Vice President JD Vance told Fox News last week that the U.S.-Iran deadlock persists and the U.S. will maintain its blockade on Iran indefinitely, but keeping gas prices low is now the administration's top priority.
"That's goal No. 1: keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over our country," the vice president said on "The Will Cain Show" Thursday. He added, "Obviously, goal No. 2 is ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon," which had been the Trump administration's top goal.
Gary Bauer, who chairs the Campaign for Working Families, says, "This could have been a lot worse if it hadn't been for Trump's previous actions."
"Even though it's not as bad as it could be, it's worse than it should have been because Joe Biden drained our oil reserve and then never replenished it," Bauer continues. "We are taking less oil out of the oil reserve than we should have been able to take out, but we can't take out any more than the current rate because it's getting dangerously low."
U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) holds 298.69 million barrels of crude oil as of August 7, 2026, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This marks the first time inventories have fallen below 300 million barrels since the early 1980s, representing roughly 41.8% of the storage site's total authorized capacity of 714 million barrels.
Meanwhile, the relationship between U.S. foreign policy and oil prices has long been politically contentious.
In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved Operation Ajax, which overthrew Iran's democratically elected prime minister. Critics and historians have long argued the intervention was driven by a desire to secure Western access to Iranian oil and prevent Soviet influence.
Gasoline prices jumped sharply in 1973, when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries cut production and banned exports to the U.S. The embargo caused U.S. crude oil prices to nearly quadruple from about $2.90 to $11.65 per barrel.
In the 1991 Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush drew widespread accusations of fighting a "war for oil" when he deployed military forces to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
In the 2003 Iraq War, President George W. Bush's administration was heavily criticized for invading Iraq.
U.S. presidents have frequently been accused of intervening in the Middle East to secure oil supplies, but now, as voters prepare to make their decisions in the upcoming midterm elections, Bauer likens the political impact of gas prices to a baseball game in which fans blame the manager for a pitcher's poor performance.
"I can counter all those beliefs, but if that's what they believe, they often say that I want a different pitcher brought in," he poses.
Bauer says voters rarely spend enough time examining the issues to understand why voting for Democrats
"is a bad idea."
"Folks just don't process the intricacies of the oil market or which party can cure inflation," he laments.
