HOUSTON — The Trump administration reached a nearly $1 billion agreement with French energy giant TotalEnergies on Monday to cancel its offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York and North Carolina. The announcement marks the latest blow by the Trump administration against the U.S. offshore wind industry, particularly in the Northeast, after it faced a series of recent legal losses. “The era of taxpayers subsidizing unreliable, unaffordable and unsecured energy is officially over,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told reporters at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. As part of the agreement, the Interior Department would terminate the leases for TotalEnergies’ Attentive Energy and Carolina Long Bay projects, worth $928 million, the department said. The lease sales occurred during the Biden administration. TotalEnergies committed to invest the value of those leases into oil and natural gas production in the United States, after which the United States will reimburse the company dollar-for-dollar for the amount they paid for the offshore wind leases, the department said. The company is poised to redirect the funds toward the Rio Grande LNG plant in Texas and the development of upstream conventional oil in the Gulf of Mexico and of shale gas production, according to the Interior Department. Burgum and TotalEnergies signed the agreements Monday from the conference. President Donald Trump has often attacked the U.S. offshore wind sector as unreliable and expensive. He’s repeatedly said he plans to have “no windmills built in the United States” under his tenure. Still, the settlement would suggest a new tack by the administration to target the sector. The Trump administration previously issued stop-work orders for offshore wind projects currently under construction on the East Coast, but judges lifted all five orders earlier this year. “Considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest, we have decided to renounce offshore wind development in the United States, in exchange for the reimbursement of the lease fees,” TotalEnergies Chair and CEO Patrick Pouyanné said in a statement. Pouyanné previously said the company would halt development of the Attentive Energy project, off the New Jersey and New York coasts, following Trump’s return to the White House. Both the Attentive Energy and Carolina Long Bay projects were in the early stages of development. Pouyanné told reporters that the company continues to invest in solar, onshore wind and batteries. The deal is a major blow for New York’s offshore wind targets, although proposed projects in the lease area controlled by TotalEnergies and its partners never secured final contracts with the state. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) called the prospect of a deal “not helpful” last week. Attentive Energy dropped out of a bidding process for deals with New York in October 2024, even before Trump’s election. The state concluded that process last month with no awards amid the federal uncertainty and officials have struggled to determine next steps for the industry writ large. Hochul has pivoted to an “all of the above” energy strategy in the face of Trump’s opposition to offshore wind — including nuclear and fossil fuels. Further delays to the development of the technology off New York’s coast will likely further the state’s reliance on repowering fossil fuel plants to serve the New York City region. The deal also leaves New Jersey without any workable offshore wind projects at a time when Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill is already searching for more clean energy to combat a regional power crunch. The project was supposed to provide more than 1,300 megawatts of power. Sherrill’s predecessor, Phil Murphy, had lofty ambitions for the industry that were all for naught. His administration approved a series of offshore wind projects that all ran into financial or permitting challenges. The state approved Attentive Energy’s project in early 2024 as part of an attempted reset of the industry, which was already facing woe. The new affront could also prove problematic to permitting reform discussions on the Hill, as Democratic lawmakers have linked progress on those negotiations to whether or not the administration continues its attacks on renewable energy. ClearView Energy Partners said in a note last week the deal could also “re-raise concerns about the durability of federal approvals and therefore further erode, but not eliminate, the thin opportunity for bipartisan permitting reform on Capitol Hill.” So far, Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) is staying the course on permitting talks, despite reports of the settlement agreement last week — a development he derided as “just more selling out the public for the fossil fuel industry.” His office did not immediately provide further comment Monday. Some Moderate New York Republicans last week also criticized the reported settlement. Marie French and Ry Rivard contributed to this report.

