A temporary U.S.-Iran ceasefire sparked a broad relief rally across assets on Wednesday, but experts warned that any deal concerning lasting peace will be complicated by a major trust deficit.

The ceasefire came following hastened diplomatic efforts led by Pakistan and just hours before Trump’s threatened deadline for wiping out the entire Iranian civilization, briefly pulling the region back from the brink of a massive military bombardment.

Oil prices cooled to below $100 per barrel following the ceasefire announcement, but remain far above the pre-war levels of around $70 per barrel.

While U.S. President Donald Trump said the two-week ceasefire was contingent on the “complete, immediate, and safe opening” of the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian officials stated that safe passage through the strait would be “possible,” subject to coordination with its armed forces and “technical limitations” — caveats that may give Iran some room to define compliance on its own terms.

“This is a problem that could derail the ceasefire later this year,” said Matt Gertken, chief geopolitical strategist at BCA Research, warning that the coordination requirement remains a risky ambiguity in both sides’ statements so far.

Trump may temporarily accept Iran as a gatekeeper — with U.S. midterm elections approaching and gasoline prices sharply higher than before the war — but after the election, the U.S. national security establishment will start to demand a more permanent solution,” said Gertken. “Fighting will ignite later this year, if not later this month.”

Tehran also said that its armed forces will cease defensive operations if attacks against Iran are halted. After the ceasefire came into effect at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday, missiles were still launched from Iran towards Israel and several Gulf states.

The reprieve on Tuesday would allow some time for the two sides to reach a longer agreement to end the six-week-old war, which has killed thousands of people and sparked a global energy crisis, with their delegations expected to meet in Islamabad on Friday.

Iran is reportedly finalizing a joint maritime protocol with Oman to institutionalize coordinated management of tanker traffic through the strait, which could embed Iranian authority over the crucial energy artery into a standing bilateral agreement.

Israel agreed to suspend strikes but urged Washington to press for deeper Iranian concessions, including the surrender of enriched uranium stockpiles. In its 10-point terms, Iran requested Washington to accept its uranium enrichment program and the lifting of all sanctions.

The ceasefire will likely hold in the near term, given the economic costs accruing to the global economy from six weeks of conflict, said Michael Langham, emerging markets economist at Aberdeen Investments. “Parties with vested interest in stopping the conflict and reopening the strait will double down on efforts to find a compromise,” he said.

If the truce holds and the strait reopens, the global economic damage should prove manageable, Langham added. Central banks could broadly resume their pre-conflict paths — and attention may shift from inflation to growth, if commodity prices normalize quickly, he added.

The ceasefire sparked a relief rally in markets amid repricing for a de-escalation in the conflict, but investors will watch for something more durable than a two-week pause, Geoff Yu, senior market strategist at BNY, said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Wednesday.

“What the market is going to start pricing ahead is a first step towards further de-escalation and perhaps something more permanent,” he said, flagging that the disruption has extended beyond crude oil to commodities such as helium, critical to semiconductor manufacturers in South Korea and Taiwan.

“The hard part is done,” President Donald Trump said in his address to the nation Wednesday night about the Iran war. The recent jump in gas prices is “short term increase” that should “will rapidly come back down” once the vital Strait of Hormuz is reopened, he said.

But there is reason to worry that the conflict and its economic consequences for Americans may get worse before they get better. If so, Trump will struggle to shake off the damaging political legacy of the war.

In that he would join a long line of U.S. presidents going back to the 1970s who have seen their tenures defined by energy crisis and inflation — the economic scourge Trump has called a “nation-buster.” 

“The oil shock of the ’70s was planted in the maybe subterranean part of our brains,” said Jay Hakes, a presidential historian who led the U.S. Energy Information Administration in the 1990s during the Clinton administration. 

“It was there for a long time because it was just such a jolt. And I think this will be that kind of jolt,” Hakes said.

Gas prices on Tuesday rose above $4 a gallon on average for the first time since the war began. Gas has followed Brent crude prices that have risen 27% since the war began to just over $100 a barrel Wednesday. Oil tankers and other commercial shippers that would normally travel through the narrow Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s southern coast have been idled due to Iran’s threats and attacks. The waterway normally carries 20% of the world’s oil. 

