LONDON — Spot gold surged through $3,400 an ounce for the first time on record and European equity benchmarks fell more than 2 percent at Monday's open as investors extended a global flight to safety triggered by a weekend of escalating strikes in the Iran war, with Wall Street futures pointing to a sharply weaker U.S. cash session ahead of OPEC+ consultations beginning Tuesday in Vienna.

The pan-European STOXX 600 dropped 2.4 percent in the first hour of trading, with Germany's DAX off 2.7 percent, France's CAC 40 down 2.5 percent and London's FTSE 100 lower by 1.9 percent, cushioned modestly by gains in BP, Shell and TotalEnergies. Bourses in Madrid, Milan and Amsterdam each shed more than 2 percent. The selling followed a brutal Asian session in which Japan's Nikkei 225 closed 3.4 percent lower and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index gave up 2.8 percent.

Gold for immediate delivery traded as high as $3,418.60 in London before paring gains to $3,402.10 by midmorning, an intraday record that takes the metal's advance since the conflict began in late February to roughly 19 percent. Silver rose 3.1 percent to $42.80 an ounce. Platinum and palladium also climbed, lifted by haven flows and by the same supply-chain anxieties weighing on industrial commodities.

"Every desk we speak to is being asked the same question this morning, which is whether $3,500 gold is a matter of weeks or days," said Marta Liewen, head of metals strategy at Hauck Aufhauser Lampe in Frankfurt. "The honest answer is that the move is no longer being driven by retail or by central-bank accumulation alone. It is institutional risk parity portfolios rebalancing into a war that the market increasingly believes will last into the summer."

Brent crude for May delivery traded at $126.10 a barrel in early London dealing, up 65 cents on the session and within striking distance of Sunday's intraday peak of $126.40. West Texas Intermediate held above $122. Traders said positioning remained skewed toward further gains, with open interest in $135-strike Brent call options for June expiry rising sharply over the weekend, according to data from the Intercontinental Exchange.

The dollar strengthened against most major currencies except the Japanese yen and Swiss franc, both of which extended gains as classic refuge plays. The DXY dollar index climbed 0.4 percent to 105.20, its highest level in three months. The euro slipped to $1.0612 from $1.0688 at Friday's New York close, weighed down by the eurozone's exposure to imported energy and by fresh concerns that the European Central Bank would now be unable to deliver the rate cuts markets had penciled in for the second quarter.

Sovereign bond markets reflected the same risk-off impulse. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell another four basis points to 3.88 percent, German Bund yields slipped to 2.34 percent and U.K. gilts to 4.07 percent. Wall Street futures pointed to a difficult open: S&P 500 e-minis were down 1.6 percent, Nasdaq 100 contracts off 2.1 percent and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lower by 1.3 percent. If those losses are matched at the cash open, the S&P 500 would extend its decline since the war began to roughly 5.9 percent, a level strategists said would test technical support near the index's 200-day moving average.

"We have moved from a market that was pricing a contained, weeks-long conflict to one that is now pricing an open-ended regional war with global supply consequences," said Devon Hartshorn, chief U.S. equity strategist at Pemberton Garrett in New York. "Until OPEC+ produces a credible barrel response and Islamabad produces a credible diplomatic one, the path of least resistance for equities remains lower."

The 23-nation OPEC+ alliance is scheduled to begin formal pre-meeting consultations in Vienna on Tuesday, with energy ministers expected to ratify a coordinated production response on Wednesday. Saudi Arabia's energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, and the United Arab Emirates' Suhail al-Mazrouei arrived in the Austrian capital on Sunday evening. Two delegates familiar with the choreography, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were private, said the leading proposal under discussion would lift group output by between 1.2 million and 1.6 million barrels a day, drawing primarily on Saudi, Emirati and Kuwaiti spare capacity.

Russia, the alliance's second-largest producer and a longstanding partner of Tehran, was described by one delegate as "resistant but not obstructive." The International Energy Agency in Paris reiterated Monday that it stood ready to coordinate a strategic-reserve release if Vienna failed to deliver. "We have the tools, we have the barrels and we have the alignment among member governments to act swiftly," said Camille Devereux, an IEA spokeswoman, in a written statement.

Equity-sector performance reflected the war premium being repriced across global assets. Defense contractors led European gauges higher, with Germany's Rheinmetall up 4.2 percent and Britain's BAE Systems climbing 2.6 percent. Airlines, autos and luxury goods were among the day's worst performers; Lufthansa fell 5.3 percent and LVMH 3.1 percent. War-risk insurance premiums for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz reached 0.85 percent of hull value, according to a Lloyd's of London broker, more than ten times their pre-conflict levels.

"The market is no longer pricing oil," said Yusuf Demiroglu, a senior commodities strategist at Akbank in Istanbul. "It is pricing the chokepoint. And as long as Hormuz remains a live security question, the premium is structural, not transient."

Traders said attention through the U.S. session would focus on whether crude could decisively break above $127 a barrel, a level several technical desks have flagged as the gateway to a test of $135. Officials in Vienna said a joint OPEC+ communique was likely to be issued no earlier than Wednesday evening Central European Time, with intermediate signals possible from individual ministers as consultations progressed.