Peter Navarro, Author of "Iran War Will Lower Energy Prices," Now Presents "Iran Caused High Energy Prices"
The Hill's New Tagline: We Print It, You Figure Out the Timeline
Peter Navarro would like you to believe that Iran, not the small fingered vulgarian in the White House, lit the inflation fuse. In his June 3 opinion piece for The Hill, Navarro insists that “U.S. inflation has risen to its fastest pace in three years” because of what he calls “Iran terror inflation” (Navarro, 2026a). He throws around the 1979 hostage crisis, the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, and every other historical grievance he can find to muddy the water. It is a neat trick, but it falls apart the moment you check the dates on the actual economic data. The receipts do not lie, and Navarro is hoping you never ask for them.
The Fuse Was Already Lit
Here is the timeline Navarro hopes you ignore. When Donald Trump took office in January 2025, year-over-year inflation was already trending downward. The Consumer Price Index had fallen to roughly 3.0 percent that month and kept cooling to 2.3 percent by April 2025, which was the lowest rate since early 2021 (U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 2026). Then came “Liberation Day” and the president’s sweeping tariffs. By September 2025, inflation had climbed back to 3.02 percent, the highest annual rate since May 2024. Core goods inflation, which had been negative throughout 2024, started accelerating in April 2025 and kept rising (U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 2026). The Twelve-Day War with Iran did not begin until June 2025, and the massive escalation that closed the Strait of Hormuz did not happen until February 28, 2026 (Wikipedia contributors, 2026). In other words, the fuse was burning long before the major conflagration, and it was lit in the West Wing with a stack of tariff orders.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas put a number on this. In May 2026, its economists estimated that realized tariff collections had added about 0.80 percentage points to core personal consumption expenditures inflation by March 2026, and that absent those tariffs, core inflation would have been 2.3 percent (Mau & Smith, 2026). Researchers at Harvard Business School similarly found that Trump’s tariffs had increased CPI inflation by 0.7 percentage points by September 2025 (U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 2026). Goldman Sachs estimated that American consumers were absorbing up to 55 percent of tariff costs (U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 2026). So when Navarro claims Iran is the arsonist, he is asking you to ignore the fire inspector’s report that clearly shows sparks flying from the president’s own trade policy.
A History Lesson for People Who Can’t Read Graphs
Navarro spends a good chunk of his article relitigating 1979, 1983, 1996, and every other year he can find to paint Iran as a cartoon villain. It is an impressive exercise in emotional manipulation, but it has nothing to do with the price of milk in Ohio in 2025. The 1979 energy crisis happened because of a specific oil embargo during a specific geopolitical moment. It did not cause Trump’s tariffs in April 2025, nor did it raise American electricity prices by 6.7 percent year-over-year by December 2025 (U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 2026). The Beirut barracks bombing was a tragedy, but it did not add $2,120 to the average family’s annual expenses in 2025 (U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 2026). Navarro drags out these ghosts because he cannot win the argument on the current numbers. If you cannot refute the data, bury it under forty years of outrage.
Navarro’s Own Crystal Ball
Perhaps the most damning receipt is Navarro’s own writing from just three months ago. On March 13, 2026, he published a Wall Street Journal opinion piece arguing that the Iran war would “lower energy prices” because it would remove the so-called “Iran Terror Premium” from global markets (Navarro, 2026b). He claimed that reducing geopolitical risk would cause oil prices to fall. Instead, Brent crude surged past $119 per barrel by March 19, 2026, and the Strait of Hormuz closed, triggering what the International Energy Agency called the greatest global energy security challenge in history (Yahoo News, 2026). One analysis noted that Navarro’s prediction had “thus far, been exceedingly wrong” (Yahoo News, 2026). Now, in June, he has pivoted from promising cheap gas to blaming Iran for expensive gas. He was not just wrong; he is hoping you forget he ever said it.
The Actual Receipts
Navarro likes to call Democrats and journalists “useful idiots” for refusing to blame Tehran for rising prices (Navarro, 2026a). But the people waving the actual receipts are not partisan hacks. They are economists at the Federal Reserve, Harvard, Goldman Sachs, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Vox recently compiled these analyses and concluded that without Trump’s tariffs and his war of choice, American inflation would likely be more than one full percentage point lower today, putting it much closer to the Fed’s 2 percent target (Levitz, 2026). Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi warned that the higher energy prices caused by the war threaten to do even more economic damage than the tariffs, further pushing inflation higher while job growth stagnates (Angelo, 2026). The war made a bad tariff problem worse, but it did not create the problem.
Who Is the Arsonist Here?
Navarro ends his piece with a rhetorical question: Will voters blame the arsonist in Tehran or the firefighter in the White House? It is a cute line, but it requires you to believe that firefighters typically show up to the scene twelve months after setting their own house on fire. Trump promised to end inflation “on day one” and instead handed American families thousands of dollars in extra costs through tariffs before the first major bomb fell on Iran (U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 2026). The war, which began with a U.S. and Israeli strike on February 28, 2026, during ongoing nuclear negotiations, has undoubtedly deepened the energy crisis (Wikipedia contributors, 2026). But the inflationary kindling was already stacked, doused in tariff oil, and waiting for a match.
If Peter Navarro wants to talk about 1979 so badly, he should remember one lesson from that era. Presidents who preside over manufactured energy crises and stagflation tend to see their approval ratings crater, no matter how hard they try to blame foreigners for their own policy failures. The difference today is that we have the data to prove it in real time. Show the receipts, read the dates, and Navarro’s story collapses like a house of cards.
If you'd like to watch a man argue with his own March press clippings in real time, Navarro's June retcon is here: https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5906113-iran-terror-inflation-us-confrontation/
Works Cited
Angelo, J. (2026, May 5). You had a miserable 2025 because of tariff inflation. The Iran war will be even worse, top economist says. *Fortune*. https://fortune.com/2026/05/05/iran-war-oil-prices-mark-zandi-donald-trump-tariffs/
Levitz, E. (2026, May 27). The 2026 economy could have been great, if not for Trump. *Vox*. https://www.vox.com/politics/489397/inflation-prices-iran-war-tariffs-trump
Mau, R., & Smith, T. (2026, May 5). Effects of realized tariff changes on PCE prices peaked in first quarter 2026. *Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas*. https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2026/0505-mau
Navarro, P. (2026a, June 3). Iran, not Trump, lit the inflation fuse. *The Hill*. https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5906113-iran-terror-inflation-us-confrontation/
Navarro, P. (2026b, March 13). Iran war will lower energy prices. *The Wall Street Journal* [Reposted on peternavarro.com]. https://peternavarro.com/iran-war-will-lower-energy-prices/
U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. (2026). *Trumpflation: Donald Trump’s broken promises on affordability* [Minority staff report]. https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/1_year_costs_report.pdf
Wikipedia contributors. (2026). *2026 Iran war*. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war
Yahoo News. (2026, March 25). The Iran war has already hurt oil production more than the ‘70s energy crisis did. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/iran-war-already-hurt-oil-170023641.html