Stop Blaming Trump for Iran’s War on the Oil Supply
There is something intellectually dishonest about looking at Americans’ rising gasoline prices and simply declaring, “This is all Trump’s fault.”
Because it isn’t that simple.
The United States is engaged in a confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime that has spent decades sponsoring terrorism, threatening its neighbors, developing weapons, supporting militant proxies and defying international demands. The conflict did not begin with Donald Trump. It is the latest chapter in a confrontation that has been going on since the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
What President Trump has done is attempt to bring that long-running problem to a conclusion.
And Iran’s response has been entirely consistent with the behavior of the regime for decades: retaliation, threats, terrorism, proxy warfare and disruption of international commerce.
The Strait of Hormuz is now the most obvious example.
Iran knows that Hormuz is one of the world’s great energy chokepoints. Before the war, roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply passed through the strait. When shipping is threatened, the consequences are felt around the globe.
And Iran has been willing to exploit that vulnerability.
The result is not theoretical. Reuters reports that shipping traffic through Hormuz has collapsed to a tiny fraction of its prewar level, with only seven vessel transits recorded on September 10. The reduction in shipping has coincided with a sharp rise in oil prices, with Brent crude moving above $100 a barrel.
That is how Americans end up paying more at the pump.
So let’s follow the chain of causation.
Iran attacks shipping.
Iran threatens the Strait of Hormuz.
Oil shipments are disrupted.
Global oil supplies become less certain.
The price of crude rises.
Refined fuel becomes more expensive.
Americans pay more for gasoline and diesel.
That is the mechanism.
You can debate whether President Trump should have pursued military action. You can debate whether the United States should have negotiated longer. You can debate the wisdom of the blockade or any particular military operation. You can even question the timing (before the mid-terms).
Those are legitimate questions.
But they are different from claiming that Donald Trump personally caused the gasoline-price increase.
Iran is an active participant in the chain of events producing the energy problem.
Indeed, Reuters reported this week that Iran attacked ten vessels near the Strait of Hormuz after the United States destroyed five Iranian oil tankers. The resulting escalation drove Brent crude above $100 a barrel and sharply reduced oil flowing through the strait.
That isn’t Donald Trump “causing gas prices.”
That is an international war disrupting a critical global energy corridor.
And there is a larger historical point that Americans ought to remember.
The Iranian regime has been behaving this way for nearly half a century.
Since 1979, the Islamic Republic has repeatedly demonstrated that when confronted with pressure, it does not necessarily respond by becoming a responsible member of the international community. It has used hostage-taking, terrorism, proxy militias, missile development, nuclear brinkmanship and threats against international shipping as instruments of state power.
The current crisis is therefore not some random event that appeared out of nowhere during Trump’s presidency.
It is the latest confrontation with a regime that has been a persistent source of instability since the Iranian Revolution.
The Trump administration has explicitly framed its campaign around dismantling Iran’s military capabilities, preventing it from obtaining nuclear weapons and cutting its ability to support terrorist proxies.
Whatever one’s opinion of that strategy, it is important to understand what Iran is doing in response.
Iran is not simply sitting passively while America acts.
It is fighting back.
And one of the most effective weapons available to Tehran is economic disruption.
Iran cannot defeat the United States militarily in a conventional war. But it can threaten shipping. It can attack tankers. It can threaten energy infrastructure. It can create uncertainty in the oil market.
And uncertainty itself has a price.
That is why the simplistic political argument—“Gas prices are going up, therefore Trump is to blame”—doesn’t withstand serious examination.
It is equivalent to blaming a police officer for the damages to a car when a criminal crashes it while fleeing. The criminal crashed the car because the officer attempted to arrest the criminal. The officer may have made decisions that can be legitimately debated. But in the end the criminal is still responsible for crashing the car.
Likewise, Americans can debate President Trump’s decisions without pretending that Iran has no agency of its own.
Iran chose to attack shipping.
Iran chose to threaten international commerce.
Iran chose to use the Strait of Hormuz as leverage.
And Iran is continuing to escalate rather than simply accepting the consequences of its own behavior.
The White House has described the broader American strategy as an attempt to isolate the Iranian regime economically and prevent it from continuing to threaten international security.
Whether that strategy ultimately succeeds is something history will judge.
But one thing should not be confused:
The fact that Americans are suffering economically from a war does not automatically mean that the American president caused the economic pain.
Sometimes a president inherits a problem that has been festering for decades.
Sometimes confronting that problem is expensive.
And sometimes the adversary deliberately makes the price even higher because it hopes Americans will become impatient and turn against their own government.
That may be precisely the calculation Tehran is making.
If Iran can turn an American family’s trip to the gas station into anger at the White House, then Tehran has discovered a remarkably cheap weapon: American political division. And of course they have an ally in the American Democratic party which takes every opportunity to foment hatred toward Trump.
Americans should be careful not to fall for this.
We can argue about Donald Trump.
We can criticize him when criticism is warranted.
We can debate his military decisions.
But we should also be capable of identifying the enemy’s actions without blaming our own country for them.
The Iranian regime has spent nearly fifty years demonstrating what happens when a government believes it can threaten the civilized world without consequences.
President Trump has chosen confrontation rather than endless accommodation.
Now Iran is fighting back.
And if Iran deliberately disrupts the world’s oil supply in an attempt to retaliate, the responsibility for that disruption belongs first and foremost to the government doing the disrupting—not to the Americans who are trying to stop it.
The answer to an aggressor creating chaos is not to pretend the aggressor isn’t responsible.
It is to understand what is actually happening.
Iran is creating the energy crisis. America is responding to it.
Those are not the same thing.