European countries are being advised to lower gas storage filling targets and to start refilling gas stores early, as the conflict in Middle East drives up global energy prices. European Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen urged in a letter to national energy ministers, seen by POLITICO, that countries should be flexible in how they refill gas stores, to “help reduce the gas demand at times where the supply is tense and ease the pressure on gas prices in Europe.” Since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Tehran in late February, the ensuing conflict has caused global energy prices to spike, driven in part by Israeli strikes on Iran’s vast offshore gas field and Tehran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical passage that facilitates a significant share of the world’s oil and natural gas trade. In the letter, Jørgensen asked EU countries to lower their gas storage refilling targets to 80 percent, 10 percentage points below normal targets. He also suggested that countries could start storage injections early to avoid an “end-of-summer rush to refill storages,” which would put upward pressure on prices. He also suggested that governments extend the deadline to meet filling targets to as late as December, two months later than usual. He said countries can take these measures under the EU Gas Storage Regulation, which provides for flexibility in difficult market conditions. The EU requires member countries to maintain gas reserves at 90 percent of capacity by the winter — a measure brought in after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But this year’s colder-than-average winter depleted those reserves to an average of under 30 percent as of March, the lowest since 2022. Anxiety has been growing in Brussels over whether the conflict in Iran, coupled with already low gas reserves, could spark a fight among countries over dwindling global energy supplies. Jørgensen said that the EU’s gas supplies remain “relatively protected” since the bloc only has “limited reliance” on gas imports from the region. But as a “net importer” of gas globally, “high and volatile global prices may also impact the EU gas storage injections,” he said. As developments in Iran and the wider region are “are significantly impacting global oil and gas markets,” there are indications that it could take longer for Qatari gas production to return to pre-crisis levels, Jørgensen said. The commissioner said he would support countries to make use of the allowed flexibilities, which should be discussed with the European Commission and other member states before being implemented. A Commission spokesperson confirmed that the letter was sent to energy ministers.

U.S. sanctions on some Iranian oil will be temporarily lifted to allow the sale of shipments already in transit, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Friday. The partial pause on sanctions is intended to help ease what the Trump administration sees as a short-term shock to the global market as a result of the attack on Iran launched by the U.S. and Israel three weeks ago. Bessent said in a social media post that the U.S. is granting a short-term authorization to allow the sale of about 140 million barrels of Iranian oil in transit. “In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against Tehran to keep the price down as we continue Operation Epic Fury,” he said. Oil prices have spiked to more than $100 per barrel since the U.S. launched airstrikes on Iran last month, triggering a rise in gas prices. Israeli strikes on Iran’s vast offshore gas field and Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical trade passage that facilitates a significant share of the world’s oil and natural gas trade, have helped drive the increases. The sales have been authorized for 30 days, according to a copy of the general license issued by the Treasury Department on Friday. The announcement marks a partial reversal of the longstanding aggressive economic pressure campaign by the U.S. intended to weaken Iran’s economy, though Bessent said the country would have “difficulty accessing any revenue generated” from the sales. “The United States will continue to maintain maximum pressure on Iran and its ability to access the international financial system,” he added. Trump appeared to acknowledge he was aware that entering a war with Iran could cause oil prices to spike, even as he touted the success of the U.S. military operation and the strength of the economy. “I expected it worse actually,” he told reporters at the White House on Friday. “I thought that oil prices would go much higher.” Bessent said he’s confident the suspension of sanctions on Iran will benefit the U.S. economy in the long run. “Any short-term disruption now will ultimately translate into longer-term economic gains for Americans — because there is no prosperity without security,” he said. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in response that the easing of sanctions gives the Iranian government “a financial lifeline” as Americans “continue to feel the impact” of the war. “To say the president has no plan is an understatement,” Shaheen said.