But $4 a gallon gas, painful as it is, may only be the tip of the iceberg. That is clearer in the rest of the world than the U.S., for now. The U.K. is set to receive its last shipment of jet fuel for the foreseeable future this week. Prices of jet fuel worldwide are up 96%, according to Platts data published by the International Air Transport Association. Futures contracts for liquid natural gas in Japan and South Korea are up 43%, according to FactSet data. 

Asia and to a lesser extent Europe are more immediately exposed to disruptions in supply from the Strait of Hormuz. Unlike the U.S. — as Trump has repeatedly pointed out — they buy directly from the Middle East. But all of these commodities are connected through global markets. Disruptions in one part of the world will quickly spread to others. Analysts fear the price of oil could jump above the record near $150 a barrel set in July 2008 during the Great Recession.

So far, the world has benefited from energy supplies that were already in transit when the war began just over a month ago, aided by emergency releases from strategic petroleum reserves. But the world is burning through those supplies. 

“With even the modest estimates we have now, the loss of oil in April will be twice the loss of oil in March,” International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol said on a podcast released Wednesday.

Governments around the world are trying to encourage energy conservation in the face the crisis. A tracker from the IEA shows 26 governments have taken steps such as Pakistan lowering the speed limit.

Trump has taken steps to encourage the market to improve supply but has stopped short of calling on Americans to try to conserve energy. Doing so might call back uncomfortable comparisons to President Jimmy Carter’s attempts after the 1979 crisis, which began with the Iranian Revolution. Ronald Reagan turned Carter’s calls for consumers to limit themselves into a potent political weapon, winning him the presidency the next year. 

And Trump has spent part of his terms in the White House calling for limits on construction of and subsidies for renewable energy production.

The politics of energy have taken a toll on the nation. “We’ve lost our ability to ask the American public to sacrifice,” Hakes said. 

Before Carter, presidents — including Republicans — called on a need for shared sacrifice. President Richard Nixon proposed a national speed limit of 55 miles per hour following the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973. It was passed into law the next year, but even before that Nixon urged people to slow down, “and they did,” Hakes said. 

“We still had a little bit of the World War II mentality,” Hakes said. 

The energy crises of the 1970s put the nail in the coffin of that mentality. Nixon and Carter struggled to lower prices, and inflation surged. Carter put Paul Volcker in place as Federal Reserve chair to tackle inflation — which he eventually did, but only by raising interest rates high enough to prompt a recession, followed by record-high mortgage rates. Carter, of course, wasn’t re-elected.

Americans’ sense of what government can and should do was permanently changed.

“The failure of the nation’s politicians to address the energy crisis contributed to the erosion of faith that Americans had in their government to solve the problems,” Princeton University historian Meg Jacobs wrote in “Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s.”

“If the Vietnam war and Watergate scandal taught Americans that their presidents lied, the energy crisis showed them that their government didn’t work,” Jacobs wrote.

Today, Trump’s premise as president is that government only works when he is in charge. “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,” he said at the 2016 Republican National Convention. He has centralized control of the executive branch in the Oval Office, drawing power from cabinet secretaries and agencies that previously operated autonomously. 

The worst-case worries may not come to pass. The U.S. could quickly force Iran to capitulate, and the global economy could heal fast, as it did after the shock of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But if not, Trump’s decision to go to war in Iran may only deepen many Americans’ alienation from their government. And as the sole decider atop the federal bureaucracy, Trump will have a difficult time convincing the public that anyone but him bears responsibility. 

A trio of European energy CEOs has sounded a warning over energy supplies, amid the ongoing conflict in Iran and restricted access through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.

Amid volatile trade, crude prices have surged around 40% in recent weeks, at one point approaching $120 a barrel as investors raised concerns over a potential lack of supply.

Those concerns have been felt particularly in Asian countries so far, with the Philippines announcing an energy emergency, while South Korea says it is preparing for “worst-case scenarios.”

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has asked the International Energy Agency to consider an additional release from global crude stockpiles, with the global energy watchdog having already coordinated the release of 400 million barrels of oil amongst member countries.

Japan will release national stockpiles on Thursday, with Takaichi confirming Tokyo will access the IEA stockpiles toward the end of the month.

But now there are fears the supply concerns will move westward.

“South Asia was first to get that brunt. That’s moved to Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and then more so into Europe as we get into April,” Shell CEO Wael Sawan said at CERAWeek in Houston, Texas.

Sawan warned governments not to take actions that could magnify the impact of supply disruptions, adding that you cannot have “national security without energy security.”

Governments across Europe have already started introducing measures to shield households from rising energy costs.

