SARASOTA, Florida — On February 28, 2026, Israel and the United States launched major strikes against Iran. Oil markets immediately became nervous about the possibility of another Middle East-driven energy shock.
Twelve days later, President Trump publicly stated, “When oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”
That sentence deserves far more scrutiny than it has received.
When a president says “we,” most Americans assume he means the American people. But that was not the spirit of Trump’s statement. He was not speaking like a president focused first on protecting working families, the middle class, small businesses, professional people, retirees, truckers, commuters, or the broader American economy from another painful price shock.
He was speaking like someone looking at a windfall.
Because the truth is that most Americans do not “make a lot of money” when oil prices spike.
They suffer.
Working families suffer.
The middle class suffers.
Small businesses suffer.
Truckers, contractors, farmers, delivery companies, commuters, retirees, and professional people all suffer.
The whole economy suffers.
The oil industry may make a lot of money. Traders and insiders who know how to play energy markets like a casino may make a lot of money. People positioned to benefit from price spikes, hedges, options, spreads, and crisis volatility may make a lot of money.
But the American people do not.
They pay.
And when crude oil moves from the low $60s per barrel, where it stood before the Iran war shock, toward $100, $115, or $120 per barrel, we should ask the obvious question:
Where is that extra money coming from?
And where is it going?
It is coming from the American economy.
It is coming from gasoline purchases, freight costs, grocery prices, airline tickets, business expenses, family budgets, and inflationary pressure throughout the system.
And much of it is going to the oil industry and to market insiders who know how to profit from volatility.
That is not national leadership.
That is not economic stewardship.
A president is not supposed to look at a geopolitical crisis and celebrate the windfall for one sector. He is supposed to be the caretaker of the entire American economy and American society.
This is where Trump’s statement is so revealing. When he said “we,” he did not sound like he was talking about the American people. He sounded like he was talking about himself, his inner circle, and the industries positioned to profit from higher oil prices.
That is exactly backwards.
The job of the President of the United States is not to help oil insiders make a killing.
The job is to protect the American people, protect the economy, and protect the country’s ability to confront dangerous regimes without letting those regimes manipulate public opinion through energy prices.
This is the third article in a series I have written about energy, oil dependence, Israel, Iran, and the American economy.
In the first article, published on March 17 under the title “Call To Integrate Energy Responsibility Into Modern Halakha Gains Attention,” I looked at the issue from the micro level: what Jews, pro-Israel Americans, and people concerned about Israel can do personally and communally to reduce fossil fuel consumption. The argument was simple. Every gallon of oil we do not burn weakens the leverage of petro-dictatorships and hostile regimes that threaten Israel, the Jewish people, and the democratic world. That article was not only about climate change, though climate change matters. It was about Jewish responsibility, Israel’s security, and the strategic consequences of oil dependence.
In the second article, published April 9 under the title “Call Grows For U.S. Energy Emergency To Shield Economy From Global Oil Shocks,” I moved from the micro to the macro. I argued that North America should explore ways to insulate itself from the global oil market so that American and Canadian consumers are not punished at the pump every time the Middle East erupts. Isolate the American and Canadian “North American Oil Market from the world oil market. This can be done.”
That matters because gasoline prices don’t only affect family budgets.
They affect public opinion.
When Americans see the price of gas jump, many do not think about Iran’s Islamic regime, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Islamic Jihad, the Strait of Hormuz, or the threat that radical Islamist movements pose to Jews, Christians, dissidents, women, minorities, and Western democratic societies.
They think about their own paycheck, their commute, their grocery bill, and their anger at whoever they believe caused the price spike.
That is exactly the political vulnerability hostile regimes exploit.
If every confrontation with Iran means Americans get punished at the pump, then America ends up responding to the Islamic Republic with one hand tied behind its back. The public gets frustrated. Politicians get nervous. The oil industry profits. And the regimes and movements threatening Israel and the West gain leverage they should not have.
This third article asks the question even more directly:
Why should the American people and the entire American economy finance oil windfalls every time the Middle East erupts?
This question should already be a major national discussion.
The United States has spent decades talking about energy independence. Jimmy Carter warned the country nearly half a century ago about dependence on foreign oil. Since then, America has become one of the world’s largest energy producers, and North America has enormous oil and energy resources.
But production is only part of the story.
Over the last several decades, Americans have also made huge gains in conservation and efficiency. We moved from incandescent light bulbs to LEDs. Solar power is now producing a significant amount of our electricity, both commercially and in private homes. We built wind power. More efficient appliances, better building standards, hybrid vehicles, more efficient gasoline vehicles, and the electrification of the automobile have all reduced demand for fossil fuels. Many of us now drive in the sunshine. Those choices helped move us toward energy independence.
The United States has been an annual net total energy exporter since 2019, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
So what good is energy independence if American consumers are still chained to global crisis pricing?
If we do not need to buy from the world in a crisis, and if we can choose not to sell into the world market when doing so punishes our own citizens, then why are Americans still being forced to absorb the full cost of Middle East oil shocks?
North American energy independence should mean something.
It should mean insulation.
