few points through this conflict, and certainly not for any sustained number of days, did the global oil price move beyond its inflation-adjusted average,” Cronje said.

Cronje said investors who reacted emotionally to the conflict would likely have underperformed.

“If you followed the wrong advice and took your money out as this war took off, because you feared the nuclear holocaust and the Third World War, the kind of scary stuff that was being written about in some serious places, you’d have done very badly,” he said.

He noted that a R1 million investment in the S&P 500 during the early stages of the conflict would now be roughly 10% higher in rand terms.

Cronje said one of the most important long-term consequences of the conflict could be a shift in the global oil balance of power away from the Middle East and toward the US as countries seek alternative energy routes and suppliers.

He compared the shift to the aftermath of the Nord Stream pipelines sabotage during the Ukraine war, after which Europe increasingly replaced Russian energy with American supply.

“The shock effect on the global economy was therefore always going to be much more muted than some of the more dramatic and hysterical writing would have had one believe,” Cronje said.