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Mojtaba Khamenei will be the new supreme leader of Iran, succeeding his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed as part of the U.S.-Israeli offensive on the country. Khamenei ruled the country from 1989 until his death this year.
President Donald Trump initially framed the strikes on Iran as an opportunity for Iranians to retake their government from the Islamist regime, which has ruled the country since its 1979 revolution. But he has since softened his tone, saying he would be comfortable with a religious leader, so long as the regime drops its hostile stance toward the U.S. and Israel.
After a U.S. operation to arrest Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump stayed within the existing regime for a successor. Trump supported Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, over the Venezuelan opposition led by MarĂa Corina Machado.
Can Trump avoid the energy pitfalls that hurt his predecessors?
President Donald Trump said last week that he wasn't too concerned about gas prices going up as the conflict in Iran escalates.
"We figured oil prices would go up, which they will. But they'll also come, they'll come down very fast," Trump told reporters on Air Force One.
But the price of fuel has steadily risen since then, and if prices don't fall soon, the cost of energy could turn into a major political liability.
As energy infrastructure is targeted by the U.S.-Israeli offensive, there's little indication prices might drop in the short term: Dramatic videos emerging from Iran over the weekend showed pillars of fire and black smoke rumbling over Tehran after Israeli strikes hit an oil storage facility in the capital. Iran retaliated by attacking an oil refinery in Haifa, Israel.
Meanwhile, shipping out of the Strait of Hormuz has effectively shut down, choking off the world's most important shipping channel for oil and gas. Major oil-producing states in the Gulf have also been subjected to Iranian retaliatory strikes, and Tehran said it would continue striking American targets in the region.
The U.S. doesn't buy Iranian oil because of its long-standing sanctions against the country. The U.S. also produces more oil than it imports because of innovations in American oil extraction in the past 15 years (you may have heard a thing or two about fracking).
But there is no such thing as true "energy independence" in a globalized oil market, where oil prices anywhere impact oil prices everywhere. The Strait of Hormuz, which is the entryway to the Persian Gulf between Oman and Iran, hosts one-fifth of the world's oil and gas shipping, connecting export terminals in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the rest of the world. Shutting down that chokepoint would cause global prices to skyrocket.
The effects are already apparent. Brent Crude, the global benchmark for oil prices, spiked last week, closing out Friday at more than $92 a barrel and breaking $100 a barrel on Sunday. Back home, gas prices in the U.S. saw their steepest single-day rise last week since 2022, which came after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, warned during an event at Harvard that airfares could jump in response to increased fuel prices. David J. Lynch has more on how the rising fuel costs are impacting the entire supply chain.
That could be bad news for Trump. Affordability remains the main campaign issue going into this year's elections, and even before the fighting in Iran, Americans said they were particularly worried about energy and utility costs. The strikes on Iran are already largely unpopular, with 52 percent of Americans disapproving of Trump's handling of the conflict, according to a flash poll by The Post. Add in rising energy costs, with 48 percent of voters feeling the economy has gotten worse under the president, and we could see considerable political backlash.
The Iranians are aware of the energy sensitivities beyond their borders and appear to be hunkering down after Trump posted a bellicose screed on Truth Social that he was seeking nothing short of complete surrender from Tehran. Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf - speaker of Iran's legislature, the Majles - wrote on X that "If the war continues like this, there'll be neither a way to sell oil nor the capacity to produce it. They're not only burning America's interests but also the interests of the region's countries and the world at the feet of Netanyahu's delusions."
"Mr. Trump's week-long misadventure has already cost the U.S. military $100 billion, in addition to the lives of young soldiers," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a statement. "When markets reopen, that cost will balloon and directly be transferred to ordinary Americans at pumping stations."
Trump appeared to acknowledge the risk and said Friday that he would take action to calm oil prices. But his options are limited, as President Joe Biden quickly learned following the mass sanctioning of Russian oil in 2022.