It should mean protection.
It should mean that hostile regimes like Iran cannot threaten the Strait of Hormuz, rattle global markets, and instantly turn American voters against necessary action by making gasoline unaffordable.
This matters because the Islamic regime in Iran must fall.
Not because the Iranian people are our enemy. They are not.
The Iranian people are among the regime’s first and longest suffering victims. Many Iranians do not want this Islamic Jihadist Regime. They are living under a nightmare of repression, executions, gender apartheid, censorship, corruption, and religious dictatorship.
The goal should be to empower the Iranian people to take back their country and build a government that represents them.
America also has to be honest about its own history. In 1953, the United States helped overthrow Iran’s democratically elected government. That was a historic mistake with consequences that still echo through the region. We cannot undo that history, but we can stop pretending the current Islamic Republic represents the will of the Iranian people.
It does not.
And we can stop letting oil prices dictate whether America dares to confront the regime’s Islamic jihadist network, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Islamic Jihad.
If rising gasoline prices make Americans too angry, too exhausted, or too economically strained to support doing what must be done, then Iran’s regime has leverage over us.
That leverage must be broken.
North American energy insulation would not solve every problem. It would not end the war by itself. It would not magically bring down the Islamic Republic.
But it would remove one of the regime’s most powerful indirect weapons: the ability to make Americans pay at the pump for confronting it.
That is the debate we should be having.
Not how much money Trump’s circle and the oil industry can make.
How much economic pain can America avoid while doing what is necessary for the free world?
And here is what makes the silence even more striking: the concept is not some fantasy that only I am discussing.
Reuters recently reported that Diamondback Energy placed a $70 million hedge betting that the price gap between U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude and globally traded Brent crude could widen significantly, “Under my proposal, potentially because of a U.S. domestic oil market is price is capped and domestic demand must be satisfied before crude oil exports are allowed.” The report said the hedge could benefit if the domestic versus global spread widens sharply. Reuters also noted that concerns over a possible export ban have resurfaced, even though the Trump administration has said it does not intend to pursue one.
That matters.
It means sophisticated players inside the oil market understand that separating domestic U.S. oil pricing from global pricing is not an absurd concept. They are already hedging around versions of that possibility.
The Energy Information Administration also reported that Brent crude averaged $103 per barrel in March and forecast it would peak around $115 per barrel in the second quarter of 2026 before easing later.
In plain English, the market already understands that North American oil and global oil can move differently under stress.
So why is this being discussed by traders, analysts, and energy companies, but not explained honestly to the American people?
Why are market insiders allowed to price in the possibility of domestic protection from global oil shocks, while ordinary Americans are simply told to accept higher gasoline prices as inevitable?
I am not arguing that insulating North America from worldwide oil shocks would be simple. There are legitimate economic and geopolitical questions involved. Export restrictions, refinery logistics, trade agreements, relationships with allies, gasoline refining capacity, and long-term energy investment all matter.
But the debate itself should not be treated as radical.
The United States is now one of the world’s largest energy producers. North America possesses enormous oil and energy resources. Yet every time conflict erupts in the Middle East, Americans are expected to absorb another painful increase at the pump as if no alternatives even exist.
Why?
Why is protecting oil windfalls treated as more realistic than protecting American consumers?
Why is the burden always placed on the whole American economy instead of asking whether a different energy pricing structure could shield Americans from at least part of the shock?
Why has this not become a major national discussion?
As someone who studied economics as an undergraduate at Rutgers University, I have been asking myself that question again and again.
If I can see the issue, and if market insiders can see the issue, then why are political leaders not putting it directly in front of the American people?
The goal should be clear.
America should be able to respond to Iran and other dangerous regimes without letting hostile oil market dynamics punish American consumers, inflame inflation, and weaken public support for necessary action.
We can do what is right in the Middle East and still protect Americans at home.
We can confront threats abroad and still buffer families, businesses, and the broader economy from avoidable energy shocks.
We can stop treating oil price spikes as though they are acts of nature when they are also opportunities for windfall profits.
And there is another political and moral danger here that has to be said plainly.
When gasoline prices spike during the Iran war, Israel is taking much of the blame.
But that is the wrong target.
A very small percentage of people are positioned to enrich themselves enormously from oil price spikes. Oil companies, traders, hedge funds, speculators, and politically connected insiders know how to profit from volatility. They can play spreads, hedges, options, futures, shorts, and crisis pricing like a casino.
Ordinary Americans cannot.
They pay at the pump.
They pay at the grocery store.
They pay through freight costs, utility costs, airline costs, business costs, and inflation.
Then Israel gets blamed.
That is the scam.
Israel becomes the scapegoat while the windfall profits flow to the oil industry and the insiders who know how to exploit the crisis.
In the 1970s, Americans understood the phrase “windfall profits.” They were angry about oil companies making extraordinary profits during energy shocks while consumers suffered. Today, that outrage has been redirected. Instead of asking who is profiting, too many people are told to blame Israel.
That narrative must be flipped.
The question is not why Israel and America are confronting Iran.