Slovenia became the first country in Europe to introduce fuel rationing, Spain approved a 5-billion-euro ($5.8 billion) aid package, which included tax reductions on electricity and gas, as well as subsidies for transport operators, farmers and for the purchase of fertilizers.

European Union leaders have also discussed temporary measures to mitigate the impact of rising energy prices.

TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné said the current oil products market is “dislocated,” telling CNBC that this is why “you see the impact in many countries, in Europe, on the gasoline price, diesel price, people being very unhappy.”

Supply measures alone won’t be enough to mitigate “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market” amid an escalating conflict in the Middle East, the International Energy Agency warned on Friday.

Instead of waiting for disrupted production to recover, lowering demand could ease pressure on consumers and help bring prices down more quickly.

Minimizing road and air transport, working from home where possible, and switching to electric cooking could significantly help cushion the shock for consumers, the agency said.

Heightened geopolitical risk has rattled traders, sending not only crude prices higher but also sharply increasing costs for refined products such as diesel and jet fuel, which directly impact transportation, logistics and consumer prices.

Oil prices have surged more than 40% since the start of the U.S.-Iran war on Feb. 28, reaching their highest levels since 2022 as supply has been severely disrupted, mostly due to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. 

The strait is a narrow maritime corridor off Iran’s coast that connects the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman and normally carries about a fifth of global oil consumption. 

Countries have already begun tapping strategic petroleum reserves, with hundreds of millions of barrels slated for release. 

The IEA last week agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil to address the supply disruption triggered by the Iran war — the largest such action in the organization’s history — without providing a timeline for when the stocks would enter the market. 

“Addressing demand is a critical and immediate tool to reduce pressure [on] consumers by improving affordability and supporting energy security,” the IAE said Friday, as it laid out a range of measures that can be taken by households and businesses to lower demand.

Among the most impactful steps are encouraging remote work where possible, increasing carpooling and public transit use, and cutting back on non-essential air travel.

Measures focus primarily on road transport, which accounts for around 45% of global oil demand.

Working from home where possible reduces fuel demand for commuting, while lowering speed limits, shifting from private cars to public transport, and alternating private vehicle access in cities, could further reduce congestion and fuel consumption, the agency said. 

Measures to shift liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) use away from transport and towards essential applications like cooking can also help keep prices lower, as can adopting alternative clean cooking solutions that reduce reliance on LPG.

Countries are also looking to fiscal measures to ease the pressure on consumers and prevent sharp rises in fuel prices that could add to inflationary pressures.

Spain is planning to reduce the value-added-tax (VAT) on fuel to 10% from 21%, according to a local media report citing sources familiar with the matter. The government will also eliminate a 5% tax on electricity, according to the report. 

Italy on Wednesday cut excise duties on fuel, while Germany’s finance ministry has said it is looking at ways to shield consumers from rising fuel prices, such as introducing a windfall tax on oil companies. 

Early Friday, international Brent crude futures with May delivery rose 1.3% to $109.93 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures with April delivery traded largely flat at $96.20.

— CNBC’s Sam Meredith contributed to this report

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday warned that if Iran continued targeting Qatar’s energy facilities, America would “massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field.”

Tehran has attacked a key energy facility in Qatar after Israel bombed the South Pars Gas in Iran, signaling a sharp escalation in the conflict and sending energy prices soaring.

Qatar said Wednesday that Iranian missiles caused “extensive damage” at Ras Laffan Industrial City, home to the largest liquefied natural gas, or LNG, export facility in the world.

Trump also denied any prior knowledge of Israel attacking South Pars, pushing back against reports that the strike was coordinated with and approved by his administration.

In a social media post Wednesday night stateside, Trump said that “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.”

Trump also urged Israel to end attacks on the South Pars gas field, unless Iran “unwisely” decides to attack Qatar. In that case, the U.S. 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.”

The attack on South Pars — the world’s largest natural gas reserve, shared between Iran and Qatar — marked the first time Israel has targeted Iranian natural gas production infrastructure since the conflict began on Feb. 28.

Iran has fired ballistic missiles at Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, with ​QatarEnergy saying the attack had caused “extensive damage” warranting deployment of emergency response teams to contain fires at the site. No casualties were reported.

Separately, Reuters reported Thursday that the U.S. government was considering deploying thousands of U.S. forces to the Middle East, raising the prospect of further escalation.

