The war for oil that backfired: Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ illusion

When President Trump launched his war on Iran, attention fixed on missiles, drones and the risks of escalation. The real story lay elsewhere: a grandiose and ultimately reckless vision of American “energy dominance” that helped propel Washington into war.

This was not simply a security decision, but an economic and ideological gamble rooted in Trump’s long-held belief that U.S. control over international energy flows would translate into global geopolitical supremacy and arrest America’s relative decline.

In his second term, that belief hardened into doctrine. But in Iran, it collided with reality.

For years, Trump has openly flirted with the idea that the U.S. should “take” or otherwise control the oil resources of states too weak to impose retaliatory costs. That impulse, once dismissed as rhetorical excess, became operational policy under the banner of “energy dominance” — maximize U.S. and allied fossil-fuel output and then wield global supply and pricing as a strategic weapon against adversaries and even friendly states.

By last year, the U.S. had indeed become the world’s largest oil and gas producer, flooding global markets with shale output and liquefied natural gas. This surge created a dangerous illusion in Washington — that America had insulated itself from the geopolitical risks of energy disruption. If the U.S. no longer depended on Middle Eastern oil, the thinking went, it could act militarily in the Persian Gulf without suffering serious economic consequences at home.

That misperception proved decisive. Trump’s advisers argued that any Iranian retaliation — whether through attacks on Gulf infrastructure or disruption of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz — could be offset by U.S. and allied production. Last June’s limited U.S. strikes on Iran had triggered only temporary price spikes, reinforcing the belief that markets could be managed.

Energy dominance, in this reading, was not just an economic strategy; it was a license for geopolitical coercion.

It removed a constraint that had shaped decades of U.S. policy. Where previous presidents hesitated — fearing that war with Iran would send oil prices soaring and damage the global economy — Trump saw an opportunity. If supply could be controlled, then conflict could be contained.

But this logic rested on a profound miscalculation that energy systems are linear, predictable and ultimately subordinate to American power. They are not.

Once the conflict escalated and the Strait of Hormuz was effectively compromised, the consequences rippled far beyond what Washington had anticipated. Prices surged, volatility spiked and the shock spread through every layer of the global economy.

Energy is not just another commodity. It is the foundation of modern economic life. When energy prices rise sharply, food prices follow. Natural gas is essential for fertilizer production, while oil powers agricultural machinery, irrigation and transport. The result is a cascading effect: an energy shock becomes a food shock and, for many societies, a political shock, hitting the most vulnerable countries hardest.

This is the real legacy of Trump’s war: not battlefield outcomes, but systemic disruption.

The energy logic that helped drive the conflict was never confined to Iran. Just eight weeks earlier, the Trump administration had demonstrated its willingness to operationalize resource control in Venezuela, where U.S. military intervention resulted in the capture of President Nicolas Maduro and the installation of a more pliable regime. Vice President JD Vance was explicit about the rationale: control over one of the world’s largest oil reserves.

Iran represented the same logic, scaled up.

Together, Iran and Venezuela account for almost one-third of global proven oil reserves.

The prospect of bringing both into Washington’s strategic orbit would amount to an unprecedented lever over global energy markets, allowing the U.S. not just to influence prices, but to shape the economic trajectories of rivals and partners alike. It is difficult to overstate how radical this vision was.

It marked a return to a resource-centric foreign policy reminiscent of earlier eras, when access to oil routinely drove foreign intervention, regime change and covert operations — from the 1953 CIA-assisted coup in Iran to Cold War-era resource conflicts. The difference today is the scale of ambition: not merely securing supply, but globally dominating it.

Dominance, however, has proven illusory. Far from demonstrating control, the Iran war has exposed the fragility of the global energy system — and the limits of American power within it. With markets interconnected, geopolitical shocks cannot be neatly contained. And even a country as energy-rich as the U.S. remains deeply vulnerable to global systemic shocks.

The irony is stark. A strategy designed to give Washington greater freedom of action has instead produced global constraint — slowing growth, fueling inflation and amplifying financial instability across continents.

If anything, the Iran war underscored the opposite of what its architects intended: that energy interdependence remains a structural reality, not a vulnerability that can be engineered away.

In the end, Trump’s pursuit of energy dominance did not merely enable the war on Iran; it made it conceivable for the first time. By convincing itself that the economic risks of conflict could be managed, the administration crossed a threshold earlier leaders had resisted. What followed was not the calibrated use of American power, but an unleashing of forces far beyond Washington’s control.

The costs mounted swiftly, at home and abroad. The bill was global — paid for one man’s delusion.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”