,"If it were up to me, I’d take the oil, I’d keep the oil. I would make plenty of money,” US President Donald Trump said about Iran during a White House Easter event this week, bringing renewed scrutiny to the role of energy in US foreign policy.
“It’s there for the taking – there’s not a thing they could do about it,” Trump added.
At the same time, Trump has threatened to “blow everything up,” including Iranian power plants and bridges, if Tehran fails to meet a deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 20% of the world’s oil usually flows.
His comments have revived longstanding debates around oil imperialism – the idea that Western powers, particularly the US, have historically used military and political means to secure access to strategic energy resources.
Ilan Kapoor, professor of critical development studies at York University in Toronto, told Anadolu that such statements point to a long-standing approach in which US foreign policy is closely tied to securing access to and control over strategic energy resources.
"Today’s tensions continue that legacy, with Iran positioned as both a geopolitical challenger and a key node in global energy circulation,” he said.
Recent military actions appear to reinforce that view. On March 13, US strikes on Kharg Island targeted more than 90 military sites but largely avoided oil infrastructure.
“The Kharg Island episode shows that even in conflict, its oil infrastructure is treated as systemically important,” ,” Kapoor said. “Iran thus embodies the contradiction of oil imperialism: a target of coercion, yet indispensable to the global energy order.”
Analysts say oil has long been central to US foreign policy and its broader strategy of maintaining influence over global energy flows.
"The oil dimension in US foreign policy is a strategic one that primarily concerns the exercise of global power, a central part of US global hegemony,” Bulent Gokay, a professor of international relations at Keele University, told Anadolu.
Although fracking has allowed the US to emerge as the world’s top crude producer over the past decade, reducing its reliance on imports, global energy dynamics remain central to its strategy.
Key US allies and rivals, including Japan, China and several Western European countries, remain heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil, reinforcing Washington’s interest in maintaining stability and influence in the region.
“Through its influence over the region’s oil-rich regimes, the US has consolidated its strategic presence in the Middle East by effectively controlling the global oil spigot,” Gokay said.
Kapoor said US power in the region has been less about direct control of territory and more about managing energy flows.
“Alliances with Gulf states are closely tied to ensuring stable production and transit,” he said. “Military strategy is oriented toward protecting energy flows rather than conventional territorial warfare.
Even so, Iran, which has long resisted US control, remains a key player in global energy markets, holding around 12% of the world’s proven oil reserves.
Gokay said although the US does not need Iran’s oil, it remains a missing piece in controlling the global supply.
"For the US, destabilizing or gaining control of Iran serves as a precursor to exerting more pressure on Russia and confronting China, which have been the main geopolitical goals of various US administrations since before the War on Terror,” he said.
Trump’s recent remarks on Iran are not isolated.
Since returning to office in 2025, he has repeatedly referenced taking control of energy resources in other countries, particularly Venezuela.
Following the capture of President Nicolas Maduro in early 2026, Washington expanded its involvement in Venezuela’s oil sector, including seizing tankers and enforcing a naval blockade.
Trump also wrote on his social media platform that Venezuelan authorities would be “turning over” up to 50 million barrels of “High Quality, Sanctioned Oil” to the US. "This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me,” he added.
Gokay noted that since Trump's return to office, Washington has also conducted military operations in Iraq and Nigeria – two more major oil producers.
"While US military actions are not solely focused on oil, it remains a prominent and unavoidable theme in these interventions," Gokay said.
However, not all analysts agree that directly seizing oil assets would serve US interests.
“There is no real strategy to taking oil reserves in the Middle East, although it may now be a goal that Trump has,” said Evan Cooper, a research analyst in the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center.
“The United States would not benefit significantly from controlling oil production in the region – it benefits far more from Middle Eastern oil being efficiently sold on to the global market,” he said.
While the US is now a major energy producer, global price fluctuations still have a direct impact on the domestic economy and political landscape.
At the same time, volatility in oil prices and supply is pushing countries toward renewable energy, a sector increasingly dominated by China.
Experts say the relationship between oil and US military intervention in the Middle East is well established.
US influence over Middle Eastern oil-rich countries became increasingly important after World War II, with US companies increasing their control of Middle East oil from around 10% in 1940 to over 60% in 1967.
In 1953, the US and the UK backed a coup that overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh after he nationalized the country’s oil industry.
Gokay said the American public was presented with a familiar justification at the time: that communist expansion posed a threat and the US could not afford another Soviet-aligned state in the Middle East. However, Iran’s vast oil reserves also represented a crucial economic and geopolitical prize.
"More than seven decades on, with a US heavy military campaign once again threatening Iran, a different president is in the Oval Office, yet the same obsession remains alive," he added.
During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, US forces intervened to protect oil shipments in the Gulf.
The 1991 Gulf War, launched after Iraq invaded Kuwait, was also closely tied to securing regional energy supplies.
Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, US policy focused in part on stabilizing and restructuring the country’s oil sector.
“America is addicted to oil,” former US President George W. Bush famously said in 2006.
The US approach has been shaped by the Carter Doctrine, announced by President Jimmy Carter in his 1980 State of the Union address, which established that the US would use military force if necessary to defend its interests in the oil-rich Gulf.
Since the Carter Doctrine, Kapoor said that protecting energy routes and infrastructure has justified a sustained military presence in the region.
“More than 40 years later, the significance of the oil-rich Middle East for the US global position still remains a central pillar of world politics,” said Gokay. “It ensures, with the use of violence, if necessary, that Middle Eastern oil remains accessible, free-flowing, cheap and under US control.”
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