As tensions spiral, world leaders are scrambling to contain the Middle East conflict amid fears of deepening the turmoil in global energy markets.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul on Wednesday warned of a “crisis of the gravest order” if global supply chains continued to be disrupted, calling for a path toward de-escalation and a cessation of hostilities once U.S. and Israeli military objectives are achieved, according to local media reports.

The United Arab Emirates called the targeting of energy facilities linked to the South Pars field in Iran a “serious escalation,” posing “a direct threat to global energy security” with severe environmental repercussions.

The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs also called Iran’s targeting of its Habshan gas facility and Bab field a “terrorist attack,” risking a “dangerous escalation.”

Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari described the Israeli strike on South Pars as “a dangerous and irresponsible step” amid escalating regional tensions.

The Gulf nation has declared Iranian military and security attachés and their staff at the Iranian embassy in Doha “persona non grata,” ordering them to leave the country within 24 hours.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud also appeared to toughen the tone, reportedly saying that “what little trust there was before with Iran has completely been shattered.” Both political and non-political responses to Iran remain on the table, he added.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Wednesday threatened to escalate hostilities by targeting oil and gas facilities in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.

In a post on X, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian condemned the strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure, saying that they “could have uncontrollable consequences, the scope of which could engulf the entire world.”

The attacks on Middle East energy production facilities have further deepened supply disruption triggered by the conflict. Brent crude May futures rose 4% to $111.77 a barrel as of 10:25 p.m. ET , while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures for April climbed over 1.3% to $97.56 per barrel.

Oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — a vital chokepoint for one-fifth of global oil supply and a significant share of LNG exports — has plunged since the war began, with the waterway effectively closed to most commercial shipping.

A fresh wave of attacks on the United Arab Emirates’ energy infrastructure has ramped up concerns over prolonged supply disruptions amid the Iran war.

It comes after the world’s largest ultra-sour gas development was struck by a drone, a fire broke out in the UAE’s Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, and another tanker was hit near the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.

The UAE also reopened its airspace on Tuesday after a brief shutdown following a fire caused by an Iranian drone attack hitting a fuel tank.

Operations at the UAE’s massive Shah gas field remained suspended on Tuesday following a drone attack, which caused a fire at the facility, according to Abu Dhabi authorities. No injuries were reported from the incident.

The Shah gas field is located 180 kilometers southwest of Abu Dhabi and is operated by a joint venture between ADNOC and Occidental Petroleum Corp. It has the capacity to produce 1.28 billion standard cubic feet of gas per day and 4.2 million tons of sulfur per year.

Separately, a drone attack sparked a fire at the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, a critically important hub for the UAE’s crude exports and bunkering operations. The Fujairah government’s media office said on Tuesday that no casualties were reported.

Fujairah, one of the world’s top hubs for storing crude and fuels, is located on the eastern seaboard of the UAE and serves as a key shipping hub for the wider region.

It has faced repeated attacks in recent weeks, underlining the vulnerability of the UAE’s only export route that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz.

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy choke points, has virtually ground to a halt since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Feb. 28. Iran has retaliated by targeting ships trying to pass through the maritime corridor.

Spanning around 248 miles from onshore oil facilities at Habshan to Fujairah, the UAE’s Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (ADCOP), or the Habshan–Fujairah oil pipeline, is estimated to handle 1.5 million barrels per day, with a reported total capacity of close to 1.8 million barrels per day.

A tanker was also struck while at anchor by an unknown projectile about 23 nautical miles east of the UAE’s Fujairah in the Gulf of Oman, according to an update published Monday from the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) center.

The incident caused minor structural damage, with no injuries to the crew and no environmental impact was reported, the UKMTO said.

The latest report comes after six vessels sustained damage in and around the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman last week as Iran warned oil prices could climb to $200 a barrel.

Oil prices were higher on Tuesday as energy market participants closely monitored ongoing supply disruptions.

International Brent crude futures with May delivery advanced 2.2% at $102.36 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures with April delivery rose 2.2% at $95.55.

Prices have surged about 40% during the U.S.-Iran war, reaching their highest levels since 2022, as shipping through the Strait has been severely disrupted. Brent closed above $100 for the first time in four years last week.

Countries around the world have scrambled to cope with the fallout of the energy shock from the Iran war, imposing measures from fuel export bans, loosening refining standards, and even getting workers to climb stairs instead of taking elevators.