BRUSSELS ― Two wars on Europe’s doorstep loomed over a 12-hour summit of EU leaders ― and for very different reasons they found themselves paralyzed rather than able to do much about either. Rarely has the bloc’s inability to take a lead on international affairs been so obvious. Between Germany’s Friedrich Merz, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni ― heads of three of the world’s top 10 economies ― and the other 24 in attendance, they could only look the other way, squabble with each other, or offer little but words as the bombing, missile-firing and killing continued. “In these very troubled moments in which we are living, more than ever it’s decisive to uphold the international rules-based order,” European Council President  António Costa, who chaired the gathering in Brussels, told reporters. “The alternative is chaos. The alternative is the war in Ukraine. The alternative is the war in the Middle East.” And that speech was about as far as it went. As Tehran pounded its neighbors, disrupting Europe’s energy supplies, Kyiv attacked Russian factories repairing military planes, and Donald Trump in Washington joked about the Pearl Harbor attack alongside the Japanese prime minister, European leaders used their talks to tinker with the bloc’s carbon permit scheme, the Emissions Trading System. It’s not a wholly unrelated matter to the global energy shock, but hardly an issue where the continent could demonstrate its geopolitical might. On Iran, leaders found they had little leverage or will to make any significant intervention. On Ukraine, more than four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion ― a conflict where they do have leverage and they do have will ― they were unable to overcome internal divisions to approve sending €90 billion Kyiv’s way. There was “no willingness to get involved across the table” on the Iran conflict, said a senior European government official, granted anonymity like others quoted in this article to discuss the talks behind closed doors. German Chancellor Merz even complained that focusing on Iran risked shifting attention away from measures to boost Europe’s flagging economy — the summit’s original raison d’être before would affairs got in the way — according to three officials. “The world looked very different at Alden Biesen,” an EU official said, referring to last month’s competitiveness-focused meeting in a Belgian castle that was meant to set the stage for this summit. That was before Iran’s war and Ukraine’s funding dilemma, brought about by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán going back on his promise to approve the loan, radically reshaped the agenda. NOT OUR WAR That’s not to say Iran was ignored completely. There was some renewed discussion about sending French warships to protect the Strait of Hormuz, the vital oil transit point that Tehran has effectively shut down by threatening to strike ships, potentially with backing from the U.N. Security Council. “We have begun an exploratory process, and we will see in the coming days if it has a chance of succeeding,” Macron said. But the summit’s final statement stopped short of pledging any new mission, referring only to strengthening existing EU naval operations in the region. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at a press conference at the end of the European Council summit on March 19, 2026 in Brussels. | Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images By the end of the talks, the EU’s leaders reached a sobering conclusion: Europe has little power or inclination to shape events. “Middle East impacts us a lot — but are we a player in the game?” an EU official who was party to the leaders’ discussions asked. “They’re trying to find a place in this debate and we have a lot of statements and positions [but] is there a role for Europeans for solving this process?” Evidently not, according to Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, who warned leaders that “starting war is like a love affair — it’s easy to get in and difficult to get out,” according to two diplomats briefed on her remarks. Translation: This is not Europe’s war — and it’s not going to be. The EU was left with doing “what we always do,” an EU official said, writing “nice statements.” BURNING GAS FIELDS Europe already angered U.S. President Trump earlier this week when its top envoys rejected his call to secure the Strait of Hormuz. The summit’s final conclusions leaned heavily on familiar calls for “de-escalation” and “restraint,” without proposing concrete action, sticking to that earlier position. That’s despite Qatar warning Thursday it would not be able to fulfill its liquefied natural gas contracts with Belgium and Italy after Iran directed its wrath — and its ballistic missiles — over U.S.-Israeli strikes at the Gulf country, knocking out almost a fifth of its LNG export capacity. Yet rather than grapple head-on with the rapidly expanding energy shock, Europe’s leaders spent hours debating the bloc’s climate policy, including its ETS, which a group of countries are eager to reform. “To say ETS is the biggest issue when big gas fields are burning is a bit weird,” an EU official said. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the consequences of the war extended far beyond the Middle East, adding its most “immediate impact” was on energy supply and prices. She announced a slate of emergency measures to lower costs, from lowering taxes to boosting investment in ETS. ‘JUST CRAZY’ If anything, the summit exposed where the wars in Iran and Ukraine overlap. In what could be his final EU gathering after 16 years if he loses next month’s election, Hungary’s Orbán slammed Europe’s approach to the unfolding energy crisis. “The behavior and the strategy that the Europeans have here is just crazy,” he said — adding the EU needed to buy Russian oil to “survive.” Orbán has blocked a €90 billion EU loan to Kyiv because of a dispute about a damaged pipeline carrying Russian oil through Ukraine to Hungary and other central European countries. For that reason, the bloc was similarly unable to offer much more than assurances on the Ukraine war either. Orbán maintained his opposition on Thursday and even won the sympathy of Meloni, who told leaders she understood his position. As frustration inside the room boiled over, many leaders sharply criticized the Hungarian premier, according to Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. “I have never heard such hard-hitting criticism of anyone, ever,” he told reporters during a break in the talks. Merz concurred that leaders were “deeply upset” at Orbán. “I am firmly convinced that this will leave a lasting mark,” he said. But the pressure from his peers failed to sway Orbán and questions of the EU loan will roll on to another summit next month ― by which time Hungary could have a new leader, or at least an old one not desperate for votes. On Iran and on Ukraine, the EU didn’t get anywhere. Earlier predictions by diplomats that leaders might continue discussions through the night or even reconvene for a second day as the urgency of a world in turmoil forced them to face up to the challenges before them failed to materialize. Things were done and dusted before midnight. After 12 hours of few decisions, leaders were left with little new to tell people back home. “There are many things worrying about this war” in the Middle East, while Orban’s veto of the loan to Kyiv “is still there and we are extremely unhappy about this, and so of course is Ukraine,” Sweden’s Kristersson told reporters upon leaving the summit. And that was that. Zoya Sheftalovich, Nette Nöstlinger, Nicholas Vinocur, Gerardo Fortuna, Gabriel Gavin, Hans von der Burchard, Sonja Rijnen, Zia Weise, Seb Starcevic, Giorgio Leali, Hanne Cokelaere, Ferdinand Knapp, Milena Wälde, Aude van den Hove, Gregorio Sorgi, Koen Verhelst, Victor Jack, Ben Munster, Jacopo Barigazzi and Bartosz Brzezińksi contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday there are “reasonable grounds” to believe both sides in the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran may have committed war crimes, as attacks and retaliatory strikes on energy facilities intensify. Speaking exclusively to POLITICO on a visit to Brussels before Thursday’s European Council summit, Guterres said: “If there are attacks either on Iran or from Iran on energy infrastructure, I think that there are reasonable grounds to think that they might constitute a war crime.”  Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars natural gas field on Wednesday, then Tehran launched a retaliatory strike on a major energy complex in Qatar. Beyond that, Guterres said the growing civilian casualties left both sides in the conflict open to possible war crimes charges. “I don’t see any difference. It doesn’t matter who targets civilians. It is totally unacceptable,” he said. Representatives for the U.S. and Israeli governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Guterres’ remarks. America and Israel began a bombing campaign on Feb. 28, killing Iran’s supreme leader and sparking ongoing retaliatory missile-and-drone attacks from Tehran on sites across the Middle East. Having called for deescalation in the region, Guterres appeared to blame Israel for driving the conflict forward, and called on U.S. President Donald Trump to persuade Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to bring it to an end. “The war needs to stop … and I believe that it is in the hands of the U.S. to make it stop. It is possible [to end the war], but it depends on the political will to do it,” Guterres told host Anne McElvoy for an episode of the EU Confidential podcast publishing Friday morning. “I am convinced that Israel, as a strategy, wants to achieve a total destruction of the military capacity of Iran and regime change. And I believe Iran has a strategy, which is to resist for as much time as possible and to cause as much harm as possible. So the key to solve the problem is that the U.S. decides to claim that they have done their job. “President Trump will be able to convince … those that need to be convinced that the work is done. That the work can end,” Guterres added. The secretary-general also attributed America’s decision to launch strikes on Iran to Israel. “I have no doubt that this was something that corresponds to Israel’s strategy … to draw the United States into a war. That objective was achieved. But this is creating dramatic suffering in Iran, [and] in the region, even in Israel. And it is creating a devastating impact in the global economy and whose consequences are still too early to foresee. So, we absolutely must end this conflict,” he said. But finding an off-ramp might prove difficult, and relations between the U.N. and the Trump administration remain frosty.   Asked if he had spoken with Trump since the conflict began three weeks ago, Guterres responded emphatically: “No, no, no … I speak with those I need to speak to. But this is not a soap opera.” He claimed, however, to have been “in contact with all sides,” including with the Trump administration, since hostilities spread across the Gulf.  “It’s vital for the world at large that this war ends quickly,” Guterres said. “This is indeed spiraling out of control and the recent attacks represent an escalation that is extremely dangerous.” Trump said on his Truth Social site that the U.S. had not authorized the attack by Israel on the South Pars site, and that Israel had “violently lashed out,” raising questions about how much influence the U.S. has over its ally. “My hope is that the United States will be able to understand that this has gone too far,” Guterres said. The conflict was primarily benefitting Russia, Guterres added, with Moscow welcoming the distraction from its own war on Ukraine. “Russia is the biggest beneficiary of the Iran crisis,” Guterres said. “Russia is the country that is gaining more with what’s happening in this horrible disaster. Russia is already the winner.” Meanwhile, European leaders, including U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, have said they won’t be sending ships to the Persian Gulf in response to Trump’s appeal for help to open the Strait of Hormuz. France has said it will only contribute support vessels “when the situation is calmer.” Guterres applauded the restraint shown by the Europeans, despite Trump’s anger at their refusal to actively support the war or help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime artery that Iran has largely sealed off, driving up global energy prices. “I think these countries made their own reading of the situation, and I believe they took a decision not to get too much involved, knowing that the most important objective is the deescalation,” he said. Listen to the full episode of EU Confidential on Friday morning.

