How This File Counts
Published 4 October 2026
This file makes a promise it can only keep by being specific: every number has a date and a source, and where a number could mean two things, it says which. The rules below are the ones the chapters followed. If a sentence in this file breaks one of them, the sentence is wrong and the rule is right.
Prices: spot is not futures
Oil prices in this file come in two kinds. Futures prices are what traders agreed to pay for oil delivered in a future month, and the file uses the daily close of the front-month Brent contract. The war's futures peak in the series is $126.41 on 30 April. Spot prices are what physical barrels sold for on the day. The US Energy Information Administration's spot series put Brent at $138.21 on 7 April, higher than any futures close. Both numbers are real, they measure different things, and they are never put on one line without a label. The spot series stops before October, so the file does not offer an October spot price. The charts say which series they show.
Casualties: a snapshot is not a total
A casualty figure is a count at a time, by a method, for a place. The file gives the date of every one, says who counted, and refuses to add counts that used different methods. It does not sum Iranian, Israeli, Lebanese, Gulf and Yemeni tolls into one figure, because no source does it honestly. Where a number comes from a government, the file says so. Where an investigation has not finished, it says that too.
Claims: said, did and confirmed
There are three levels of knowledge about any incident. A party said it happened, a party did something about it, and an independent source confirmed it. CENTCOM statements establish what CENTCOM said. Iranian state television establishes what Iranian state television said. Shipping bodies and satellite analysis can sometimes confirm. The file uses the verbs accordingly, and it does not write "every breach", because nobody has counted them.
Agreements: separate clocks
The war has had several agreements, each with its own date and terms. The 7 April American announcement and the regional ceasefire of 8 April are the same arrangement seen from two time zones. The June memorandum, the July collapse and the August deadline are three further events. The Lebanese ceasefires have clocks of their own. When two dates look as though they should be the same, the file keeps both and says why.
Weekdays and dates
Every weekday in this file was computed from its date and checked, not remembered. Where a source's own date conflicts with its web address or its metadata, the date in the body of the article was used and the conflict was noted.
What a source can carry
An anonymous official can carry an estimate, attributed to that official. A company can carry a statement about its own plant. A ministry can carry its own count. A think tank's composite of other people's numbers cannot carry a figure that the underlying sources do not support. Where this file relied on a third-party mirror of a primary document, or on a newspaper's account of a parliamentary answer, it says so, because the reader deserves to know which links are strong.
The freeze
The file was frozen for facts at 6 pm India time on 3 October. Items that depend on later wire reports are left out unless they were confirmed by the freeze. The reader should treat everything here as true as of that point and no later.
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