Iran war underscores risks of Trump's relentless focus on oil

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Donald Trump returned to office last year, he launched a crusade to shift the country away from renewable energy, drastically undoing the climate-friendly policies of his Democratic predecessor to focus instead on oil and other fossil fuels as the answer to his goal of American energy dominance.

But the war in Iran is underscoring the risks of that approach.

As crude oil prices rise above $100 a barrel and gasoline prices surge toward $4 a gallon, the Republican president's strategy of blocking clean energy such as wind and solar power has left Americans with fewer alternative energy sources and thus more vulnerable to supply shocks caused by the war, experts say. The Strait of Hormuz, a key access point for the global oil market, remains effectively blocked as Iran targets traffic through it.

“The biggest short-term losers of the war will be U.S. consumers of oil and gas, as energy prices rise,” said Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on global water sustainability.

“It turns out fossil fuels have their own supply risks, and the administration has no answers,” added Tyson Slocum, energy director at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.

Trump promised during his campaign to cut energy bills in half but has presided over spikes in electric bills as demand from data centers soars, Slocum said. “Now we are seeing higher gas prices, and nobody knows where it’s going," he said.

Trump told reporters the conflict is a “very small price to pay” after years of terror from the Iranian leadership and predicted that oil prices “will drop like a rock” once the war ends.

“Dig we must. That’s the Trump policy of lots of oil," he said Monday at the White House.

Meanwhile, American consumers are already seeing the effects at the pump.

The national average price for gasoline has jumped to about $3.84 per gallon as of Wednesday, according to AAA, after Trump boasted in his State of the Union address last month that gas prices were below $3.

And in a pivotal midterm election year when affordability is a top concern for voters, Trump’s energy policies could hurt Republicans as Americans feel the brunt of higher energy costs.

“We’re always concerned when gas prices go up,” said Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

“Gas drives the affordability issue,” added GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Trump has long been hostile to renewable energy, particularly offshore wind, and prioritizes fossil fuels to produce electricity. Trump has said wind turbines are ugly and expensive and pose a threat to birds and other wildlife. While wind turbines pose a risk to birds, cats are by far the leading threat, followed by building collisions, government statistics show. A report by the National Audubon Society found that two-thirds of North American bird species could face extinction due to rising temperatures.

In his second term, Trump has gone all in on fossil fuels, providing tax breaks and fast-tracked permits for oil and gas drilling. At the same time, he has blocked dozens of clean energy projects and canceled billions of dollars in grants to promote clean energy, which he derides as the “Green New Scam." Climate change is "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion,” Trump told the United Nations last year.

Trump's policies mark a reversal from those of President Joe Biden, who unleashed a flurry of actions intended to slow planet-warming pollution from the power sector and other industries and encourage use of electric vehicles.

A landmark regulation, since reversed, would have forced coal-fired power plants to capture smokestack emissions or shut down. Biden and congressional Democrats also approved nearly $375 billion to boost clean energy, the biggest spending to fight climate change by any nation ever.

Trump and congressional Republicans moved swiftly to overturn those polices. The president has gone so far as repealing a longtime scientific finding that climate change endangers public health and the environment.

“You see an administration that has said, quite literally through reversal of the Endangerment Finding, we shouldn’t worry so much about climate change,” said Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

Under Trump, U.S. policy essentially says, “We’re the largest oil and gas producer in the world, so why buy all this clean energy stuff like EVs and solar panels from China?” Bordoff said on Bloomberg Green’s “Zero” podcast.

Seeking to ease pressure on prices, Trump has moved to release millions of barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and temporarily lift sanctions on Russian oil shipments already at sea.

Officials also are considering use of the U.S. Navy to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. is negotiating with countries heavily reliant on Middle East crude to join a coalition to police the waterway, where about one-fifth of the world’s traded oil normally flows.

Despite those efforts, prices have remained high.

“We are currently experiencing what is the largest oil supply disruption in history,” said Gregory Brew, a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group.

Energy prices will likely remain high for the foreseeable future, Brew said at an event sponsored by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “The Iranian strategy of applying pressure to the United States will continue to play out, and President Trump will continue to feel the pressure,” he said.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright acknowledged that prices are likely to remain elevated for weeks but said the world will face “short-term pain to solve a long-term problem” as the U.S. and Israel try to “defang” Iran.

