Trump Demands “No More” Strikes on Gas Fields, Macron Calls for Moratorium — What It Means for Oil Prices, the War’s Future, and Trump’s Political Survival
Published: March 19, 2026 | Sources: Reuters, Axios, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, Al Jazeera, ABC News, France 24, CNBC, Newsweek, Britannica, CRS/Congress.gov, Columbia CGEP, EIA, Gallup, Nate Silver, Quinnipiac, Echelon Insights
Executive Summary
On the night of March 18–19, 2026, a dramatic escalation in the three-week-old Iran war forced a critical question to the forefront of global geopolitics: can any power prevent both sides from attacking oil and gas infrastructure, and could doing so become the off-ramp that ends this conflict?
Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas field — the world’s largest natural gas reserve, shared with Qatar — in a coordinated strike approved by the White House. Iran retaliated within hours by firing missiles at Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, one of the world’s largest LNG processing hubs, causing extensive damage. Brent crude spiked above $110/barrel. President Trump then publicly rebuked Israel, declaring “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL” on South Pars, while simultaneously threatening to “massively blow up” the entire gas field if Iran attacks Qatar again. French President Macron called for an immediate moratorium on all strikes targeting energy and water infrastructure.
This analysis examines whether the US can enforce a mutual halt on energy infrastructure attacks by all parties; what such a halt would mean for oil prices currently at their highest since the 2022 spike; whether this could become the pivotal off-ramp from the worst of the conflict; and how success or failure will shape Trump’s political fortunes heading into the 2026 midterms.
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Key Data Snapshot
| Indicator | Current Status | Significance |
| Brent Crude (Mar 18) | $108.78/barrel; spiked above $110 | Up ~$38 YoY; highest since 2022 |
| Strait of Hormuz | Effectively closed since Mar 4 | 20% of global oil & 19% of LNG disrupted |
| IEA Emergency Release | 400M barrels — largest in history | Has done little to contain prices so far |
| US SPR Drawdown | 172M barrels over 120 days | Adds temporary supply cushion |
| Iran Ship Attacks | 21+ confirmed on merchant vessels | 5 crew killed; 150+ tankers anchored |
| Gulf Energy Strikes | Qatar Ras Laffan, UAE, Saudi Arabia hit | LNG production halted at Ras Laffan |
| Trump Approval (Mar 2026) | 37–44% across polls; −13.9 net | Foreign policy at −21 net approval |
| US Casualties | 13 military deaths as of Mar 13 | Political sensitivity rising |
Sources: Fortune, EIA, CRS/Congress.gov, UKMTO, Columbia CGEP, Nate Silver, Quinnipiac, Echelon Insights. Data as of March 18–19, 2026.
1. The War on Energy: How We Got Here
The 2026 Iran war began on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury — coordinated airstrikes targeting Iran’s military infrastructure, nuclear sites, and leadership. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening salvo. Iran’s response was immediate and broad: retaliatory missile and drone attacks targeting US bases, Israeli cities, and — critically — oil and energy infrastructure across the Gulf region.
According to Britannica’s account, Iran’s strikes targeted US embassies, military installations, and oil infrastructure in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan. On March 4, the IRGC declared the Strait of Hormuz “closed,” threatening and carrying out attacks on ships attempting to transit. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported that as of March 8, the UK Maritime Trade Operations Centre had documented over a dozen attacks on ships in and around the Strait, killing five crew members.
The scale of disruption is historic. Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) assessed that approximately 110 billion cubic meters per year of LNG exports through the Strait — representing 19% of global LNG trade — have been disrupted since February 28. The IEA declared it the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market and announced a record emergency reserve release of 400 million barrels.
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2. The US Position: Protecting Energy Infrastructure While Waging War
From the outset, the Trump administration has walked a razor-thin line: waging an aggressive military campaign against Iran while trying to shield the global energy system from catastrophic disruption. This tension has produced a series of escalating policy moves:
Preserving Iran’s Oil Infrastructure on Kharg Island
On March 13, US forces struck more than 90 military targets on Kharg Island — which handles roughly 90% of Iran’s crude exports. But US Central Command explicitly stated it was “preserving the oil infrastructure.” Trump emphasized this restraint publicly, telling NBC News he deliberately avoided energy targets because “having to rebuild that would take years.” He wrote on Truth Social that he had “chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island,” but warned this restraint could end if Iran continued to block the Strait of Hormuz.