BRUSSELS — Europe’s insistence that it doesn’t face an energy supply crisis took a blow Thursday when Qatar warned it would have to scrap contracts with Italy and Belgium following a massive Iranian attack. QatarEnergy CEO Saad al-Kaabi told Reuters on Thursday it would have to cancel long-term liquefied natural gas supply contracts for up to five years after an Iranian ballistic missile knocked out a significant share of its production capacity in the Persian Gulf. The state-owned company, which produces a fifth of the world’s LNG, said the damage could impact deliveries to Italy, Belgium, South Korea and China. “These are long-term contracts that we have to declare force majeure,” al-Kaabi said. On Wednesday Iran bombed the Ras Laffan gas plant in Qatar. The ballistic missile attack, which followed an Israeli attack on Iran’s South Pars gas field, caused “sizeable fires and extensive further damage,” QatarEnergy said in a post on X. The strikes damaged two of Qatar’s 14 liquefied natural gas trains and one gas-to-liquids facility, QatarEnergy said Thursday. The outages will remove around 12.8 million tons of LNG annually from the market, roughly 17 percent of Qatar’s total export capacity and around 3 percent of global supply, for an estimated three to five years. The strikes mark a major escalation in regional tensions. Qatar’s LNG plant had already been offline following a previous drone strike, but the latest damage is expected to significantly prolong the disruption. Gas markets reacted sharply on Thursday, with European futures jumping as much as 35 percent to more than double pre-conflict levels, underscoring the risk of a prolonged supply shock. The outage leaves major buyers in Europe and Asia scrambling to replace lost volumes, raising concerns over energy security and the potential for sustained price pressure as competition for alternative LNG cargoes intensifies. NOTHING TO SEE HERE Earlier on Thursday German Energy Minister Katherina Reiche had downplayed the impact of the war, saying: “What we in Europe don’t have is a physical bottleneck.” She insisted the EU’s gas supplies are still flowing from Norway, the U.S., Kazakhstan and other countries. But Reiche said while she doesn’t believe the current situation is as serious as the 2022 shock following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “the current situation is also causing us concern,” and that it’s critical for Europe to continue to “monitor this crisis and make careful decisions.” Her comments came as EU leaders met for high-level talks in Brussels on Thursday, with energy one of the top issues. In 2022 Germany depended on Russia for more than half of its gas, but now relies on Norway and the Netherlands for the majority, importing some LNG from the U.S. It is not dependent on Qatari LNG. Other EU countries including Poland, Italy and Belgium depend on the Middle East country for a larger percentages of their LNG. Poland said Thursday its gas supplies “are secured,” adding Qatari LNG only accounts for 10 percent of the country’s total gas supply. “[T]his volume can be gradually supplemented with supplies from other sources, if necessary,” said Grzegorz Łaguna, a spokesperson for Poland’s Ministry of Energy. “Deliveries for March are being made, and there is currently no information indicating any significant risks to meeting current demand for natural gas, including the continued restrictions on supplies from Qatar,” he added. The U.K. government and regulators also played down fears of a supply shock. “The U.K. has very strong energy supplies from a diverse range of sources,” said Energy Minister Michael Shanks on Tuesday. But the country has just two days’ worth of gas supplies currently in storage, according to reports based on National Gas data. U.K. Green Party leader Zack Polanski has demanded the government freeze bills in July, when the cap is set to jump hundreds of pounds. Chancellor Rachel Reeves insists support should be “targeted” only at the poorest families, wanting to avoid a rerun of the eye-watering sums spent by the last government to protect all households and businesses after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. India and China’s reliance on disrupted Middle East gas supplies has already caused price hikes and questions about European gas reserves.  “Geopolitics continue shaping gas and LNG markets, and despite the industry’s large scale, it lacks flexibility to absorb major disruptions, creating market volatility,” said Kristy Kramer, head of LNG strategy and market development at Wood Mackenzie. “How the industry responds to this event will vary, but we expect buyers to prioritise LNG supply security with a renewed focus on diversity.”

