On February 18, as US President Donald 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 West Asia and wreak havoc in energy markets.

Even during the Israeli and US strikes against Iran last June, Wright said, there had been little disruption in the markets. “Oil prices blipped up and then went back down,” he said. Some of Trump’s other advisers shared similar views in private, dismissing warnings that — the second time around — Iran might wage economic warfare by closing shipping lanes carrying roughly 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply.

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 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.

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’s 12-day war, firing barrages of missiles and drones at US military bases, cities in Arab nations across West Asia, and on Israeli population centres.

US officials have had to adjust plans on the fly, from hastily ordering the evacuation of embassies to developing policy proposals to reduce gas prices.

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 "not know how to get it safely back open".

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.

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 defence secretary Pete Hegseth have described narrower and more tactical objectives that could provide an off-ramp in the near term.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the administration “had a strong game plan” before the war broke out, and vowed that oil prices would drop after it ended.

“The purposeful disruption in the oil market by the Iranian regime is short term, and necessary for the long-term gain of wiping out these terrorists and the threat they pose to America and the world,” she said in a statement.

Hegseth acknowledged on Tuesday that Iran’s ferocious response against its neighbours caught the Pentagon somewhat off guard. But he insisted that Iran’s actions were backfiring.

“I can’t say that we anticipated necessarily that’s exactly how they would react, but we knew it was a possibility,” Hegseth said at a Pentagon news conference. “I think it was a demonstration of the desperation of the regime.”

Trump has displayed growing frustration over how the war is disrupting the oil supply, telling Fox News that oil tanker crews should “show some guts” and sail through the Strait of Hormuz.

Some military advisers did warn before the war that Iran could launch an aggressive campaign in response, and would view the US-Israeli attack as a threat to its existence. But other advisers remained confident that killing Iran’s senior leadership would lead to more pragmatic leaders taking over who might bring an end to the war.

When Trump was briefed about risks that oil prices could rise in the event of war, he acknowledged the possibility but downplayed it as a short-term concern that should not overshadow the mission to decapitate the Iranian regime. He directed Wright and Treasury secretary Scott Bessent to work on developing options for a potential spike in prices.

But the President did not speak publicly about these options — including political risk insurance backed by the US government, and the potential of US Navy escorts — until more than 48 hours after the conflict started. The escorts have not yet taken place.

New York Times News Service