In early April, Trump promised to turn Iran’s power plants and bridges to rubble if Tehran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Eight weeks later, he signed a deal that handed Iran its oil revenue, sanctions relief, and a reconstruction plan.

The distance between that threat and that deal is the most revealing fact of the war. Trump had the firepower to wreck Iran’s energy system and the rhetoric to promise it. He held back, because the one target he could not afford to hit was the price of American gasoline. A war that looked like a contest between Washington and Tehran was governed, at its decisive moments, by a calendar that runs to November.

Striking Iran carried a domestic price, and Americans paid it at the pump. When the joint US-Israeli campaign opened on February 28, and Iran answered by choking the Strait of Hormuz, the market reacted faster than in almost any modern conflict. Brent crude ran from about $72 before the war to near $120 at its peak, a 51% jump in March alone, then spiked close to $126 at the end of April. The IEA called it the largest supply disruption in the history of the oil market.

The shock reached voters within weeks. The AAA national average for gasoline climbed from about $2.98 before the war to a peak near $4.55 in May, the first time it had crossed $4 since 2022, with........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)