Trump Says We Don’t Need Middle East’s Oil But War Will Continue

Now that the situation in Iran is thoroughly complex—enough that it could take months or even years to solve, according to some analysts—Donald Trump is attempting to convince the nation that America doesn’t need Iran, the Middle East, or the Strait of Hormuz at all.

Per Trump’s speech Wednesday night, the $25 billion sum spent on the war thus far has instead been in an attempt to “help our allies.”

“We’re now totally independent of the Middle East, and yet we are there to help,” Trump said. “We don’t have to be there. We don’t need their oil. We don’t need anything they have. But we’re there to help our allies.”

Beyond the nickels and dimes, the war has cost the lives of more than 1,937 people in Iran, including dozens of political leaders, according to Al Jazeera. At least 13 U.S. soldiers have also been killed in the war, and more than 300 have been wounded. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Monday that the conflict would be resolved in the coming weeks, though military officials have indicated that the war could rage for months or even years.

Even before Trump initiated American involvement in the war, Iran—and the Middle East at large—accounted for less than 10 percent of U.S. oil imports. Most of America’s oil, approximately 60 percent of it, comes from Canada.

But the price per barrel has nonetheless shot up, particularly after Iran sealed off the Strait of Hormuz, which serves as the single most important energy transit point in the world. (Oil prices are set globally, not by the individual countries that export it.) Situated between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, the strait funnels approximately one-fifth of all crude oil shipments.

Most of that oil would head toward China or India. In 2024, the U.S. imported roughly 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the strait, accounting for about 7 percent of total U.S. crude imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

On Tuesday, gas prices surpassed $4 a gallon across the nation for the first time since 2022, but Trump’s speech late Wednesday made the matter even worse. Several comments made by the president about potentially escalating the war rattled the markets, sending the price of oil surging by 13 percent.

Trump attributed the preceding increase in oil prices to the “Iranian regime launching deranged terror attacks against commercial oil tankers and neighboring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict.” He then promised to “hit” Iran “extremely hard.”

The White House mistakenly uploaded Donald Trump’s remarks at an Easter lunch, which was supposed to be closed to the press, to YouTube Wednesday, before realizing its error and making the link private.

In the speech, which Business Insider’s Bryan Metzger uploaded to X in full, Trump fantasizes about being a king, admits there’s no money left for health care or childcare because of the war he started, and daydreams about seizing all of Iran’s oil.

“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They’ll have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up,” Trump said. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection.

“I can’t get a ballroom approved. It’s pretty amazing, right?” Trump also said in the speech. “If I was a king, we’d be doing a lot more. I’m doing a lot, but I could be doing a lot more if I was a king.”

Trump went on to lament that it’s “unfortunate” that Americans don’t have the “patience” to take Iran’s oil.

“We could just take their oil. But, you know, I’m not sure that the people in our country have the patience to do that, which is unfortunate. You know, they want to see it end. If we stayed there, I, you know, I’d prefer just to take the oil. We could do it so easily. I would prefer that, but people in the country sort of say, ‘Just win, you’re winning so big. Just win, come home,’” Trump said in the speech.

Trump also mentioned his address to the country to take place later that evening, saying to the audience, “Tonight I’m making a little speech at 9 o’clock and basically I’m gonna tell everybody how great I am.”

The whole speech seems to be an insight into what Trump actually thinks but isn’t willing to say to the broader public. But the American people deserve to know what the president thinks about them and their needs, even if it’s not very much.

The death of a blind Rohingya refugee who was abandoned by Border Patrol agents in a parking lot has been ruled a homicide, the Investigative Post reported Wednesday.

The Erie County Medical Examiner’s autopsy report, released Wednesday, suggested that the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam was the result of negligence from Border Patrol agents after he “was placed into a hostile environment that he could not reasonably be expected to extricate himself.” Shah Alam, 56, was a blind Burmese refugee who spoke no English.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed that the Tim Hortons in Buffalo where federal agents left Shah Alam was “determined to be a warm, safe location near his last known address.” Video footage reviewed by the Investigative Post, however, showed that the location, which was miles away from his home, had already closed for the night, except for the drive-thru.