Demanding Israel Stop Striking Gas Fields (March 19)
The most dramatic development came overnight on March 18–19. Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas field — the first attack on Iranian natural gas infrastructure in the war. Axios reported the strike was coordinated with and approved by the White House, though Trump publicly denied foreknowledge. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG facilities, causing extensive damage and fires. QatarEnergy confirmed multiple facilities were hit.
Trump responded with an extraordinary public statement on Truth Social: “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field.” He simultaneously threatened that if Iran attacked Qatar again, the US would “massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field.” This dual message — restraining Israel while threatening Iran — represents the clearest US attempt yet to draw red lines around energy infrastructure on both sides.
Macron’s Moratorium Call
French President Macron reinforced the push, posting on X after speaking with both Trump and Qatar’s Emir: “It is in our common interest to implement, without delay, a moratorium on strikes targeting civilian infrastructure, particularly energy and water supply facilities.” Twelve Muslim-majority nations meeting in Riyadh separately denounced Iran’s strikes on Gulf neighbours and called for an immediate halt.
Securing the Strait of Hormuz
Trump has repeatedly called on nations that depend on the Strait to help reopen it. He ordered the US military to provide political risk insurance for maritime trade and said the Navy could escort ships. CENTCOM deployed 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions against hardened Iranian missile sites along the coastline near the Strait. However, Reuters reported that the response from other nations has been muted, with none publicly committing to deploy navies. The CRS noted that analysts believe the US military has the capacity to counter Iran’s forces and restore shipping, but such an effort could take days, weeks, or perhaps months.
3. Oil Price Implications: What a Halt on Energy Strikes Would Mean
| Date | Brent Crude | Key Event |
| Feb 27, 2026 | $71.32/barrel | Day before war begins |
| Mar 2, 2026 | $77.24/barrel | +8% in two trading days post-strikes |
| Mar 9, 2026 | ~$94/barrel | Hormuz effectively closed; EIA baseline |
| Mar 13, 2026 | $99.84/barrel | US strikes Kharg Island military targets |
| Mar 16, 2026 | $106/barrel | Tanker traffic still paralyzed |
| Mar 18, 2026 | $108.78; spiked >$110 | Israel strikes South Pars; Iran hits Qatar LNG |
Sources: Fortune, CRS/Congress.gov, Al Jazeera, EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook (March 2026).
The EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (March 2026) forecasts Brent remaining above $95/barrel over the next two months before falling below $80 in Q3 2026 and to around $70 by year-end — but this is entirely contingent on assumptions about the conflict’s duration and resulting production outages.
If the US successfully enforces a mutual halt on energy infrastructure attacks, the price impact would be significant through several channels. First, the immediate risk premium of $15–20/barrel currently priced into Brent for Gulf energy infrastructure attacks would begin to deflate. Second, oil stranded at sea — 150+ tankers currently anchored outside the Strait — could begin to move, relieving acute supply concerns. Third, Gulf LNG producers (particularly Qatar) could restart operations, easing the unprecedented gas price crisis in Asia and Europe. Finally, investor sentiment would shift from crisis mode to cautious optimism, potentially accelerating the EIA’s forecast of prices falling toward $70 by late 2026.
However, the limitations are real. Al Jazeera’s analysis of the oil logic behind the war noted that energy security has structured US strategy in the Gulf since the Carter Doctrine of 1980. Even with a moratorium on energy strikes, reopening the Strait of Hormuz requires Iran’s acquiescence or military operations to clear mines and suppress IRGC naval forces — a process the CRS warns could take weeks or months. The US Treasury has already issued a 30-day waiver on Russian oil sanctions to help stabilize prices — a move CBS News reported is paradoxically benefiting Russia financially as the Iran war sends global energy prices skyward.
4. Could This Be the Off-Ramp? Why the Worst May — or May Not — Be Behind Us
The Case for Optimism
Several factors suggest the conflict may be approaching an inflection point. Trump’s public restraint of Israel on South Pars, combined with Macron’s moratorium call and the 12-nation Riyadh statement, creates a multilateral framework for de-escalation. The US has deliberately preserved Iran’s oil export infrastructure on Kharg Island, signaling that Washington wants to leave Iran with an economic lifeline rather than driving it to total economic collapse. Meanwhile, within the Trump administration, voices calling for an off-ramp are growing louder. NBC News reported that David Sacks, Trump’s AI czar, publicly urged the president to “declare victory and get out,” noting this is “clearly what the markets would like to see.”