Fuel prices surged after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that year as U.S. allies tried to pivot away from Russian oil and natural gas, with the average price per gallon of gas breaking $5 in June 2022. Russia was a major energy supplier for much of Western Europe, which led to bipartisan concern in the U.S. that Russia could use its energy dominance to coerce Western Europe during its invasion of Ukraine.
But the Biden administration struggled to fill the gap the lack of Russian oil and gas created in the global market. It tapped heavily into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and even issued waivers for Chevron to export oil out of Venezuela despite sanctions on the country. Fuel prices were one of biggest political liabilities for Democrats, who wound up losing control of both chambers of Congress that year, largely on inflation-related attacks.
"If the Trump administration does not do something to restore confidence in ships traveling through the Strait Hormuz, these prices are going to keep heading up," said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for the pricing app Gas Buddy, told our colleague Evan Halper. "It's starting to feel like 2022 all over."
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve hasn't recovered to its pre-2022 levels; it currently has about 415 million barrels worth of oil. Even if the Trump administration were to completely deplete the reserve (which Trump does not seem intent on doing), it would not be nearly enough to make up for a long-term disruption in the strait. In 2024, the Strait of Hormuz saw roughly 20 million barrels of oil pass through each day.
Trump has also touted Venezuela as a new source of oil after his operation that ousted former president Nicolás Maduro. But Venezuela's oil infrastructure is still largely decrepit from years of corruption and neglect, producing a meager fraction of its historic highs, at just over 700,000 barrels per day last month. It would take years to rebuild Venezuelan infrastructure to scale up exports - and oil majors are skittish about making the investments to do so. Venezuelan oil is also much heavier than Gulf oil, meaning it requires special refineries and would be a poor substitute for oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz.
"Gas prices are up. We have at least six dead Americans, maybe more. We've had our embassy hit in Riyadh. We've had our consulate [attacked] in Dubai. These are really big things," Nate Swanson, who was a senior adviser on Iran in the first Trump and Biden administrations, said on the Foreign Affairs Interview podcast. "It's destabilizing for the U.S., especially as we're entering an election cycle. So I think the Iranians are gambling they can outlast Trump, and there's a decent chance they're right."
Trump appears bullish on forcing a major political shift in Cuba, telling a group of Latin American leaders Saturday that the communist regime is "in its last moments of life."
"As we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we're also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba. Cuba's at the end of a line," Trump said. "They have no money. They have no oil. They have a bad philosophy."
Trump used more explicit terms in a phone interview with CNN's Dana Bash, telling her late last week that "Cuba is gonna fall pretty soon, by the way, unrelated, but Cuba is gonna fall, too. They want to make a deal so badly."
"They want to make a deal, and so I'm going to put Marco over there and we'll see how that works out," Trump said, referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long advocated the removal of the Cuban regime.
Trump has vowed to neutralize hostile governments in the Americas, namely Venezuela and Cuba, and has the strong backing of conservative Cuban exiles who've long advocated for the ouster of the current government in Havana. He already dealt a significant blow to Cuba with his operation to arrest its ally Maduro and by freezing Venezuelan oil from reaching Cuba. Cuba was in close economic and political partnership with Venezuela, and the South American country's oil was a major energy lifeline for Havana.
"Daines' little trick is precisely what the Dems would have done, were the situation reversed. They're probably just miffed about not being the first to think of it," Lillebo said. "We, like every party-based political system, have come to expect every disgusting trick that can be devised (just short of being illegal) in the parties' fight for power. We need to get back to the intended system, where the representatives actually try to represent their district, not the party bosses."
Democrats did pull a similar maneuver last year. Rep. JesĂşs "Chuy" GarcĂa (D-Illinois) dropped out of his reelection shortly before the filing deadline, giving his chief of staff a glide path to the seat. The House voted on a bipartisan basis to denounce the move.
A few of you thought it was wrong of the Montana Democratic Party not to back independent candidate Seth Bodnar, who is running against Alme. The state Democratic Party's rules do not allow it to support independent candidates, which Patricia Rennau found "utter shortsightedness."
"One sure way to lose voter interest is to put party over a qualified candidate," Rennau wrote.
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