Keeping gas prices low is now the United States’ “goal No. 1” in the Iran war, Vice President JD Vance has said, as Washington threatened an indefinite naval blockade and signaled it would soon intensify economic pressure on Tehran.
The comments appeared to be the latest shift in the public rationale for the conflict, with Vance ranking Iran’s nuclear ambitions second.
The vice president’s remarks came as the Trump administration embraced a long-term effort to inflict more damage on the Islamic Republic, despite growing signs of strain on American forces and domestic pressure ahead of the midterm elections.
President Donald Trump has suggested a shift away from military force in favor of “low-keying it” with economic pressure. That followed a deadly cycle of tit-for-tat exchanges that produced no clear resolution and depleted U.S. reserves of missile interceptors.
Oil and gas prices spiked worldwide after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Markets have since calmed since that early peak, but prices are still significantly higher than before the conflict and rose again early Friday after the most recent remarks from Vance and others.
“I know that oil is down today and it’s way down from the highs in the early days of the conflict,” Vance told Fox News on Thursday, before the latest uptick. “That’s goal No. 1 — keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over our country.”
He added that “obviously goal No. 2 is ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.” Tehran insists it has no desire to develop one.
Trump and his team have offered various reasons for conflict with Iran, initially saying they wanted to support mass anti-government protests, before prioritizing a desire to defang Iran’s nuclear program and even topple the regime.
Oil and gas was flowing relatively freely worldwide before the U.S.-Israeli attack, sparking a conflict that has increasingly centered on the tussle for control of the Strait of Hormuz — a waterway through which some 20% of the world’s energy supplies traveled prior to the war.
During a speech on New York’s Long Island on Friday, the president alluded to a plan to declare the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory.
“After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated — pretty soon, I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump told a crowd of law enforcement officers. “Essentially, that’s what it is. We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to.”
Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. had “total control” over the strait and described the American blockade of Iranian ports as a “wall of steel.”
But traffic through the key trade route remains a trickle of the 130-140 vessels that typically traversed during peacetime. Though the U.S. is blockading Iranian ports, Iran continues to fire on ships attempting to transit.
Two tankers affiliated with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. were attacked while trying to cross the Strait on Thursday, the United Arab Emirates Foreign Ministry said in a statement, blaming Iran for the assault.
The vessels suffered minor damage and there were no reported injuries, according to the UAE and the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center. The UKMTO said the vessels were hit by aerial drones.
Tehran says the key trade route will not reopen until its demands are met.
Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari said Thursday that “no vessel can safely transit the Strait of Hormuz without Iran’s authorization and supervision,” according to the state-controlled IRIB news agency. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi earlier in the day accused the U.S. of “intelligence failures” and making a “miscalculation” over Hormuz.
The U.S. has nonetheless remained bullish.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Thursday that the U.S. could keep up its naval blockade on Iran “indefinitely” because “we’ll rotate ships in and out, as we have, and we’ll continue to” do.
That comment followed news that the USS George Washington is now sailing to the Middle East and is expected to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, which has been at sea for some 250 days and not had a port call for more than 200. Families of some of the 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard the Lincoln describe low morale and deteriorating conditions.
The Trump administration seems to be doubling down on the new strategy of economic pressure.
“Watch this space for more announcements coming next week,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant told Newsmax on Thursday. “We are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country.”
He did not give details about what these measures might be. Trump has often lobbed verbal threats toward Tehran only to later back down, citing an imminent diplomatic breakthrough that has so far failed to materialize.
Meanwhile, the Hormuz impasse has shocked the world economy, not just limiting supplies of oil and gas, but also vital products such as fertilizer.
The international oil benchmark of Brent Crude sits just above $87 dollars a barrel, 45% higher than it was in January. The average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. is now higher than $4; before the conflict it was lower than $3.