If all sides agree to a moratorium on energy infrastructure attacks, it would serve as a de facto partial ceasefire that protects the global economy’s energy arteries while diplomatic channels (Oman, Egypt, and potentially others) work toward a broader resolution. This is the same playbook the US attempted with the Russia–Ukraine energy ceasefire — using energy as the first building block toward a complete halt in hostilities.
The Case for Caution
Iran’s foreign minister has explicitly rejected ceasefire talks. Reuters reported that Tehran has no interest in negotiating while strikes continue, and Trump himself told NBC News the “terms aren’t good enough yet” for a deal. Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has vowed to continue blocking the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC warned that any further attacks on Iranian energy facilities would be met with strikes that would “not stop until [enemy energy infrastructure] is completely destroyed.”
Critically, the South Pars strike demonstrates that escalation dynamics are difficult to control even within an alliance. Despite the strike being approved by Washington (per Axios and the Wall Street Journal), Trump publicly distanced the US from it when the consequences (Iran attacking Qatar) proved politically costly. Enforcing discipline on Israel while simultaneously deterring Iran from retaliating against Gulf states is an extraordinarily complex balancing act.
5. The Political Stakes: Trump’s Approval and the Midterm Reckoning
President Trump’s approval ratings are at their worst levels of his second term, and the Iran war is a major factor:
Quinnipiac University (March 6–8, 2026): 37% approval / 57% disapproval, net −20 — the lowest recorded for Trump in their second-term series.
Echelon Insights (March 12–16, 2026): 41% approval / 57% disapproval. Foreign policy approval cratered to net −21, falling 8 points in a single month.
Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin (March 18): Net approval at −13.9. Silver noted the war remains unpopular across most polls and that rising gas prices or American casualties could drive numbers lower. Trump has been underwater in polling every single day for a full year.
Newsweek reported that CNN described Trump as the “weakest president this century” at this stage of a second term. Newsweek’s own analysis pointed to the intensity of disapproval — the share of voters who “strongly disapprove” exceeds all levels of approval, a pattern associated with turnout risk in midterm elections.
Gas prices have hit $3.675 nationally as of March 14 (Newsweek), with oil above $110. For a president who built his 2024 campaign partly on criticizing Biden-era inflation, surging energy costs are politically toxic. Successfully enforcing a halt on energy infrastructure attacks — and visibly bringing oil prices down — would be the single most tangible accomplishment Trump could point to ahead of the November 2026 midterms. During his first term, Republicans lost 41 House seats in the midterms; his team cannot afford a repeat.
6. The Last Chance to Contain the War?
The events of March 18–19 may represent a decisive moment. The escalation cycle — Israel strikes Iran’s gas fields, Iran retaliates against Qatar, the US threatens to destroy the gas fields entirely — brings the conflict to the brink of a scenario that would devastate global energy markets for years. If South Pars and Ras Laffan (which together account for much of the world’s LNG supply) are significantly damaged, the consequences would dwarf any energy crisis since the 1970s.
This is precisely why multiple actors are now converging on the idea of an energy infrastructure moratorium. Trump’s “no more attacks” directive to Israel, Macron’s call for an immediate moratorium, the Riyadh joint statement from 12 nations, and Iraq’s direct communication with Tehran about allowing tankers through the Strait all suggest that protecting energy infrastructure may be the one area where competing interests align enough to create space for de-escalation.
The precedent from the Russia–Ukraine conflict is instructive. In March 2025, Trump and Putin agreed to a 30-day energy infrastructure ceasefire as a stepping stone to broader peace. That effort failed — within hours, both sides resumed strikes. But the underlying logic was sound: energy is the one domain where war damages the attacker as much as the target, because the global economy is interconnected. The same logic applies with even greater force to the Iran war, where 20% of global oil flows through a single strait controlled by a belligerent.