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. had no advance knowledge of an Israeli strike on a major Iranian natural gas field that prompted Iran to retaliate against neighboring Qatar and sent oil prices soaring. Even as he distanced the U.S. from the strike on the South Pars gas field, Trump vowed to “massively blow up the entirety of the field” if Iran attacked Qatar again. “The United States knew nothing about this particular attack, and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape, or form, involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen,” he said in a social media post. The president’s response to the attack on the world’s largest gas field, which supplies the vast majority of Iran’s domestic energy demands, appeared to be an unusual acknowledgment of a breakdown in coordination between Israel and the U.S. in the war that the two countries launched with joint strikes on Feb. 28. Trump said Israel struck a “relatively small section” of the natural gas field. He said South Pars would not be targeted in the future unless Iran launches further attacks on Qatar, in which case he threatened to destroy the entire natural gas field. “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field unless Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar – In which instance the United States of America, with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before,” he said. Iran depends heavily on natural gas to produce electricity and heat throughout the country. The natural gas from South Pars fulfills 80 percent of Iran’s natural gas demands.

Hungary is pressing the European Union to suspend tariffs and extra duties on fertilizer imports from Russia and Belarus as the war in Iran threatens to drive up global food prices. Such a move would boost a key source of revenue in funding Moscow’s war of aggression against Ukraine. In a letter to European commissioners on Monday, Hungarian Agriculture Minister István Nagy warned that rising global fertilizer prices and supply uncertainty exacerbated by the war in Iran risk squeezing EU farmers and pushing up food costs. He called for the levies on Russian and Belarusian products to be temporarily reduced to zero, warning that Hungary could face lower crop yields if access to cheaper imports remains restricted. The country produces only nitrogen fertilizers domestically and relies on foreign supplies of phosphorus and potash. The EU tightened duties on fertilizers from Russia and Belarus in 2025 after imports rose in the years following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The increase raised concern that Russia was redirecting gas exports hit by sanctions into fertilizer production to sustain export revenues. Russian shipments to the EU were still worth around €2 billion last year, but volumes fell sharply in early 2026 as the new levies began to bite. Iran’s effective blockage of the Strait of Hormuz is driving up the cost of fertilizer by tying up supplies of both the fuel and raw materials needed to produce it. Budapest is also pushing the EU to relax its ban on Russian gas to ease price pressures — an idea roundly rejected by Brussels.

President Donald Trump may be pledging a quick end to his war on Iran — but the political fallout will persist long after the fighting stops. Trump administration officials are downplaying the spike in oil and gasoline prices resulting from the disruption of crude shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway. “The recent increase in oil and gas prices is temporary, and this operation will result in lower gas prices in the long term,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday, referring to the attacks on Iran. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Monday that price perturbations would last “weeks, not months” as tanker traffic continues snarling in the strait. But analysts say the disruption is already baked into oil and gas prices, threatening to prolong higher gasoline prices further into the midterm elections. Here are five reasons high oil prices might persist: IT’S PHYSICAL The war on Iran has already disrupted the Gulf region’s energy markets so significantly that a quick recovery is no longer possible, said Anas Alhajji, a global energy markets expert. A mounting backlog of tankers on both sides of the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively shut down for more than a week, will take at least two weeks to clear. Then there will need to be a return to oil and gas production in a growing number of Middle Eastern countries that have now been shut down, including Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Some of the damage from Iranian attacks, such as those on Qatar’s natural gas facilities, cannot be easily repaired, he said. “Ending the war does not mean ending the crisis,” Alhajji said. “We have countries that literally shut down production because their storage is full. To bring back that oil to a pre-crisis level takes time. For [liquefied natural gas] in particular, it takes a very long time.” IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO Trump may have started the war — but he doesn’t have the power to unilaterally end it. The Iranians have not publicly stated that they will quickly agree to stop their attacks. In the last week, they have increasingly targeted the region’s energy infrastructure, which could cause a major jump in oil prices and a longer period of uncertainty if they persist. In response to Trump’s comments, Revolutionary Guard spokesperson Ali Mohammad Naini on Tuesday told Iranian state media that “Iran will determine when the war ends.” Iranian officials are keenly aware of the political pressure Trump faces at home as long as gas prices at the pump remain elevated. Iran’s foreign minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, said the spike in global oil prices showed that the regime would not capitulate if the