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Donald Trump looks like he’s getting ready to just walk away.
The president is telling US allies — who didn’t join his war in Iran because they got no advance notice, didn’t want it and thought it infringed international law — that they’ll be stuck with the consequences.
“Go get your own oil,” he wrote on Truth Social Tuesday, shortly before sources told CNN that the administration can’t promise to restore free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz before declaring mission accomplished.
The president later predicted the war will be “finished” within two to three weeks. “What happens in the Strait, we’re going to have nothing do with,” he told reporters in the Oval Office
Iran has used the choke point at the mouth of the Persian Gulf to halt crucial oil supplies and to hold the global economy hostage. If the war ends with it in control of the critical waterway, it will chalk up a strategic victory.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks to members of the media during a press briefing at the Pentagon on Tuesday, March 31. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Amid fresh signs Trump wants the war over, officials seem to be shaping rhetorical cover for him to end it without fixing the aftermath. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday claimed the US had achieved “regime change” in Iran — even though the country is still ruled by repressive Islamic radicals who despise the US.
The latest administration attempts to redefine success reflect unpalatable choices facing Trump more than a month into the war and the growing pressure of a four-to-six-week deadline officials set for its duration. They follow assertions by the president that “productive” talks are taking place with Iran — although officials in Tehran deny this is the case and there’s no public evidence of diplomatic progress.
Ending the war with Iran controlling the strait would be seen internationally as a strategic defeat for the United States. Iran would certainly claim victory and might consider it had reestablished a deterrent to future attacks. And it would likely try to monetize its new position by imposing tolls for tankers transiting the route. This would provide revenues for rebuilding military, missile and even nuclear programs smashed in US and Israeli air attacks.
All this would challenge Trump’s skill at spinning almost anything into a victory. But it might still be a preferable endgame for the president because any attempt to reopen the strait by force would risk heavy US casualties and prolong the war in a way that would further undermine his eroded political authority at home.
Trump can’t escape the consequences of his decisions
Gas prices soar past $4.50 per gallon as seen at a Circle K, on Friday, March 20, in Key West, Floriday.
Gas prices soar past $4.50 per gallon as seen at a Circle K, on Friday, March 20, in Key West, Floriday. Jen Golbeck/SOPA Images/Sipa USA/AP
Walking away might leave turmoil. But it would be consistent with Trump’s methodology, which in practice has been more effective in destroying status quos than building new systems. It would also extend the America First principle that the country should act at all times within the confines of its exclusive national interests. And it would indulge Trump’s anger at NATO allies he regards as leeching off American security guarantees.
But America doesn’t exist in a vacuum defined by Trump’s rhetoric. He’d struggle to outrun the economic and political reverberations of keeping the strait under the control of a reinvigorated Iran. Trump may be able to create political spin to explain his exit — but the markets are unlikely to be as easy to convince.
“Even though the united States is the world’s leading oil producer, that doesn’t insulate US consumers from oil prices because oil prices are global,” Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East studies program at the Defense Priorities think tank, told Zain Asher on CNN International on Tuesday. “And so everybody in the United States and everybody in the world is affected by this supply shock.”
That economic blow threatens to set off a global recession that would crash onto US shores — possibly months before the midterm elections, in which Democrats hope to score a big win that will help them rein in Trump’s second-term power.
More broadly, the fallout of the Iran war now threatens another consequence: an even deeper fracture in the transatlantic alliance. This would only underscore the need for European allies — and those Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney calls “middle powers” — to invest more in their own militaries with the understanding that America’s post-World War II security umbrella has become unreliable.
Warning bells reverberated throughout Europe when Secretary of State Marco Rubio, one of the most pro-NATO members of Trump’s inner circle, said on Al Jazeera this week that US allies’ response to the war was “very disappointing” — and hinted Trump would “reexamine” US commitments to them when it ends.
How Europe might pay the price
Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends a meeting to discuss the US-Israeli conflict with Iran and the impact on the Strait of Hormuz, in London, on Monday, March 30.
Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends a meeting to discuss the US-Israeli conflict with Iran and the impact on the Strait of Hormuz, in London, on Monday, March 30. Jaimi Joy/Reuters
Allied leaders are learning in the unpredictable age of Trump that they can no longer rely on US security guarantees since an American president appears close to making them conditional on blanket support for his actions.
Some, like Britain, initially withheld permission for the US to use air bases for offensive missions in Iran. Others, like Spain, went much further. As a result, Trump lambasted the “special relationship” with London and threatened to cut off all trade with Madrid.
But Trump put those leaders in an impossible position. His year of berating allies, including his demands that Denmark hand over Greenland; tariff assaults; and disdain for the sacrifices of America’s friends in post-9/11 wars meant they had little room to both help him and save their own political careers.
But staying out of the war won’t spare them from paying its costs.
High energy prices and rising inflation threaten to crush fragile economies and cause political blowback among electorates to already-weak centrist governments in Europe. There’s talk of rationing gasoline and diesel already in some EU nations. And there are fears on the continent that a collapse of central government authority in Tehran could trigger yet another mass refugee exodus towards its borders and test fiscal and cultural fault lines.
And it’s not credible that these countries could simply — in Trump’s words — go get their own oil. Slimmed-down European militaries have been exposed by the war. It took several weeks for Britain’s Royal Navy to get an anti-missile destroyer stationed off Cyprus to protect UK assets. France managed to dispatch an aircraft carrier battle group to look after its interests and those of Middle East allies. But without the support of the US, there’s no chance NATO powers could open the strait and keep it open. Even the mighty US Navy currently considers it too dangerous to venture in range of Iranian drones and missiles.
As always with Trump, it’s wise not to take everything he says at face value. Indications the US may walk away from the war came a day after he warned that he’d obliterate Iranian electrical plants and even desalination facilities in a violent escalation of the war if Tehran failed to satisfy his demands for peace.
Trump’s public venting is sometimes a ruse to force the hands of weaker counterparts. Rubio hinted that this might be the case when he said on Friday that “countries in Asia and all over the world have a lot at stake and should contribute greatly” to an effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
There may be no clear off-ramp for Iran and the US — but maybe there’s one for US allies in their showdown with Trump. Europe does have the capacity to be useful. Some countries have minesweeping capabilities that the US lacks. France has said it would be willing to join an international mission with other navies to protect shipping through the strait — but only after fighting stops.
“I think they’re still working to prevent these differences with the United States on Iran from causing a permanent rupture to the transatlantic relationship,” Stephen Flanagan, a former senior director for defense policy and strategy at the National Security Council, said at a Middle East Institute briefing Tuesday. “But this has become difficult every day in the face of Trump’s withering criticisms of how the Europeans have responded so far.”
The US seems to want more.
“(Trump is) pointing out this is an international waterway that we use less than most; in fact, dramatically less than most. So the world ought pay attention and be prepared to stand up,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday.
But there’s no appetite in Europe for being dragged into yet another American war in the Middle East with what critics regard as a questionable rationale and no path to a better situation after the fighting.
“What does (…) Donald Trump expect a handful or two handfuls of European frigates to do in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful US Navy cannot do?” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said last month.
“This is not our war; we have not started it.”
But this position will not spare allies from the war’s fallout — a reality that reflects what is becoming a defining characteristic of Trump’s second term.
Hundreds of millions of people from Asia to Europe and Africa to the Middle East didn’t vote for him and have no say in what he does.
But his decisions are changing their lives in profound ways nonetheless.
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