This comes as the Iran war stretches into its third week, and despite U.S. President Donald Trump proclaiming that the U.S. has “won,” the effects of the war, especially on the energy market, continue to be felt.

On Thursday, China ordered refiners to stop refined fuel exports so as to mitigate potential domestic fuel shortages, according to Reuters.

Sources told the agency that the ban was issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, and includes shipments of gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel.

CNBC attempted to reach the NDRC for comment, but did not receive an immediate reply.

Other major countries are considering or have imposed price caps for fuel products.

On Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said that Tokyo was considering steps ‌to cushion the economic blow from rising fuel costs, including curbing gasoline prices.

Takaichi was quoted by Japanese media on Thursday as saying she plans to cap pump prices at an average of 170 yen ($1.07) per liter nationwide, adding that gasoline prices could potentially hit 200 yen per liter.

Tokyo also conducted a unilateral release of crude from its own stockpiles, without waiting for coordination with other nations.

Japan has been particularly badly hit by the war in Iran, as the world’s third-largest economy needs to import almost all of its energy needs.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said on Friday the government implemented a petroleum price ceiling.

“We have decided to set a clear price cap on supply prices to curb domestic fuel prices, which are fluctuating wildly due to the unstable international situation,” Lee said.

India also had to make some tough choices. The country told oil refineries to prioritize supplying liquified petroleum gas to the 330 million households that use it as a primary cooking fuel, over 3 million businesses that use commercial LPG cylinders.

Work-from-home orders came back in some countries after years of companies trying to coax workers back to offices after the pandemic, with Vietnam and Thailand reportedly getting employees to work remotely.

Thailand went a step further, ordering civil servants to take the stairs instead of elevators, reducing their reliance on air conditioning and telling government employees to wear short-sleeved shirts rather than suits.

The Philippines and Pakistan both instituted four-day work weeks for government workers, and Bangladesh has even shifted its calendar, bringing forward its Eid-al-fitr holiday, allowing universities to close early in a bid to save fuel.

The energy price shock that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago is fresh in the minds of European policymakers as the conflict in Iran once again drives oil and gas prices higher. Experts, however, think this time could be different.

Fears of a full-blown energy crisis on that scale — which saw oil top more than $120 a barrel by June 2022, gas prices soar, household energy bills rise, and eurozone inflation hit a record 9% — may yet be overblown, according to investment strategists.

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, has retreated from the near-$120 per barrel seen earlier in the week, as the International Energy Agency agreed on Wednesday to release a record 400 million barrels of oil from its emergency reserves. European natural gas prices, as measured by the Dutch TTF futures benchmark, also pulled back from a three-year high of 63.77 euros per megawatt-hour and were last seen under 50 euros per MWh on Wednesday.

James Smith, developed markets economist focusing on the U.K. at ING, said that while the initial energy price reaction appears “eerily familiar” to the start of the Ukraine invasion, the global economic picture looks very different from the 2022 shock.

“The 2022 energy crisis landed on a global economy that was ripe for inflation to take off. Supply chains were fractured, job markets tight, and fiscal policy was fueling the fire. All of that, to varying degrees, is less true today,” Smith said in a note.

The impact on Europe’s inflation trajectory hinges on the duration of the conflict, analysts say.

The ongoing shutdown of Qatari production of liquefied natural gas (LNG) — which accounts for almost a fifth of global LNG supply — and attacks on vessels in and near the critical Strait of Hormuz could disrupt oil and gas stocks in Europe for longer.

A cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz has been struck by an unknown projectile, causing a fire onboard, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said in an update on Wednesday morning.

The strike forced the crew of the ship, which has not been identified, to evacuate, the UKMTO said. It urged vessels to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity while authorities continue to investigate.

The incident took place 11 nautical miles north of Oman in the Strait of Hormuz. The UKMTO said there is no report of any environmental impact.

Shipping traffic through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz has ground to a near standstill since the U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28. Iran has retaliated by targeting ships trying to pass through the strait, with multiple incidents reported in recent days.

The waterway is a narrow maritime corridor that connects the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Roughly 20% of global oil and gas typically passes through it.

U.S. forces sank several Iranian ships on Tuesday, including 16 minelayers, near the Strait of Hormuz, according to U.S. Central Command. The update followed an earlier announcement from U.S. President Donald Trump that said if Iran had put any mines in the waterway, “we want them removed, IMMEDIATELY!”