The question is why American consumers are being forced to finance windfall profits every time Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Islamic Jihad, or the broader Islamic jihadist network pushes the Middle East toward war.
The oil industry will not like that question.
Trump will not like that question.
Market insiders will not like that question.
But the American people deserve to hear it.
If America has spent decades pursuing energy independence, then energy independence should protect Americans. It should not merely give oil companies the ability to sell into global markets while American consumers remain trapped in global crisis pricing.
We should insulate the North American oil market because doing so would protect the economy, reduce inflationary pressure, preserve public support for confronting Iran, and stop Israel from being blamed for an oil windfall it did not create.
At some point, America has to recognize what just happened.
Iran took a brutal beating from the air, and yet the regime appears to believe it can simply absorb the damage, wait out the pressure, and survive.
Why?
Because the Islamic jihadist regime has a different mindset than we do in the West, it now believes America flinched.
At the beginning of this war, President Trump spoke in the language of unconditional surrender and regime change. He told the Iranian people, in effect, that this was their moment to take back their country.
Then he hesitated.
He talked tough, then pulled back.
And in that moment, the regime in Tehran learned something dangerous. It learned that America still fears the economic consequences of finishing the job.
It learned that oil prices can still restrain American power.
It was learned that if gasoline prices rise high enough, American politicians will start looking for an exit ramp instead of victory.
That is why the calls are already growing louder to rule out regime change, negotiate, stabilize the situation, and get oil flowing again.
The Islamic regime is ready to wait us out. It believes time is on its side. It believes Americans will get tired, gas prices will scare politicians, and the West will decide to go back to the way things were.
We cannot go back.
We cannot go back to the old system.
The system where Iran survives.
The system where oil markets panic.
The system where Americans pay.
The system where Israel gets blamed.
The system in which Islamic jihad gains time, confidence, and momentum.
That is not a strategy.
That is surrender by another name.
The Iranian regime may think it has won.
It has not.
But America has to realign its thinking immediately.
In the 1970s, oil shocks helped drive inflation, fear, and national weakness because America was dependent on foreign oil.
That was then.
This is not the 1970s.
America has spent decades becoming energy independent. We drilled. We conserved. We innovated. We moved from incandescent bulbs to LEDs. We built solar. We built wind power. We made cars more efficient, and the advent of the electric car began reducing gasoline demand even further. Many of us now drive in the sunshine. We became a net energy exporter.
Now we need to act like it.
If North America is energy independent, then North America should not remain economically chained to global oil panic every time Iran threatens the Strait of Hormuz, fires missiles, activates proxies, or pushes the region toward war.
Why are our domestic energy costs still linked so tightly to the world oil market?
Why are American families still exposed to crisis pricing?
Why are we letting hostile regimes use oil prices to weaken public support for necessary action?
Militarily, economically, and strategically, that makes no sense.
Islamic jihad is at war with Western civilization. It threatens Jews, Christians, Muslims who reject extremism, women, dissidents, minorities, democracies, and free societies.
Israel is not the cause of that war.
Israel is on the front line of it.
The Islamic regime in Iran and the broader Islamic jihadist movement have spent decades turning Israel into the scapegoat. Every regional failure, every dictatorship, every act of repression, every economic collapse, every corruption scandal, and every terror campaign gets redirected toward Israel and the Jews.
The trigger point of that strategy was October 7, when Hamas invaded Israel, slaughtered 1,200 people, and took hostages. That was not an isolated rogue event. It was planned, staged, and launched with propaganda ready in the wings. The massacre began in Israel, but the information war began immediately across the world.
That is not accidental.
It is a strategy.
Blame Israel, and dictators survive.
Blame Israel, and terrorists become “resistance.”
Blame Israel, and oil windfalls disappear from the conversation.
Blame Israel, and Americans stop asking who is profiting while they are paying.
That is the narrative that must change.
It is not Israel.
It is Islamic jihad.
It is the Islamic regime in Iran.
It is the terror network Iran funds, arms, trains, and inspires.
We do not need a massive American ground war to accomplish the objective. We need to help the Iranian people free their own country from the Islamic regime that has stolen it from them.
That can happen sooner than many people think if America shows resolve instead of hesitation.
Europe should be brought on board. Democratic nations should understand the stakes. The Iranian people should know the free world is not abandoning them to the ayatollahs.
Look around.
Islamic jihad is on the move. It is not only in the Middle East. It is showing up in the streets of Western cities, around synagogues, on campuses, in propaganda networks, and in political movements that excuse extremism while blaming Israel.
We cannot go back.
We must finish the job.
Help the Iranian people free themselves, and Islamic jihad collapses everywhere.
Free Iran, and Hamas collapses.
Free Iran, and Hezbollah collapses.
Free Iran, and the Houthis collapse.
Free Iran, and Islamic Jihad collapses.
Free Iran, and the entire Iranian-backed terror network loses its center of gravity.
That is why this fight matters far beyond oil prices.
Insulate North America from global oil panic.
Break Iran’s leverage.
Stop blaming Israel.
Follow the money.
Stand with the Iranian people.
Free Iran, and humanity will have a brighter future.
