Trump Isn’t ‘Looking for Long Term’ in Iran

The United States has resumed bombing Iran, the U.S. military’s regional command announced on Wednesday. The United States also bombed more than 80 sites on Tuesday, including radar and air defense facilities, but the new set of targets is more expansive.

President Trump declared on Wednesday that the ceasefire between the two countries is dead. Yet he also suggested that an extended war isn’t on the table. “We’re not looking for long term,” he said at the NATO Summit in Turkey. “Anything that happens is going to be over very quickly … and will only make it safer, including for oil.”

Such a statement surely reflects the president’s awareness that his war isn’t very popular among Americans. But does he have any leverage anymore over how long the war lasts? When Trump okayed the interim Iran ceasefire in June, he said that Iran would not toll oil and gas tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Since then, Iran and Oman have started setting up the infrastructure to do just that. That discrepancy may have been the ceasefire’s doom: The truce broke down after Iran fired missiles at oil and natural gas tankers that were allegedly not using its approved route through the strait. (Iran has said that its preferred route through the waterway is the “only safe passage.”)

American officials have said that restoring freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz is one of their goals in ending — and now, resuming — the war. But the strait was open to all before the war began; Iran only shuttered it after the United States and Israel began bombing in February. Yet now that Iran has learned how easily it can close the strait and keep it closed, it has a new weapon to wield over the American and European economies.

And what of the country’s nuclear program? Back in March, it allegedly didn’t play into the calculus, partly because President Trump claimed the U.S. had destroyed the program in 2025. Instead, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the president had no choice but to enter the new conflict because Israel was already going to bomb Iran, and since the Islamic Republic would respond by targeting American bases in the Middle East, the United States might as well strike first. A day later, President Trump changed the story, saying that Iran was already planning to bomb U.S. military bases, which forced pre-emptive action on America and Israel’s part.

Yet by April 1, the president had justified the war to the American people by citing Iran’s nuclear program more than 20 times. “For years, everyone has said that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. But in the end, those are just words, if you’re not willing to take action when the time comes,” he said. The new conflict had obliterated the country’s navy, defense industrial base, and ability to produce missiles, he said. Yet Iran — partly thanks to its small, cheap drones — was able to keep the strait closed for another two months.

What does all of this mean for energy and decarbonization? More expensive fossil fuels. The global crude benchmark Brent surged to $80 a barrel today, while West Texas Intermediate surpassed $74, bringing both to roughly the same level as when the June ceasefire was first announced. Researchers at Brown University estimate that Americans have paid $60 billion — or roughly $500 per household — more for gasoline and diesel than they would have had the conflict never happened.

If this stage of the war doesn’t go “long term,” as Trump hopes, then at least the world will have a little more oil than anticipated to work with, as stockpiles have risen in recent days. But a new and extended phase of the war threatens a return to the prices seen earlier in the spring — or prices that go even higher, should China decline to tap its reserves this time. One potential early pain point is diesel, which is already expensive because of Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries. Costlier fuel will keep encouraging more EV sales in Europe, Asia, and even the United States; high diesel prices in particular will provide a tailwind to the shockingly rapid electrification of China’s trucking sector.

Of course, the war will bring much more besides — more squandered time, more military spending, more human misery. It is the first that Trump might regret most. A conflict the White House joined without much public debate — and once forecast would last “four to six weeks” — now looks likely to eat much of his second term.