This would not be happening if the USA had not launched an attack on Iran
This was the desired effect though, as higher oil prices means more profit for US based oil producers. I'm sure that will trickle down any time now.
This was the desired effect though, as higher oil prices means more profit for US based oil producers. I'm sure that will trickle down any time now.
Honestly, I think you're giving far too much credit to the current US government.
(if one is some combination of unsophisticated, irrational, and vain, and in a position of power, they will eventually be exploited by someone more rational and sophisticated, imho)
Very similar to Putin (73 years old, as of this comment) making his move against Ukraine when he did. Light cone of potential outcomes and path dependency.
“Old men pulling triggers out of ideology before they’re too weak to.” I argue that, in many ways, extended life expectancy has been a curse in this context. It has allowed unscrupulous people positions of power where great harm is incurred with limited repercussions (if any!), positions of power they would not be in if they had aged out sooner. You can only wait to vote them out, or wait for them to die if you cannot vote them out. Very unfortunate.
Can systems be changed to expose these folks to the appropriate incentives that will improve outcomes? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I suspect (know way to know) Isreal would have been better off attacking Iran alone - they could have sent a message "back off - we can do more harm to you than you can do to us", but sending that message is hard. They tried to send a clearer bigger message, but the problem is the message getting through ended up being "this is the worst that you will do to us and we can endure". The reality is Iran knows the US and Israel won't invade, and so long as that option is off the table Iran can do anything it wants knowing things won't get worse.
Compare to how Bush handled Iraq - months of convincing the world to help him invade (not always successfully, but enough that many people were sending troops). If conditions were sent such that troops really were on the table I would expect Iran to back down (I give it about 60% odds, which means 40% an invasion happens!). Israel would have won in that case, but it wasn't handled like that (there are reasonable odds that the US would refuse the propaganda to invade if that was tried though which means Israel would be back to the previous status quo...).
You probably have to read that last paragraph a dozen times to understand it. I'm not the best writer and it is a complex subject.
A US administration sympathetic to Russia stands to benefit from higher oil prices.
Someone else suggested they see $85/bbl as the ideal price. I don't know if that is true, but it seems reasonable.
This is a really complex optimization problem, but slowing EV adoption, which low gas prices help, is likely the better course for a few more years. Eventually just gouge the petrol users left is the most profit, but I don't think that has been reached yet.
That's giving the Trump administration too much credit. Before the war there were pieces about how oil companies were doing worse under Trump than under Biden[1]. Of course, you could argue that the Iran war is Trump finally responding to oil companies, but given that it only started more than a year after he took power, it really makes you wonder whether Trump is bumbling along, or playing some 5d chess with the global oil market. On the flip side there's plenty of evidence that he doesn't want high oil prices, for instance lifting sanctions on Iranian and Russian oil.
[1] https://www.economist.com/business/2025/02/06/donald-trump-l...
Like any senile octogenarian you want to do something, brainwash them to do your bidding and make it think it's their own choice
I am unsure its by design or just idiocy. (Probably a mix of both).