Oil prices slipped in Asian trading on Thursday, ending a three-session streak of gains, after President Donald Trump said renewed U.S. attacks on Iran would not last long and signs of recovering crude flows through the Strait of Hormuz eased some supply concerns.

As of 04:42 ET (08:42 GMT), Brent Oil Futures expiring in November fell 0.2% to $95.43 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) slipped 0.2% to $90.83 a barrel, paring earlier gains. Both benchmarks had reached five-week highs over the previous three sessions.

The rally had been driven by fears that renewed military confrontation between the United States and Iran could further disrupt oil supplies from the Middle East. U.S. forces struck Iran's southern coast on Wednesday, while Tehran retaliated against U.S. positions across the region, in the most intense exchange of fire between the two countries since July.

Trump, however, said on Wednesday that the renewed U.S. campaign against Iran would not persist for an extended period, helping to temper some of the market's immediate supply concerns. He also said the U.S. had targeted Iranian radar, missile systems, and capabilities linked to laying mines around the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait remains the key focus for oil markets. The waterway normally carries roughly a fifth of globally traded oil, including crude from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran, which is why even short-lived disruptions there tend to move prices sharply. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said 17 million barrels of crude passed through the waterway on Monday, the highest volume since the conflict sharply reduced flows.

Still, shipping traffic remains volatile. Preliminary Kpler data showed only four commodity vessels transited the strait on Tuesday, compared with a 10-day average of about 13, underscoring how quickly conditions at the chokepoint can shift.

The market also received a bullish signal from U.S. inventories. U.S. commercial crude stocks fell by 4.5 million barrels last week, the first decline in five weeks, defying analysts' estimates for a small rise. Inventory draws can indicate tightening domestic supply, adding support to prices even when geopolitical risk premiums fade.

Product inventories offered a mixed picture. Gasoline stocks fell by 1.2 million barrels, while distillate inventories, including diesel and heating oil, rose by about 800,000 barrels.

Attention is also turning to OPEC+. The group is expected to leave its October oil output policy unchanged at a meeting on Sunday after completing the scheduled unwinding of a 1.65 million-barrel-per-day layer of cuts, part of its broader strategy of gradually restoring barrels held off the market in recent years. OPEC+ had previously raised September output quotas by 188,000 bpd. The group's spare capacity, concentrated largely in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, sits close to the Strait itself, a geographic overlap that traders monitor closely when regional tensions escalate.

Source: Investing.com