U.S. and Israel continued to target oil infrastructure. “9 days into Operation Epic Mistake, oil prices have doubled while all commodities are skyrocketing,” he wrote on X. “We know the U.S. is plotting against our oil and nuclear sites in hopes of containing huge inflationary shock. Iran is fully prepared. And we, too, have many surprises in store.” IT COULD GET WORSE On Tuesday, evidence emerged that Iran was beginning to place mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a significant escalation that greatly could complicate efforts to resume the 20 percent of daily global energy shipments that traverse the region, CBS News reported. The potential mining of the strait, along with all of the damage to infrastructure and stalled production, means it could be a long time before the energy markets return to normal, said Rory Johnston, an oil analyst who writes the newsletter “Commodity Context.” “This crisis will continue to get worse until normal traffic through the Strait resumes, and, at this stage, even if the conflict ended today and tankers ramped back up to 100% Hormuz flow, it would still take months to return to anything resembling normality,” he wrote on X. The longer the strait is effectively closed, the greater the chance the world tips toward a “deep recession,” said Greg Priddy, an expert on energy market disruption who worked at the U.S. Energy Information Administration in the George W. Bush administration. He said it would take more than a month to get back to normal if the war were to stop today, but that there will not be “normal tanker traffic as long as Iran has weapons to throw at tankers.” Priddy, who is now a senior fellow at the conservative Center for the National Interest, said keeping the current volume off the market for another seven weeks would cause a major global economic contraction so severe that it would create “probably the worst recession that anyone has seen since the 1930s.” IT’S NOT JUST MINES The attacks on energy infrastructure from Iran and potentially other groups are widening by the day and have the potential to create lasting damage. On Wednesday, Iran attacked and destroyed a major oil storage facility in Oman. Three ships were hit near the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, including a Thai-flagged container vessel that the Iranian government took credit for attacking because it was “illegally insisting on passing through the Strait of Hormuz.” On Wednesday, Trump told reporters that oil tankers should start transiting the narrow opening despite the risks. “I think they should use the strait,” Trump said. “Look, we took out just about all of their mine ships in one night.” Democratic senators who attended a classified briefing on the war Tuesday said the administration has no plan to reopen the strait. “Right now, they don’t know how to get it safely back open,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy wrote on X. “Which is unforgiveable, because this part of the disaster was 100% foreseeable.” IT’S NOT JUST IRAN While the administration is threatening the Iranian government with severe consequences if they attack ships moving through the strait, they are not the only hostile actors in the region that can effectively block the shipping route. There are multiple splinter groups in the region that are not affiliated with the Iranian government but who are incensed that their leader has been killed and want revenge, noted Alhajji, the energy market expert. The late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was not just the leader of Iran, but also for Shia muslims in general, and had supporters across the region, including in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Pakistan, Afghanistan and more, he noted. That has created a wider network of groups that are willing to attack oil interests in the region, he said, and there is evidence that they may already be preparing attacks. Cheap drones could be used to damage multimillion-dollar oil tankers. “They are angry because their leader got killed,” Alhajji said. “The technology in the last 15 years has advanced to the extent that to cause multimillion-dollar damage with $500 is very possible.”

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron said France wants to set up military escorts for container ships and tankers into the Strait of Hormuz “as soon as possible,” though he cautioned such an operation can’t get underway until the fighting in the Middle East subsides. The disruption of maritime traffic in the strategic chokepoint, through which about 20 percent of the world’s crude passes each day, has sent oil prices skyrocketing in recent days. Macron said the potential mission would be a “purely defensive mission” including both European and non-European states. Macron told reporters at a military base in Cyprus that he discussed the potential mission with his Greek and Cypriot counterparts, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Nikos Christodoulides. Macron’s visit to Cyprus Monday comes after the island suffered drone attacks last week following the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran that plunged the region into conflict. “When Cyprus is attacked, it is Europe that is attacked,” Macron said as he pledged to uphold Franco-Cypriot defense agreements. France has already sent air defenses to Cyprus and deployed its only aircraft carrier to the region. Macron said France was looking to “take a strictly defensive stance alongside all countries that are under attack from Iran” and “contribute to regional deescalation.” Cyprus’ Christodoulides also said that Nicosia would not engage ⁠in any military operations ⁠but would instead focus ‌on a humanitarian role. Mitsotakis said “freedom of navigation” was “under attack” and said Europe should prepare to “deal with other asymmetric threats, such as large migration flows.” Nektaria Stamouli contributed to this report.