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In a commentary on Tuesday, the New York Times said in the lead-up to the surprise U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, President Donald Trump downplayed the risks to the energy markets as a short-term concern. The Times also said \u201cthe search for pathways out of the war has gained urgency since the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
The following is the text of the article with minor changes or omissions:\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Feb. 18, as President Trump weighed whether to launch military attacks on Iran, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, told an interviewer he was not concerned that the looming war might disrupt oil supplies in the Middle East and wreak havoc in energy markets.<\/p>\n
Even during the Israeli and U.S. strikes against Iran last June, Wright said, there had been little disruption in the markets. \u201cOil prices blipped up and then went back down,\u201d he said. Some of Trump\u2019s other advisers shared similar views in private, dismissing warnings that \u2014 the second time around \u2014 Iran might wage economic warfare by closing shipping lanes carrying roughly 20 percent of the world\u2019s oil supply.<\/p>\n
The extent of that miscalculation was laid bare in recent days, as Iran threatened to fire at commercial oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which all ships must pass on their way out of the Persian Gulf. In response to the Iranian threats, commercial shipping has come to a standstill in the Persian Gulf, oil prices have spiked, and the Trump administration has scrambled to find ways to tamp down an economic crisis that has triggered higher gasoline prices for Americans.<\/p>\n
The episode is emblematic of how much Trump and his advisers misjudged how Iran would respond to a conflict that the government in Tehran sees as an existential threat. Iran has responded far more aggressively than it did during last June\u2019s 12-day war, firing barrages of missiles and drones at U.S. military bases across the Middle East and on Israeli centers.<\/p>\n
U.S. officials have had to adjust plans on the fly, from hastily ordering the evacuation of embassies to developing policy proposals to reduce gas prices.<\/p>\n
After Trump administration officials gave a closed-door briefing to lawmakers on Tuesday, Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said on social media that the administration had no plan for the Strait of Hormuz and did \u201cnot know how to get it safely back open.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inside the administration, some officials are growing pessimistic about the lack of a clear strategy to finish the war. But they have been careful not to express that directly to the president, who has repeatedly declared that the military operation is a complete success.<\/p>\n
Trump has laid out maximalist goals like insisting that Iran name a leader who will submit to him, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have described narrower and more tactical objectives that could provide an off-ramp in the near term.<\/p>\n
\u2018Show some guts\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Hegseth acknowledged on Tuesday that Iran\u2019s response against the countries hosting American military bases caught the Pentagon somewhat off guard.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t say that we anticipated necessarily that\u2019s exactly how they would react, but we knew it was a possibility,\u201d Hegseth said at a Pentagon news conference.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump has displayed growing frustration over how the war is disrupting the oil supply, telling Fox News that oil tanker crews should \u201cshow some guts\u201d and sail through the Strait of Hormuz. When Trump was briefed about risks that oil prices could rise in the event of war, he acknowledged the possibility. He directed Wright and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to work on developing options for a potential spike in prices.<\/p>\n But the president did not speak publicly about these options \u2014 including political risk insurance backed by the U.S. government, and the potential of U.S. Navy escorts \u2014 until more than 48 hours after the conflict started. The escorts have not yet taken place.<\/p>\n Wright, the energy secretary, caused a market commotion Tuesday when he posted on social media that the Navy had successfully escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz. His post drove up stocks and reassured oil markets. Then, when he deleted the post after administration officials said no escorts had taken place, markets were once again thrust into turmoil.<\/p>\n Efforts to resume shipments have been complicated by intelligence that Iran was preparing to lay mines in the strait, one U.S. official said. The Iranian operation was only in its earliest stages, but the preparatory efforts spooked the Trump administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n As the conflict has roiled global markets, Republicans in Washington have grown concerned about rising oil prices damaging their efforts to sell an economic agenda to voters ahead of the midterm elections.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump, both publicly and privately, has been arguing that Venezuelan oil could help solve any shocks coming from the Iran war. The administration announced on Tuesday a new refinery in Texas that officials said could help increase oil supply, ensuring that Iran does not cause any long-term damage to oil markets.<\/p>\n A potential off-ramp<\/strong><\/p>\n The confidence that White House officials had that the shipping lanes could stay open is surprising given that Trump authorized a military campaign last year against the Houthis, a Yemeni group, that had used missile and drone attacks to bring maritime commerce in the Red Sea to a halt.<\/p>\n In a social media post last March announcing he had authorized military strikes against the Houthis, Trump said that the attacks had cost the global economy billions of dollars, and that \u201cno terrorist force will stop American commercial and naval vessels from freely sailing the Waterways of the World.\u201d<\/p>\n But since the start of the war in Iran, Trump has not offered a consistent message. In private, his aides have said they feel frustration over his lack of discipline in communicating the objectives of the military campaign to the public.<\/p>\n Trump has said both that the war could go on for more than a month and that it was \u201cvery complete, pretty much.\u201d He also said the United States would \u201cgo forward more determined than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n Rubio and Hegseth, however, appear to have coordinated their messaging for now on three discrete goals that they began laying out in public remarks on Monday and Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cThe goals of this mission are clear,\u201d Mr. Rubio said at a State Department event on Monday before Mr. Trump held his own news conference. \u201cIt is to destroy the ability of this regime to launch missiles, both by destroying their missiles and their launchers; destroy the factories that make these missiles; and destroy their navy.\u201d<\/p>\n The State Department even laid out the three goals in bullet-point fashion, and highlighted a video clip of Rubio stating them on an official social media account.<\/p>\n The presentation by Rubio, who is also the White House national security adviser, appeared to be setting the stage for the president to bring an end to the war sooner rather than later. In his news conference, Trump boasted of how the U.S. military had already destroyed Iran\u2019s ballistic missile capability and its navy. But he also warned of even more aggressive action if Iranian leaders tried to cut off the world\u2019s energy supply.<\/p>\n Matthew Pottinger, who was a deputy national security adviser in the first Trump administration, said in an interview that Trump had indicated he could decide to pursue ambitious war goals that would take weeks at least.<\/p>\n The search for pathways out of the war has gained urgency since the weekend, as global oil prices surge and as the United States burns through costly munitions. Pentagon officials said in recent closed-door briefings on Capitol Hill that the military used up $5.6 billion of munitions in the first two days of the war alone, according to three congressional officials. That is a far larger amount and munitions burn rate than had been publicly disclosed. The Washington Post reported on the figure on Monday.<\/p>\n Iranian officials have remained defiant, saying they will use their leverage over the world\u2019s oil supply to force the United States and Israel to blink.<\/p>\n \u201cStrait of Hormuz will either be a Strait of peace and prosperity for all,\u201d Ali Larijani, Iran\u2019s top national security official, said in a social media post on Tuesday. \u201cOr it will be a Strait of defeat and suffering for warmongers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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\n Some military advisers did warn before the war that Iran could launch an aggressive campaign in response, and would view the U.S.-Israeli attack as a threat to its existence.\u00a0<\/p>\n