The administration’s loud noises and sudden movements over energy costs won’t convince what’s left of Iranian command and control to abandon their attacks.
When speaking extemporaneously about the course the war with Iran is taking, Donald Trump is as stalwart and resolute as he has been since the campaign began. On social media, however, the president sounds as excitable as ever.
In a missive posted to Truth Social on Thursday, the president accused his Israeli allies of having “violently lashed out” in executing air strikes on Iran’s South Pars natural gas field. The statement came as Iran targeted oil and gas facilities across the Gulf region.
Trump insists he “knew nothing about this particular attack,” although U.S. and Israeli officials have told reporters that Jerusalem’s target-selection process was coordinated with Washington. The president reportedly hopes that his statements pump the brakes on the escalating campaign of attacks on Gulf region energy facilities, including Iran’s.
“The president believes Iran got the message and is now against attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure,” the Wall Street Journal’s Alex Ward reported, citing the assessment of “U.S. officials.” That’s an odd thing to believe. Why would the Iranians interpret Trump’s rhetoric as anything other than a blink on his part — an expression of the extent to which he has reached his limits and is, effectively, deterred?
That’s not the only signal the administration is sending in that regard. The president’s subordinates waived sanctions on Russian oil exports in transit at the outset of the Iranian effort to close the Strait of Hormuz to hostile maritime traffic. That was almost certainly not part of the plan heading into this war. Likewise, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday entertained the prospect of removing sanctions on Iranian oil in transit to relieve some of the upward pressure on energy prices.
At one end of the executive branch, American war planners are busily drafting and executing strategies to throttle the revenues Iran generates from its energy exports — plans that could include an amphibious invasion of the Persian Gulf islands Tehran uses as transshipment hubs. At the other end, administration officials are thinking up ways in which the rest of the world could still benefit from Iran’s export capacity.
“I actually thought the numbers would be worse,” Trump told reporters on Thursday morning when asked about the rising cost of oil and gas. “I thought that it would go up more than it did.” That’s not hard to believe. In the last decade, the estimates of what an existential conflict with the Islamic Republic would do to energy prices were far more calamitous than what we’re seeing today. But that doesn’t render their current costs absorbable, and the polling reflects the public’s growing trepidation over what the war with Iran is doing to their finances.
All the loud noises and sudden movements from this administration over energy costs will not convince Iran’s assets in the field and what remains of its central command-and-control apparatus to abandon their attacks on Gulf region energy facilities. They will only embolden the Islamic Republic to keep going.