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November’s midterm was always supposed to be about affordability. Then, the bombs began falling in Iran.

The expanding U.S. war in the Middle East threatens to scramble the cost-of-living narrative that has so far defined the contest for control of Congress. The election, now less than eight months away, will determine whether President Donald Trump retains his iron grip on Washington or spends his last two years in office fending off Democratic congressional majorities.

Both parties have sought to capitalize on kitchen-table issues, as Americans struggle to keep up with the rising costs of ordinary goods and services. The war in Iran now threatens to exacerbate those concerns — and Democrats are seizing on the opportunity to pillory Trump and Republicans for beginning a conflict that could make life even more expensive for ordinary Americans.

“Because there was no plan going in, I think there will be lots of things that are unforeseen consequences of this,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in an interview with CNBC. “I mean you saw how much gas has gone up in a day, oil futures have gone up, there are going to be a lot of knock-on effects.”

Some of those knock-on effects have already been evident. U.S. crude oil has jumped past $90 per barrel, up from $67 the day before the war broke out. The global market index Brent has skyrocketed to more than $90 per barrel. That’s caused gas prices to spike to about $3.38 per gallon, according to a national average from Gasbuddy, up more than 35 cents from the week before the war.

Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, was quick to point out in an interview that liquefied natural gas prices have also spiked. Though U.S. increases have been modest so far, global LNG supply has been squeezed by a shutdown in Qatar — one of the world’s top LNG-producing countries. Natural gas is the largest electricity generator in the U.S., which is critical as the booming data center industry stresses the electric grid and increases utility costs.

“I think what American families have been feeling most acutely for the past year-plus is their energy bills, their utility bills rising,” Huffman said. “A big part of the utility bill increase is that natural gas is getting more and more expensive … a lot of our effort has been pushed into LNG exports instead of strategies that would lower bills for American consumers. That problem is only more amplified by this conflict.”

But a quick operation in Iran is far from certain, and any extended conflict could create an election-year quagmire for Republicans, said Brittany Martinez, executive director at Principles First and a former aide to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

“If energy prices rise or markets stay volatile, affordability becomes a harder message for Republicans to carry cleanly,” Martinez said. “Republicans will argue that projecting strength abroad prevents greater instability, while Democrats will try to link any sustained price increases to foreign policy decisions. The real question is whether this turns into a prolonged conflict that voters feel in their household budgets.”

Many believe the military intervention in Iran has the potential to drag on, including Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., a national security advisor in the Obama White House.

“This administration doesn’t seem to think about this at all,” Kim said when asked about a potential power vacuum keeping the U.S. in the region longer. “The intelligence community has done a whole range of assessments that very much keep me up at night, and the fact that this White House, I assume, read the same things I read and still went through with this, I just find that to be absolutely reckless.”

Complicating matters more for the GOP is that the war in Iran is unpopular. A CNN poll released March 2 found that nearly 60% of those surveyed disapproved of the U.S. taking military action in Iran. That comes as Trump’s economic approval remains underwater: A Fox News poll released March 4 found that 61% of voters disapproved of Trump’s job on the economy.

“We don’t see it as an opportunity, but I do think it’s our responsibility to tell the American people exactly the decision that Donald Trump is making,” said House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, D-Calif. “He’s sending billions of our tax dollars to the Middle East for another war while he’s kicking people off of healthcare and … eliminating nutrition programs.”

Rep. Zach Nunn, an Iowa Republican seeking reelection in a district Cook Political Report with Amy Walter has labeled a “toss up,” said he is not concerned the war could drown out the GOP’s affordability message. He pointed to the sprawling tax and spending bill that was signed into law last year, increased domestic energy production, and housing legislation that advanced out of the House last month as examples of things the party will use to show action on rising costs.

War in the Middle East does not necessarily preclude Republicans from continuing to try to bring prices down, he argued.

“A more fulsome conversation would be, how do we make sure that we still deliver on affordability?” Nunn said in an interview. “I think this is the absolute right spot for us to be in.”

But Trump, the “America First” president who campaigned on ending the U.S.’s foreign entanglements, risks alienating his base with his Iran offensive. Democrats see the war as evidence of what they have been telling voters about Trump all along: he does not care affordability.

“We have a president who has campaigned on ending forever wars, and he has jumped into war without justification or explanation to the American people,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “So this has been broken promise after broken promise. This has been at the expense of the needs of everyday Americans. And I do think voters will hold them accountable in November.”