Two days before Donald Trump ordered a military attack on Iran, unleaded regular gas was $2.67 per gallon at my regular Shell station in Annandale. The following Saturday, that same station was selling the same gas for $3.29, an increase of 62 cents in nine days, or 23 percent.  Trump still thinks affordability is a hoax, but he doesn’t have to whip out a credit card to fill “The Beast” limousine, or pay a jet fuel surcharge on Air Force One which, by some estimates, costs $200,000 an hour each time Mr. Trump decides to fly to one of his golf resorts or other exotic locale away from the White House.  

The cost of Operation Epic Fury (who comes up with these names?) is yet to be determined but, at an estimated billion dollars a day so far, it easily could outstrip the estimated $168 billion cost of the Vietnam War.  That action was nearly 20 years in length, so the cost spread over time was about $23 million per day, but America also suffered almost 57,000 combat fatalities   , and thousands of veterans have been battling PTSD and other war-related issues ever since. As Presidents Kennedy and Johnson discovered, the cost of war has multiple ramifications for the American people and society, not just for the military.  Rarely is aggression “one and done” although Mr. Trump’s comments so far appear to focus on the massive use of American weapons, dismissing potential deaths as “the bad parts of war.” American troops are on alert but have yet to be deployed as of this writing.  

That situation may not last long.  In his several press briefings about Iran last week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appeared to have two favorite words: warriors and lethality.  His demeanor was positively bouncy as he described the massive use of force, the kinds of missiles and drones used, and he delighted in announcing that an American submarine had torpedoed and sunk an Iranian vessel in the Indian Ocean. Hegseth’s aggression obsession is in overdrive.  This is not a video game; has anyone told that to Trump, Vance, and Hegseth?    

Few in the West are mourning the death of Ayatollah Ali Khameini, whose iron rule of Iran continued the despotism of the earlier Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.  Mr. Trump may have thought that a quick hit on Iran would effect regime change, but Middle East experts understand that thousands of years of religious and political strife will not be settled by Western aggression.  In a January 8 column, I asserted that Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and removal of President Nicolas Maduro was all about oil, not regime change, free and fair elections, or drug interdiction.  It shouldn’t be a surprise if Trump’s attack on Iran also is all about oil, not regime change, not about helping the Iranian people take back their government, even though he has encouraged them to do so.  Except for a brief tenuous democracy in the early 1950s, Iran’s government has been an autocratic monarchy or a religious regime so building a new democratic structure will require societal assets that simply do not exist now.     

In this country, gasoline prices likely will continue to rise, along with prices of most other goods and services that come by air, rail, or land, further strangling household budgets.  Affordability a hoax?  Not for most Americans!