Trump’s energy policy benefits Iran and Russia, not America

President Trump’s irrational love affair with fossil fuels is doing more than polluting our environment and accelerating climate change. It is benefiting Iran and Russia, harming global security, and raising energy prices as the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran rages.

While America is now largely self-sufficient in oil and natural gas production — exporting more of the fuels than we import — prices of the fuels are set globally. That means Americans are not exempt from rising energy prices, as everyone who has visited a gas station lately knows.

Unfortunately, the war Trump and Israel launched against Iran on Feb. 28 is dramatically raising the prices people around the world are paying for the gasoline, diesel, home heating oil, natural gas and electricity we need to fuel our vehicles, power our homes and businesses, grow and harvest our food, and manufacture products.

Whether you think the war with Iran is a major blunder or a necessary action (as Trump claims), it is indisputable that the global dependence on oil and natural gas — produced in large quantities by Iran, the nearby Gulf Arab states and Russia — leaves the world dangerously vulnerable to supply disruptions from these countries.

We see this today, as Iran has halted most shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil consumption and shipments of liquefied natural gas travel.

Iran’s attacks on neighboring Arab states and continuing U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have sharply curtailed Middle East oil and natural gas exports. Disruptions could get much worse if attacks on the oil and natural gas infrastructure on both sides of the conflict continue and the Strait of........

© The Hill