Baltimore Many Americans may not have skin in the war with Iran in the way of earlier conflicts during the last one-hundred years, but the distance from the war may be coming home anyway. A longtime friend and comrade reported gassing up his car in North Carolina yesterday, while trying to get ahead of the rising prices. The price jumped ten cents, while he was pumping!
He’s not alone of course. In the way the nightly news used to report daily on the hostages from the US Embassy in Tehran during Carter’s administration, now there’s a daily report on rising gas prices. Gas was up 10% right after the first missiles landed. Prices were up 14% by Sunday. On Monday morning, as markets, opened the price was up 17% in the US.
The price by the barrel of Brent Crude, the oil standard measure, is also soaring. Overnight, during the weekend, a week into the war, prices on the spot market briefly hit $120 a barrel. By Monday morning, the price was lower, in the $115 per barrel range. We haven’t hit those numbers since the beginning of the pandemic. The Group of Seven is convening to discuss releasing petroleum reserves. Major oil companies are going to make out like bandits with $100 oil and rising prices. Early reports indicated no increase in production as the majors adopt a wait-and-see on the likely duration of the war and how long the Strait of Hormuz might be closed to traffic. Trump’s Transportation head reported that he believed it would be open soon, but that was likely aspirational, rather than realistic.
All well and dandy, but even as Trump says that the rising price of gas is no big deal, he may be in denial when Americans are seeing price increases daily and whenever they go to fill ‘er up. They are going to notice. They are talking to each other. There’s no mystery or conspiracy talk about why the prices are going up. Everyone will be clear this is due to Trump’s War.
Worse, the Iranians still seem unready to cooperate with Trump’s loud talk, big stick bullying, even while Israel and the US are bombing the stuffings out of them. Trump’s call for “unconditional surrender” seems to have fallen on deaf ears so far. Trump demanding a say in choosing the new leader in Iran was ignored, as the hardline son of the recently killed ayatollah was named, partially because of his close ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
These are not signs that this will all be over soon. Other naysayers are throwing shade on the notion that Iran can be brought to heel solely by airpower without boots on the ground, and here’s hoping that at least is still a bridge too far for Trump to cross.
Bottom line: this is a bloody mess; Americans know it and are being reminded at the gas pump and can’t avoid the daily news, even as the spin doctors work the refs, Trump is going to find out quickly the truth of the old adage that you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people any of the time.