WHEN FOREIGN POLICY BECOMES DOMESTIC POLICY By Mark Anderson, Legal and Legislative Assistant, New Mexico Bankers Association If you study enough print or television media in America, then you inevitably become familiar with stock assumptions or phrases that are often deployed. One tried-and-true notion professed by the elite pundit class is that very few Americans pay attention to, let alone vote on, foreign policy matters. While that may be accurate in the most general sense, it tends to be an overly simplistic conclusion. It is true that most Americans don’t pay close attention to the day-in, day-out machinations of U.S. foreign policy, but many people have an innate sense of when reckless and costly foreign policy decisions are siphoning away energy and resources needed to address pressing domestic issues, even if it can’t be fully articulated and is perhaps vaguely felt. However, there are times when foreign and domestic policy merge in a way that is so glaringly obvious that it becomes impossible to ignore, and we are currently in the midst of one of those periods. On February 28, 2026, President Donald Trump ordered a series of military strikes on Iran, labeled Operation Epic Fury. Since the decision, which was made without Constitutionally-mandated Congressional approval, there have been cascading economic effects globally and, in a tangible way, direct hits to Americans’ wallets. Aside from the obvious unconstitutionality and illegality of the decision to go to war, even if one were to look at it from a cold, hard realpolitik perspective, the choice is still reckless and short-sighted. The war with Iran has been poorly received from the outset and has reverberated stateside almost immediately, two factors that are very different from past major conflicts. One reason that Americans can be so disconnected from their own government’s foreign policy is that, often, blowback from reckless decisions can take years to take hold, leaving the public unclear on the root cause. But this conflict has been markedly different so far. From February 20 to March 20 of this year, the price of Brent crude oil futures rose from $71 per barrel to about $110 per barrel, a 54% increase. Brent, a type of oil mostly from the North Sea, is considered the international benchmark for oil prices, with traders regularly buying and selling futures in financial markets. Oil prices are set to continue to rise with no realistic off-ramp to end the war in sight. Meanwhile, President Trump continues to bring into question market manipulation, as he has falsely declared on multiple occasions that his administration is engaged in diplomatic talks with Iran, leading to the price of oil futures to fall dramatically. The most immediate effect domestically has been a marked increase in gas prices, as gas prices usually rise with Brent prices because Brent is relatively easy to turn into gasoline. According to the American Automobile Association, since February 20, the average price of a gallon of regular gas in the U.S. has risen by more than a dollar, from $2.93 to $3.98. That is a 36% increase, the single largest one-month rise in 30 years. The biggest reason for the increase is Iran’s current ability to control and halt shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway along the country’s southern coast that connects the Persian Gulf with larger waterways. The strait is considered the most important shipping lane in the world, as one-fifth of global oil passes through it. Iran’s blockade of the strait was triggered by the initial attack by the U.S., as Iran proceeded to bomb numerous American military bases in the region in addition to attacking Gulf state countries like Dubai, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, all allies of the U.S. As a result, the infrastructure that prevented Iran from blockading the strait was largely destroyed, Iran seized control of the waterway, and now holds an enormous point of leverage over the global and American domestic economy. Iran has been booby-trapping the strait with mines, tightly restricting the flow of traffic through the waterway. According to a March 13 Wall Street Journal report, top military officials warned President Trump of the strong possibility of the closure of the strait in the event of an attack on Iran, but those warnings were summarily ignored and contingency plans were not developed. Since the 1979 Iranian 10
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