Don’t Blame Iran for High Oil Prices

Sure, events in the Middle East play a part. But there are more important factors much closer to home.

John F. Di Leo | March 13, 2026

Yes, crude oil prices are up, spiking at some points over $100 per barrel.  This is universally blamed on the war with Iran, and rightly so; that is the immediate cause. 

When the mullahs are overthrown, and Iran’s oil returns to the world market again, things will be infinitely better, but yes, for the time being, this long awaited and necessary intervention is causing a temporary price jump. 

There are a lot of things that cause spikes in the price of oil.  Anytime anything of note happens in the Middle East in particular, crude oil goes up in price, usually just for the duration of the crisis.  It is therefore reasonable to assume that when the crisis is over — in this case, when the mullahs are evicted from this world, and a transitional government is put in place — global oil prices will return to normal. 

But what is normal, and why does it matter? 

As the avian flu (and the government overreaction to it) hurt chicken production during the Biden-Harris years, prices of chicken and eggs skyrocketed.  They are only now returning to normal, after several years of huge peaks. 

As both federal and state government policy tampered with the cattle industry in recent years, squeezing them out of water rights and grazing rights, and as green energy policy has raised the costs of transportation, processing, warehousing, and refrigeration (beef is naturally incredibly sensitive to all of these), beef prices have gone up while the actual cattlemen’s share of the money has plummeted.  This has caused an opposite problem: Unlike the chicken and egg world, which can be quickly hurt and can quickly recover, the beef world, once hurt, takes decades to recover. 

When we look at prices and wonder, “Why has inflation been tamed in some areas and not in others?,” we must remember that every commodity is different, so they respond to different measures, even though when we get our grocery cart up to the cashier, every item seems like “just another SKU” to ring up. 

Similarly, with the price of oil, we tend to assume that a single major trigger is responsible for a price spike, and when that trigger goes away, we tend to think we don’t need to worry about it anymore.  Those commenting on oil nowadays only talk about the global oil price, as if that were the only thing affecting fuel prices. 

But there are also tons of other costs — often, perhaps, completely unnecessary costs — embedded in petroleum prices.  We should all spend more time thinking about those other costs and concentrate on what other policies our government may have chosen to pursue over the years that affect our price at the pump, often much more than the global commodity price of a barrel of crude oil. 

Just a few examples: 

Both our federal and state governments have put policies in place — especially but not entirely at the state EPA and federal EPA levels — that have made it virtually impossible to build a new refinery in the USA for half a century.  Our nation’s population has almost tripled since the last refinery was built.  A new one is finally coming (in Texas), but California is forcing three more to close this year, making the problem infinitely worse. 

The federal government — sometimes Congress, sometimes presidential administrations, sometimes both — has often either outright banned oil exploration or drilling or intentionally slow-walked permits, again and again, sometimes over huge areas like the ANWR and the Gulf of Mexico, sometimes over smaller regions, making oil companies just give up on the United States. 

The federal government dreamed up the crazy concept of summer and winter fuel blends, a concept that requires two changeouts per year that affect both the refineries and the gas stations, unnecessarily adding numerous costs to every step of the process from refining to storage to delivery. 

Some years ago, the Democrat party managed to convince its base that there’s something intrinsically dangerous about the drilling process known as fracking, so many states have made permits for that particular process, a method of making wells much more productive, especially difficult to get.  There’s no justification for the distinction at all from an environmental or legal perspective; the fracking opponents just wanted to reduce the amount of oil that wells can produce, to win dubious political points with their Luddite base. 

Oil has to get from the well to the refinery, and the gasoline and diesel then have to get from the refinery to the filling station.  Trucking is the most expensive way to transport it, trains are less expensive, and pipelines are the most inexpensive.  So what has the left — the opponents of progress — done, again and again?  Leftists constantly oppose pipeline construction projects, which over time makes fuel far more expensive than it needs to be (as well as adding to the congestion of our mile-long freight trains and our truck-clogged highways). 

We cannot leave this topic without looking at the massive variety in fuel pricing from state to state.  At this writing, the national average for regular unleaded gasoline is about $3.58/gallon.  There will naturally be some variance from city to suburb to rural areas, due to property value differences and similar issues.  But that’s not enough to explain why California’s average that same day is $5.34/gallon, Florida’s is $3.70/gallon, and Kansas’s price is just $3.00/gallon.  All for the same product.  The simple fact is that many states have loaded up their fuel pumps with local, county, and especially state taxes, inflating the cost of fuel far more than any spike in the global “crude price per barrel” could ever cause. 

There’s more.  The list of ways in which government at every level interferes with the market is almost infinite.  But this is enough to make the point. 

Speaking for myself, as a writer in the Midwest, I drive mostly between Illinois and Wisconsin, where the difference in fuel averages is usually about fifty cents per gallon.  The spike in crude oil prices caused by this war doesn’t equal the tax-caused differences between Illinois and Wisconsin prices, and it can’t hold a candle to the differential with prices on the west coast, where outrageous state taxes make their gas cost almost twice as much as in the heartland. 

Stepping back from the details for a moment, and looking at the big picture again, we see that, yes, world events do have an effect on fuel pricing in the USA, but there are so many other things that have an effect, too — things of our own choosing, things that we could control if we wanted to. 

We need more refineries.  We need lower taxes.  We need faster permitting.  We need less demonization of necessary industries.  We need fewer Luddites in positions of power. 

Should we be concerned about overseas issues — such as wars and blockades — and their effect on the domestic economy?  Certainly.  It’s all connected; these things do matter.  But we should never forget that — as in most things — there's a lot more we could do at home to make things better, if we wanted to. 

It’s a political choice.  When we walk into the voting booth, do we vote for the party that’s trying to make things better, or do we keep on voting for the party that never stops making things worse?  

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer, consultant and public speaker. Read his book on the surprisingly numerous varieties of vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his biting political satires on the Biden-Harris years (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his collection of essays on public policy in the 2020s, Current Events and the Issues of Our Age, all available in eBook or paperback, exclusively on Amazon. 

Image via Public Domain Pictures.

SUPPORT AMERICAN THINKER

Now more than ever, the ability to speak our minds is crucial to the republic we cherish. If what you see on American Thinker resonates with you, please consider supporting our work with a donation of as much or as little as you can give. Every dollar contributed helps us pay our staff and keep our ideas heard and our voices strong. Thank you.

© American Thinker