“There’s no guarantees in wars at all,” Wright told ABC News on Sunday. “This is short-term pain to get through to a much better place.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the turmoil in the Middle East shows “the fastest path to energy security” is to speed up a just transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy.

“There are no price spikes for sunlight and no embargoes on the wind,″ he said.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright walks to the White House following an interview with CNN, Thursday, March 12, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)

A UAE navy ship sails next to a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz as seen from Khor Fakkan, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

President Donald Trump greets Col. Matha "Jeannie" Sasnett, commander of Air Force Mortuary Affairs, as he arrives on Air Force One, Wednesday, March 18, 2026, at Dover Air Force Base, Del., to attend the casualty return for the six crew members of an Air Force refueling aircraft who died when their plane crashed in western Iraq while supporting operations against Iran. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Thursday summoned Catholic bishops to Rome for a special meeting on ministering to families that takes as its starting point Leo’s strong endorsement of one of Pope Francis’ most controversial policies on marriage and divorce.

Leo penned a special message marking the 10th anniversary of Francis’ 2016 document “The Joy of Love.” He called the text a “luminous message of hope” that is even more relevant and urgent today than it was a decade ago.

When it was released, “The Joy of Love” immediately sparked controversy because it opened the door to letting civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.

Church teaching holds that unless these Catholics obtain an annulment — a church decree that their first marriage was invalid — they cannot receive the sacraments, since they are seen as living in sin and committing adultery.

Francis didn’t create a church-wide pass for these Catholics, but suggested — in vague terms and a strategically placed footnote — that bishops and priests could do so on a case-by-case basis after accompanying them on a spiritual journey of discernment. Subsequent comments and writings made clear Francis intended such wiggle room, part of his belief that God’s mercy extends in particular to sinners and that the Eucharist isn’t a prize for the perfect but nourishment for the weak.

The document became one of the most divisive of Francis’ pontificate and in many ways became the focal point of conservative opposition to his pontificate. It prompted a wave of criticism from mostly conservative Catholics, who said it had sown confusion among the faithful about the church’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.

But in his message Thursday marking the anniversary, Leo strongly endorsed Francis' text. He cited the Chapter VIII, which contained Francis’ opening on the divorce question, though he didn’t explicitly refer to access to the sacraments or Francis’ footnote No. 351.

In the text, Francis had told priests that they cannot merely apply moral laws to people in “irregular” situations. Rather, he said the church should help people who are in a technical state of sin, especially when there are mitigating factors at play.

In the related footnote No. 351, Francis elaborated that “in certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments.” He told priests that “the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy” and that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”

“On this tenth anniversary, we give thanks to the Lord for the stimulus that has encouraged reflection and pastoral conversion in the Church, and ask God for the courage to persevere on this path,” Leo wrote.

He summoned the presidents of bishops conferences to Rome for a meeting in October to decide next steps to minister to families today “in light of ‘The Joy of Love’ and taking into account what is currently being done in the local churches.”

Francis’ document sharply divided the church.

Within the first year of publication, four conservative cardinals formally asked Francis to clarify certain questions, or “dubia,” raised by the text. They argued church doctrine held that Catholics who remarried without a church annulment were living in sin and couldn’t receive the sacraments.

He never replied.

For a variety of reasons, such annulments often cannot be obtained though Francis issued a separate reform to simplify, facilitate and accelerate the process.

The following year, a petition of conservative Catholic theologians accused Francis of heresy.

But others embraced the text. Bishops from Francis’ native Buenos Aires issued a set of criteria to apply Chapter VIII that clearly allowed for civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion, especially if the person in question isn’t responsible for the failed first marriage, while stressing it was not a free-for-all “as if any situation were to sufficiently justify it.”

Francis ordered the Argentine criteria published as an official act of the Vatican and wrote a letter to the bishops declaring their interpretation authoritative. “The document is excellent and clearly sets out the meaning of Chapter VIII,” he wrote. “There are no other interpretations.”

The Maltese church, for its part, issued its own set of guidelines that were published in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, in another indication of Holy See approval.

The Maltese guidelines say that if a Catholic in a new civil union believes, after a path of spiritual discernment searching for God’s will, that he or she can be at peace with God, “he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

FILE - Pope Francis leaves at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, May 15, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)