If Trump can enforce restraint on Israel, deter Iran from further energy strikes through the twin threats of total South Pars destruction and naval action in the Strait, and rally an international coalition to guarantee safe passage of tankers, the worst of this war may indeed be behind us. Oil prices would begin to normalize, the acute supply crisis would ease, and a framework for broader negotiations could emerge. Failure, on the other hand, means continued escalation, oil potentially surging toward the $150+ levels already seen in Dubai crude, and a global economic shock that could tip fragile economies into recession.
Conclusion: The Energy Red Line
The US is attempting something extraordinarily ambitious: to draw a red line around energy infrastructure in the middle of an active war it helped start. Trump’s directive to Israel, his calculated preservation of Kharg Island’s oil facilities, and his threat-and-protection framework for Qatar’s LNG represent the clearest articulation of this strategy. Macron’s moratorium call adds European diplomatic weight.
Success would bring oil prices down from crisis levels, protect the global economy from a 1970s-style energy shock, and give Trump a tangible diplomatic achievement to present to voters before November. It would also create the first real off-ramp from a war that has killed over 2,000 people, displaced hundreds of thousands, and disrupted global trade on an unprecedented scale.
But the obstacles are immense. Iran has shown no interest in negotiating while under attack. Israel’s strike on South Pars demonstrates the limits of US control over its own ally. And the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, with the IRGC showing no signs of relenting. The coming days will determine whether the energy infrastructure moratorium gains traction — or whether the war escalates into the kind of energy catastrophe that the entire world has been dreading since February 28.
This may indeed be the last chance to contain the war. The question is whether the participants — all of them — are ready to take it.
SOURCES & CITATIONS
Reuters via Yahoo News – “Trump vows no more attacks by Israel on Iran gas field after it ‘violently lashed out’” (March 19, 2026)
Axios – “After Tehran strikes, Trump says Israel won’t attack Iran gas fields anymore” (March 19, 2026)
CBS News – Live Updates: Iran War (March 19, 2026); “Iran war keeps gas prices high” (March 17, 2026)
NBC News – “Trump says Iran is ready to negotiate a ceasefire but he’s not ready to make a deal” (March 15, 2026); “Escalate or exit? Military’s menu of options” (March 18, 2026)
CNN – “Day 19 of Middle East conflict — Trump threatens Iran’s gas fields, Gulf energy sites come under attack” (March 18, 2026)
ABC News – “Iran live updates: Trump says ‘NO MORE ATTACKS’ on Iran gas field but issues threat” (March 19, 2026)
France 24 – “Live: Trump threatens to ‘blow up’ major Iran gas field if strikes on Gulf energy sites continue” (March 19, 2026)
Al Jazeera – “The oil logic behind Trump’s war on Iran” (March 18, 2026); “How US-Israel attacks on Iran threaten the Strait of Hormuz” (March 1, 2026)
CNBC – “Iran threatens to retaliate against neighbors; Trump urges countries to assist in securing Strait of Hormuz” (March 13, 2026)
Newsweek – “Iran War: Trump Rebuffs Ceasefire Efforts With All Eyes on Hormuz Strait” (March 15, 2026); “Trump Approval Rating Update” (March 19, 2026)
Congressional Research Service (CRS) via Congress.gov – “Iran Conflict and the Strait of Hormuz: Impacts on Oil, Gas, and Other Commodities” (March 11, 2026)
Columbia CGEP – “Live Updates: US-Israeli Attacks on Iran and Global Energy Impacts” (March 17, 2026)
Britannica – “2026 Iran War” (updated March 2026)
Wikipedia – “2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis”; “Economic impact of the 2026 Iran war” (updated March 2026)
US Energy Information Administration (EIA) – Short-Term Energy Outlook (March 2026)
Fortune – “Current price of oil” and “Oil prices hit nearly $110” (March 18, 2026)
The Week – “South Pars strike sparks US warning: Trump vows action” (March 19, 2026)
Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin – “Trump Approval Rating” (March 18, 2026)
Quinnipiac University – National Poll (March 6–8, 2026)
Echelon Insights – March Omnibus Survey (March 12–16, 2026)
Gallup – “Trump’s Approval Rating Drops to 36%” (November 28, 2025)
CBC News – “Ukraine, its allies object to US move to exempt Russian oil from sanctions” (March 13, 2026)
UK House of Commons Library – “US-Israel strikes on Iran: February/March 2026” (March 19, 2026)
