President Donald Trump’s time frame to end his war in Iran keeps stretching longer, with the Iranian government putting up more of a fight than his administration expected.
Axios reported on Friday that the Trump administration thinks it needs “about a month” to force Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the closure of which is choking off a significant portion of the global oil supply and causing the price of gasoline in the U.S. to skyrocket.
The plan, per Axios, is for the U.S. military to occupy Iran's Kharg Island—which processes the vast majority of Iran's oil—and leverage that to get Iranian leaders to open the strait.
"We need about a month to weaken the Iranians more with strikes, take the island and then get them by the balls and use it for negotiations," an unnamed source close to the White House told Axios.
Of course, that plan would require American boots on the ground, risking yet more lives in a war that Trump did not seek congressional approval for.
It’s also longer than the timeline of “four to five weeks” that Trump gave when he first launched the ill-conceived war roughly three weeks ago. And that assumes both that the strategy to occupy Kharg Island goes exactly to plan, and that Iran agrees to reopen the strait—none of which is guaranteed.
Meanwhile, each day the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, the price of oil rises as global supply dips. That means gasoline prices in the United States are expected to climb even higher.
“The national average price of gasoline stands at $3.93/gal, now up 99c/gal from a month ago, with diesel at $5.16/gal, up $1.47/gal from a month ago,” Patrick De Haan, an oil and gas expert with GasBuddy, wrote in a post on X. “Combining spending on gasoline and diesel, Americans are paying ~$575 million more every day compared to a month ago.”
Worse for Trump now is that Israel—his primary ally in his war on Iran—seemingly doesn't care about reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and plans to keep attacking Iran against Trump's warnings, The New York Times reported Friday. If Israel continues to provoke Iran with attacks, it could lead Iran to carry out more retaliatory strikes on Middle Eastern oil and gas infrastructure, risking a global economic recession.
And that is sure to make what is Trump’s unpopular war even less popular.
A new poll released Friday from Reuters/Ipsos finds that just 37% of Americans support the war. And a shockingly low 7% say they would support a large-scale invasion of Iran.
What’s more, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll from Wednesday found that 80% of Americans already think gas prices are too high, with 60% of those people saying Trump is mostly to blame for that fact.
If gas prices continue to rise, as is expected, those numbers could get even worse.
Ultimately, war in Iran has turned into a predictable mess. And each day that ticks by without an end to the conflict brings the economy further to the brink of disaster.
This is what happens when Americans elect a madman president.
Here’s the reality:
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