How the Iran war could make Trump an accidental climate president

By Laura Paddison, CNN

(CNN) — The Iran war was supposed to be a short, sharp strike that brought down the regime within a few weeks. Instead, the US finds itself enmeshed in a conflict that’s upending the world’s energy system.

As oil and gas prices soar, there have been noticeable shifts toward clean energy, and it’s raised a profoundly weird question: Could this war make President Donald Trump an accidental climate president, at least on the global stage?

It would be a deep irony, if so. Trump is the climate-denier-in-chief. He has called global warming a “hoax,” clean energy a “scam,” pushed fossil fuels, and unraveled a slew of climate and environmental protections.

But as the war grinds into its eighth month, it’s highlighting the immense vulnerability of fossil fuels to geopolitical instability. There are signs of global clean energy moves, even as the picture remains complex, with some countries scrambling for coal instead.

The longer the war continues, some experts say, the bigger the impact it could have on undermining global oil and gas demand.

“With all (Trump’s) efforts to encourage fossil fuel use, he might end up accelerating their phase down instead,” said Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

The launch of the US and Israel’s war on Iran in February led to the biggest oil shock in history. Iran strangled the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that transported roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas, sending the cost of a barrel of oil surging over $100.

Many analysts predicted the price spike would be short-term, but it has persisted even as Iran’s chokehold over the strait has loosened. Shipping costs to get oil through the Strait of Hormuz have surged, and new fronts are opening up in the conflict, including attacks by Iran-backed Houthis on Saudi oil facilities and tankers.

It’s all affecting demand. Back in January, the International Energy Agency forecast global oil demand would rise by 930,000 barrels per day in 2026. By September, the picture had changed dramatically. The IEA now forecasts a decline of 2.5 million barrels a day due to the “impasse” in negotiations between the US and Iran.

Less oil means less planet-warming pollution. Global fossil fuel emissions are on track to fall around 0.5% in 2026, according to an analysis from Carbon Brief, a non-profit climate change publication. It would mark the first fall since 2020, when the Covid pandemic ground the world to a halt.

It also means big shifts in transportation, where most of the world’s oil goes. People are driving and flying less, but these are likely temporary changes, said Sverre Alvik, vice president and energy transition outlook director at DNV, a Norway-based consultancy. Much more permanent are the vehicles people are buying.

Global sales of electric vehicles were up 4% in the second quarter of 2026, according to the IEA, which said the Middle East crisis “has clearly reinforced the case for EVs as a way to address energy security and fuel cost concerns.”

Australia and parts of Asia have seen EV booms, as has Europe, where sales hit record highs in 2026, according to a report from the non-profit advocacy group Transport & Environment. Fuel prices were a key factor, with diesel reaching particularly painful highs, up 38% since the start of the war.

The US bucks the trend, however. EV sales have slumped as the Trump administration has cut support for them and effectively banned cheaper Chinese models. They’re down more than 30% this year so far, according to research firm Motor Intelligence.

Then there’s natural gas. The conflict has dealt “a major supply shock” to the world’s gas markets, according to the IEA, which projects global demand will shrink by around 0.5% in 2026.

Countries are seeking alternatives, with dozens implementing policies to switch from fossil fuels to clean power since the war started. Harnessing the sun and wind doesn’t rely on a few volatile chokepoints in the same way as oil and gas.

“The new geopolitics of energy is driving clean energy solutions and electrification,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Global Energy, Climate, and Sustainability Lab at New York University.

Investment in solar capacity in Southeast Asian countries, for example, has roughly quadrupled in the first two quarters of this year, according to data from the Rhodium Group, an independent research provider. Most of the region’s liquified natural gas comes from the Gulf, so they had to “make a quicker pivot,” said Tess Carter, an associate director for energy and climate at Rhodium.

It will take time to see real evidence of an accelerating shift away from oil and gas, said Gross. A wholesale move to EVs and widespread changes in grid-scale electricity are lengthy processes. “But I do expect that it is coming,” Gross said.

That said, there is a catch. The transition to alternative energy options has not just meant renewables; some countries have turned to coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. Global coal demand is now projected to rise by 1.2% in 2026, a reversal of earlier forecasts which had projected a small decline.

There is also the possibility that oil and gas demand could come swinging back — the IEA projects a recovery for oil in 2027. And we’ve been here before on big global disruptions. Some environmentalists hoped the pandemic would lead to a clean energy shift, instead, fossil fuel demand surged in 2021.

How permanent the shifts are may depend on how long the conflict endures. For every month it lasts, the probability of permanent oil “demand destruction” increases, a DNV analysis found. “If the war lasts for four years, for example, then our analysis shows that oil demand will never resume to the level we had in 2025,” DNV’s Alvik said.

Some are hopeful that whatever happens, more permanent changes are already ingrained. Iran has shown drones and missiles are all that’s needed to strangle a waterway — not a powerful navy. “The world cannot unsee what has happened, and oil and natural gas supply seem much more insecure than they did before the war,” said Gross of the Brookings Institution.

Rob Jackson, a climate scientist at Stanford University, said the conflict “could have a sustained effect because dozens of countries are now promoting EV incentives, charging infrastructure and electrification in general.”

Still, he finds the notion of Trump as an accidental climate president “ridiculous.” He may have hastened clean energy uptake overseas, but he has gutted green energy in the US and “set us back decades,” Jackson said.

“The forces driving green energy around the world — cleaner, cheaper fuels — will ultimately prevail despite him.”

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