The Border Patrol agents drove away after one minute. Shah Alam was found dead days later.

The Medical Examiner’s office said that Shah Alam suffered from a burst ulcer in his small intestine that was precipitated by hypothermia and dehydration.

It was unclear whether Shah Alam had first developed the ulcer before or after he was taken into custody more than a year ago, and charged with trespassing and misdemeanor possession of a weapon. The blind refugee was lost on a walk and using a curtain rod as a walking stick that police alleged he was “swinging in a menacing manner.” He was tased, beaten, and arrested.

Terrence Connors, the attorney representing Shah Alam’s wife and sons, said that he intended to file a lawsuit on the family’s behalf.

“Now that we have the medical evidence and the cause of death, we will look into the filing of the necessary documents to hold the individuals and the entities responsible for his death,” he said.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said Erie County District Attorney Michael Keane announced Wednesday that they had opened an investigation into Shah Alam’s death.

“As more details of this case emerge, I want to be crystal clear: Every individual involved in the death of Mr. Shah Alam must be held fully accountable,” Hochul said. “To ensure a fair and impartial investigation, the Erie County District Attorney must continue his investigation and, if warranted by the evidence, prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James also opened an inquiry into Shah Alam’s death targeting the Erie County Sheriff’s Office, from where Shah Alam was released after Border Patrol determined that his charges did not render him removable. They should have returned him to the holding center where sheriff’s deputies could contact his family to retrieve him, but the holding center called Border Patrol instead.

The United States and Israel bombed the home of Iran’s former Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, killing his wife and leaving him “gravely wounded,” according to Iranian media.

Kharazi has been seen as a potential peace negotiator in the current conflict given his role as head of Iran’s Foreign Policy Council. Two Iranian officials said Kharazi was attempting to assemble a meeting with U.S. Vice President JD Vance, according to The New York Times, leading many within the Iranian government to believe that the attack was meant to derail peace talks. Did Israel push the button while the U.S. stood by, allowing them to drag out this deadly war? Or is the United States lying about peace talks to locate and assassinate any of the Iranian leaders still willing to negotiate?

“Targeting Kharazi sure looks like an effort to undermine peace talks and prolong the war,” The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristoff wrote Thursday on X. “It would be good to know if the attack was American or Israeli, and if Israeli whether the Americans signed off on it.”

Kharazi was complaining about this lack of diplomatic transparency on Western media just last month.

“Trump had been deceiving others and not keeping with his promises, and we experienced this in two times of negotiations—that while we were engaged in negotiation, they struck us,” he told CNN.

The U.S. and Israel have now killed multiple Iranian state leaders, nearly 2,000 Iranian civilians, and over 1,200 Lebanese civilians.

Two more members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet could soon be on their way out.

The president is reportedly considering axing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Trump has polled his top advisers about the duo’s fate, asking other Cabinet officials in recent weeks whether he should give them the boot.

His gripe with Gabbard relates to her decision to shield a former deputy who disagreed with Trump’s war with Iran, people briefed on the discussions told The Guardian. It’s not clear if Gabbard will actually be fired, or who could possibly replace her.

Meanwhile, Bondi’s administrative future is apparently on the fritz due to her handling of the Epstein files. Trump has been “frustrated” with her leadership at the Justice Department, and is considering tapping Lee Zeldin—the current administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency—to replace her.

Yet Trump is still opting to publicly display his confidence in Bondi. The duo traveled to the Supreme Court together Wednesday for the court’s birthright citizenship case (something that no sitting president has ever done), and Trump chose to heap praise on Bondi’s performance when asked about the situation by The New York Times.

“Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job,” Trump said in a statement to the Times.

In comparison to his first administration—which was practically a revolving door for the president’s underlings—Trump has been much more sparing with his staffers over the past year. Still, Bondi and Gabbard would not be the first officials from Trump’s second term to receive a pink slip from the Oval Office.

Trump axed Kristi Noem from her position atop the Department of Homeland Security last month, immediately following a string of abysmal appearances before Congress. Her position among the higher echelons of the Trump administration had become increasingly tenuous in recent months due to a series of scandals, though most notably after ICE agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, marring Trump’s immigration agenda—a chief MAGA priority—in the process.