Sen. Ted Cruz

Look, the Strait of Hormuz is no doubt a critical choke point.

And Iran, I think part of the reason that we're seeing them go after the Strait is because I think they're at...

in desperate straits, that they are so weakened they don't have very many options left.

And look, we've seen, for example, we've seen a short-term energy price spike.

Now, listen, if energy keeps soaring and if you end up with gas prices much, much higher, you know, you ask politically about the election.

High gas prices historically have not been good for elections.

People are pissed.

Now, I don't believe that'll happen in the long term.

I think we're seeing a short term spike.

Any time you have military conflict in the Middle East, you predictably have a spike in the price of oil and the price of gasoline.

If we can bring, if we can see a stable regime in Iran that is not waging war with us,

And if the Iranian energy can come to the global market free of sanctions and free of conflict, I think long term that has a significant downward pressure on the price of oil and the price of gasoline.

And I also would point out that even with the spike we've seen, the price of gasoline is still significantly lower today than it was under Joe Biden.

And so we saw under the Trump administration and Republican Congress, the price of gasoline basically cut in half.

And then we've seen about half of that go back up again during this conflict.

I think the conflict will be short-lived, and I think you'll see prices fall when that happens.

Yes.

Well, look, that was bombed by the Iranians.

And it is an amazing statement that Iran, when this military conflict started, began firing missiles at practically every one of its neighbors.

And ironically, the Arab world is more united behind this military conflict than Europe is.