Iran’s attack on two oil tankers and a refinery Thursday thrust the conflict into a deepening phase with stark implications for President Donald Trump’s standing at home as the risk of rising energy prices intensifies.
With images of the damaged ships in vulnerable sea lanes, crude prices climbed to their highest levels since the United States and Israel initiated the war seven days ago. At home, gasoline prices rose to $3.26 on average, the highest level recorded in both of Trump’s presidencies.
Iran’s move Thursday to hit energy targets, including an oil refinery in Bahrain, threatens to tip the war into a new phase in which vulnerable oil and gas sites are increasingly in the crosshairs, with economic ramifications worldwide, according to political observers.
The potential for spiraling attacks by Iran on refineries, LNG hubs and tankers is making some Trump allies nervous.
“That’s the thing about war, which is why you don’t usually start one sort of whimsically, because you never really know what the hell’s going to happen,” said a former Trump energy adviser who’s in contact with the White House and was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. “If you’re not worried, you aren’t paying attention, because once you start firing rockets at people, there’s no telling what’s going to happen.”
The attacks came as the White House urgently searched for ways to soothe concerns in the U.S. about rising energy prices, with chief of staff Susie Wiles pressuring Cabinet officials and industry leaders for solutions. The political risks to Trump and the Republican Party are punctuated by polling that shows large majorities of the public opposing the war against Iran ahead of midterm elections that promise to feature energy prices as a flashpoint.
“The mother of all nightmare scenarios for the global oil market was this,” said Jason Bordoff, a top energy adviser in the Obama White House, referring to expanding attacks on infrastructure.
Trump appears unconcerned about the war’s potential blowback. He told POLITICO in an interview Thursday that there is no risk of high gas prices hurting Republicans in the November elections.
“People are loving what’s happening,” Trump said. “We’re taking out a threat to the United States of America, major threat … and doing it like nobody’s ever seen before.”
But the political risks were evident at gas pumps, where the average U.S. price of fuel was nearly 30 cents higher Thursday than when Trump gave his State of the Union address 10 days ago — and touted his administration for low prices.
Increased attacks on energy infrastructure in the Middle East could have prolonged economic consequences that ripple across the globe.
Bordoff, the former Obama adviser, said spiraling attacks on oil and gas facilities promise to also hurt the attacker, who could suffer from their own aggression because global oil markets are so entwined.
It’s “bad for everyone,” said Bordoff, a founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
“The global oil market has a too big to fail element to it, meaning there’s a mutually assured destruction risk with targeting energy infrastructure,” he said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda would mitigate oil price spikes.
“Rest assured — President Trump’s entire energy team, from the White House to the National Energy Dominance Council to Secretaries [Chris] Wright and [Scott] Bessent, have been planning for this, and they are all over it!” she wrote on X, referring to the Energy and Treasury secretaries.
For now, Republicans are feeling “trepidation not frustration” with the way Trump has handled the Iranian conflict, said Doug Heye, a Republican consultant and former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. It’s too early to predict how the president’s actions in March will affect the November election, he added, but Trump has a long history of taking risks that pay off for him and the Republican Party.
“He’s the YOLO president,” Heye said, referring to the saying “You Only Live Once.” “He’s going for it, he’s going for everything, and you can’t put him in the same box that you would put any other second term president in.”
The Middle East produces about a third of the world’s oil and holds half of its proven reserves, according to the International Energy Agency. Iran has already rained missiles and drones down on many of its neighbors, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
On Thursday, Iran attacked an oil refinery in Bahrain and two oil tankers — one in the Strait of Hormuz and one off the coast of Kuwait. Earlier in the week, a major port in Oman was damaged by a drone strike, and the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility in Qatar and an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia were struck by falling debris from destroyed drones.
Current energy disruptions signal that “triple-digit oil prices [could] become a very real possibility” in the coming days or weeks, Aditya Saraswat, an analyst at Rystad Energy, wrote in a note Thursday.
“We could begin to see precautionary shutdowns across the region, which would have serious implications for global oil markets,” he wrote. “If disruptions start in Iraq, the risk is that they spread to other key producers such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar.”
The energy infrastructure of Iran, which is among the top 10 oil-producing countries in the world, is perhaps more vulnerable than facilities across the region.
About 90 percent of its exported oil travels through a terminal on Kharg Island, a 5-mile strip of land in the Persian Gulf.
A strike there could unleash a wave of reprisals, said the former Trump energy adviser.
“It’s another element of uncertainty,” the adviser said.
