Iran warns Trump’s blockade is ‘doomed to fail’ as oil prices soar to 4-year high
Iran warned on Thursday that the US naval blockade was “doomed to fail” as oil prices soared to their highest level in years with the standoff over the crucial Strait of Hormuz wreaking havoc on the global economy.
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The international benchmark oil price, Brent crude, soared to more than $126 a barrel at one point overnight, the highest since 2022, when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. It then fell back to just over $121 a barrel by 5:30 a.m. ET.
The average price of gas in the United States reached $4.23 per gallon on Wednesday, the highest level in nearly four years.
The spike came following a report from Axios that the U.S. military was set to brief President Donald Trump on plans for possible military action to help break the impasse in negotiations to end the war and reopen the main trade route.
A plan prepared by US Central Command includes a wave of “short and powerful” strikes intended to force Iran back to the negotiating table, Axios reported.
It comes after Trump warned that Iran “better get smart soon” as he weighed possible military options to reopen the strait, through which about 20% of the world’s oil passes.
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Traffic on the waterway has been effectively paralyzed since Iran attacked shipping after the United States and Israel launched their joint attack in late February, shaking the global economy.
Washington launched its own blockade of Iranian ports in response, and Trump told Axios on Wednesday that it would remain in place until Iran agreed to a nuclear deal.
That appears to rule out a new Iranian proposal to end the war and reopen the strait without resolving the impasse over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Trump said he considered the blockade to be “a little more effective than bombing.”
Trump and other senior administration officials met with a group of energy executives earlier this week to discuss key issues, including Washington’s possible next steps to continue the blockade “for months if necessary,” a White House official told NBC News.
Members of Trump’s national security team presented him with several options this week for handling the bottleneck, a U.S. official and a person familiar with the meeting told NBC News. Options discussed included whether the U.S. military presence in the strait should change — either increase or decrease — and whether the military should become more aggressive in conducting operations there, the U.S. official said.
The prospect of prolonged disruption across the strait has sent energy prices soaring despite the ceasefire. “Our world is facing a major economic and energy challenge,” Fatih Birol, director of the International Energy Agency, said at a conference in Paris.
