On February 28, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started a war with Iran. Since then, violence has spread throughout the Middle East. On the first day of bombing, the US bombed an elementary school, killing more than 100 children. Iran struck back, hitting Israel and US bases in the region. Israel expanded into Syria and Lebanon, bombing apartment buildings in Beirut. A few weeks ago Israel bombed oil depots in Tehran, engulfing the sky in flames and raining toxic oil on a population bigger than New York City.

But all Americans can think of, naturally, is the price of gas.

Oil is both a major driver of this war and, for now at least, the primary way Americans are feeling its effects. The war drives home the grim reality that we are hostage to this toxic ooze that burns dirty, poisons wildlife, causes cancer, and accelerates climate change. The necessity to wean ourselves off of it, as quickly and completely as possible, has never been more apparent.

An oil crisis of Trump’s own making

Even Trump is subservient to the whims and demands of the oil economy. Since he started the war, he’s tried desperately to control the chaotic effect his bombing campaign has had on global oil markets. Trump may not be bright, but he understands one very basic political reality: He can cover up the Epstein files, get away with all manner of fraud and graft, and even commit war crimes – but he cannot let the price of gas get too high.

From a strategic perspective, then, the focal point of the war quickly became the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passageway out of the Persian Gulf that pinches down between southern Iran and the Omani Musandam Peninsula. The strait is an essential shipping lane for 20% of the world’s liquified natural gas (LNG), as well as a third of the global fertilizer trade. With essentially uncontested control of the strait, Iran has closed it to “enemy-linked” ships. Iran insists that non-hostile ships pay a toll in Chinese yuan, which is an attempt to undermine the supremacy of the petrodollar.

The crisis at the Strait of Hormuz is entirely of Trump’s own making, and has triggered an erratic series of threats, pleas, lies, and bargaining from him as he tries to keep his stupid war from grinding the global economy to a halt. Trump has even threatened to deploy the US Navy to escort ships through the strait. One has to wonder how sailors feel about being offered up as bodyguards for Qatari tankers, thrown into a situation where they would be wide open for Iranian drone and missile attacks.

Trump the oil imperialist

Trump sees this war almost entirely through the lens of oil. As part of alleged ceasefire negotiations, Trump claimed Iran “gave us a present… worth a tremendous amount of money… it was oil-and-gas related.” That turned out to be Iran allowing 10 oil ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump also implied that those high gas prices causing so many people pain at the pump are actually good for the country. Because the US is a net exporter of oil, Trump said, “When oil prices go up, we make a lot of money” – perhaps forgetting that most Americans do not own oil companies.

Compare Trump’s constant talk of oil to the Bush Administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2003-06, calling Iraq a war for oil was considered a conspiracy theory. Dissidents and war critics were driven out of polite conversations for even bringing it up. Insinuating that the troops would ever be deployed for such an ignoble purpose was treated as beyond the pale, if not treasonous, by FOX News and the Bush White House.

This time, there’s next to no pretense of nobility in Trump’s war. While lots of motivations, with varying degrees of believability and logic, have been given – ranging from halting Iran’s nuclear capabilities to ushering in Armageddon – the Trump Administration is perfectly open about the centrality of oil to their war mission. In a way, it’s almost refreshing to hear a politician speak so forwardly about their imperialist intent, even if it does lay bare the villainy of the US empire.

In addition to the Strait of Hormuz, Trump is focused on Kharg Island, a small island in the Persian Gulf that handles up to 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. Senator Lindsey Graham, who is among the most bloodthirsty warhawks on the planet, encouraged Trump to seize Kharg Island (and compared such an operation to Iwo Jima, in which 7,000 Marines died – no skin off Lindsey Graham’s back). Trump himself then said, while discussing his military options, “My favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran.”

Trump has long openly fantasized about using the military to conquer oil fields. In the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump was widely admired for pretending to oppose the Iraq War. But as we quickly learned, that opposition wasn’t based on principle or morals. Instead, he was mad that we didn’t plunder Iraq’s oil. In 2013, before his political career really started, he tweeted, “I still can’t believe we left Iraq without the oil.” To Trump, this is just how the world works: If your guns and bombs make bigger holes and explosions, you get to just take whatever you want, anywhere in the world. There is no right, no wrong, no law.

This also tracks with how Trump has handled the oil industry in Venezuela. Last year, Trump started claiming that Venezuela had stolen, or “unilaterally seized and sold American oil.” This claim was a reference to Venezuela nationalizing their oil industry and evicting American oil companies. Then in January, the US military raided Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s home and abducted him, an astonishing breach of all international norms. Meanwhile, Trump began shadily directing Venezuelan oil revenue into an offshore Qatari account.

The need to wean ourselves off of oil

Such oil imperialism long predates Trump. Oil is the locus of US foreign policy. Just ask other offenders of the US oil monopoly, like Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein. The US military itself is the single largest institutional polluter and user of fossil fuels. It’s a dirty business that’s ruining the planet and jeopardizing our futures in countless ways, of which this despicable war in Iran is just the latest and highest-profile.

The simple answer to all this madness is to wean ourselves off of oil. It won’t be easy, and we’ll probably never be fully rid of it, but we aren’t even trying. There are a million ways we could start cutting back, a million investments we could make toward a future that is as oil-free as possible. But Trump is doing everything he can to keep us addicted to it, including starting an unpopular, illegal, and unnecessary war that imperils the world.

Trump has always been particularly pro-fossil fuel. He loves the nonsensical phrase “beautiful clean coal.” He calls green energy a “scam” and has repeatedly made the utterly deranged claim that windmills cause cancer. His administration displays a psychotic obsession with destroying green energy initiatives, most recently paying a French energy company $1 billion to cancel a wind farm and instead invest in oil and gas.

From toxic emissions to regional spills to global climate change to war, oil makes our world and our lives dirtier and less safe. Fighting wars so we can dig it up until it’s all gone – or until we are – benefits only Trump and the other billionaire barons, who couldn’t care less about the choking masses suffering under the bombs, pollution, and intolerable heat our need for oil brings about.

With a little bit of will and some leadership, we could start to control our greed and oil addiction. If we were able to do that, we might not find ourselves traipsing into the Middle East on such a regular basis. All the billionaires’ oil wars have done is waste American money and lives, kill countless men and women and children overseas, and make the rest of the world hate us. We can do better, and it starts with stopping Big Oil.