Public comments by President Donald Trump about the war with Iran reflect a growing frustration he has been communicating in private to people around him, as the disruptive conflict drags into a second month without a clear exit strategy.
Trump told people close to him that he is irritated with members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other allies, according to people familiar with his thinking. As the war drags on, Trump sees some partners as unwilling to do enough to help achieve a decisive end to the conflict.
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Meanwhile, U.S. WTI fell 1.46%, closing at $101.38 per barrel; in March, the increase was 51%, marking the best month since May 2020.
The president made some of these complaints public, urging allies on Tuesday (the 31st) to “go seek their own oil,” despite Iranian threats that effectively closed the vital Strait of Hormuz, sending global fuel prices surging.
“You’re going to have to start learning to fight for yourselves, the U.S. won’t be there to help you anymore, just as you weren’t there for us,” he wrote on social media.
Trump has alternated between claiming progress in diplomatic talks with Tehran and threatening to intensify the attacks, while increasingly pressing for a ceasefire.
The president understands that the current situation is unsustainable, according to another person familiar with his thinking who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The president’s team suggested that reopening Hormuz — through which about 20% of the oil supply transported by sea passes — may not be a prerequisite for ending the war.
A resolution of this kind could reassure anxious investors who want to see the disruptions caused by the war disappear. The S&P 500 rose after the Iranian state news agency reported that the country’s president was willing to end the war, climbing as much as 2.7%, the largest intraday gain since May.
But leaving the strait’s status undefined — especially with Tehran demanding sovereignty over the waterway as part of a deal — would do little to prevent future turmoil in the global economy. Brent surged about 60% in March since the start of the war, and U.S. gasoline topped $4 per gallon for the first time since 2022.
Taken together, these developments suggest that the war Trump began with Iran and Israel is no longer entirely under his exclusive control. It also poses a political risk for the president, who campaigned on not starting new wars and whose Republican Party faces the prospect of losing control of Congress in the November midterm elections.
Still, it is the economic pain caused by the war that weighs most on the White House, as senior officials grow increasingly concerned about the danger it poses to Republican lawmakers seeking re-election, said one person.
“President Trump has always made clear the short-term disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury. The long-term trajectory for America’s economy remains solid, with the administration focused on implementing the president’s proven economic agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and abundant energy,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. “Once the objectives of Operation Epic Fury have been achieved and these short-term disruptions are in the rearview, Americans can be confident that the president’s agenda will unlock the historical growth in jobs, wages, and the economy that they saw during Trump’s first term.”
Critics accuse the U.S. of underestimating the scope and duration of the disruption to energy flows resulting from the conflict. Trump and his aides, however, have sought to separate the existential threat posed by Iran and its allied groups to the U.S. and the region from the war’s impact on maritime transport. As the U.S. depends less on oil and gas from the Middle East than Asia does, he has also sought to shift responsibility to other countries more dependent on the region’s energy to help solve the problem.
Trump said on Tuesday that the U.S. has helped to drastically reduce the military threat posed by Iran, which, he said, could create the conditions for the Strait’s closure to resolve itself.
“Well, I think he will automatically open, but my position is: I obliterate the country. They have no power at all, and the countries that use the Strait will go there and open it,” the president told the New York Post.
That suggestion could alarm Gulf states, which were emboldened by Trump’s Fox News interview last week in which he said the U.S. would continue protecting Gulf allies even “if we don’t stay” in Iran.
“They would probably like us to stay,” he said. “If we don’t stay, we’ll protect them. We know, you know, they’ve been very good.”
Although the U.S. could, in theory, end military operations against Iran and leave Hormuz to a separate coalition task force, that would reduce Washington’s influence over Tehran — especially since European and Gulf allies are interested only in a more limited mission aimed at reopening the strait, not in achieving broader strategic aims through bombing Iranian assets.
During negotiations leading up to the current war, Trump moved an unprecedented amount of military assets — from warplanes to carrier strike groups — to the Middle East, yet he still could not get Iran to yield on certain U.S. demands, such as abandoning its missile program or its support for allied groups like Hezbollah or Hamas.
The United Arab Emirates is the only Gulf Arab country to say it will join a naval force to try to reopen Hormuz or provide escorts. Bahrain is working on a U.N. Security Council resolution to grant a mandate to a naval task force.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cited the president’s post on social media when asked, during a briefing on Tuesday morning, whether reopening the strait was an essential objective of Operation Epic Fury.
Hegseth said that reopening the strait “is not just an American problem” and added: “In the end, I think other countries should pay attention when the president speaks. He has proven that when he speaks, it’s because something matters. And he is signaling: perhaps it’s time to start learning to fight for yourselves.”
The White House spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said in a Monday briefing that the U.S. was “working to” fully reopen the strait, but did not list that as a central military objective for the U.S. when asked whether Trump would declare victory even if passage through the strait remained slow.
Leavitt reiterated that the central objectives are to destroy Iran’s navy, destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles, dismantle Iran’s defense-industrial infrastructure, and prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Speaking last Friday, after meeting with his G7 colleagues, Secretary of State Marco Rubio also drew a line between the war’s strategic objectives and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
It would be unacceptable if, after the operation ends, Iran continued to dictate control of the strait and demanding payment to cross it, Rubio said. “The whole world should be outraged by that. We are affected somewhat. But the rest of the world is affected a lot more.”
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