Rep. Turner says he doesn’t think ground troops necessary to reopen Strait of Hormuz
Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, appears on ABC News’ “This Week” on April 5, 2026. (ABC News)
(WASHINGTON) — Republican Rep. Mike Turner defended the U.S. war with Iran on Sunday and said that he doesn’t believe an American ground force would be required to restore freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
“I don’t think U.S. ground troops are going to be necessary in any direct conflict,” Turner told ABC News’ “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos after being pressed on whether troops on the ground would be needed to reopen the strait.
“The straits are going to be open,” Turner told Stephanopoulos, but said that the U.S. cannot allow Iran to continue developing missile technology or nuclear weapons that could threaten the American homeland and Europe.
“You have to be able to address this … great sponsor of terrorism, this … global power ambition that Iran has,” he said.
Turner’s comments come as President Donald Trump has repeatedly indicated that the Strait of Hormuz is not the U.S.’s problem.
“The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won’t be taking any in the future. We don’t need it. We haven’t needed it and we don’t need it,” Trump said Wednesday in a prime-time address to the nation, adding that it was the responsibility of other countries to secure the strait.
“We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on,” he said.
Turner said that despite the impact of the war on global oil markets, the consequences of inaction from the U.S. against Iran would have been greater.
“Certainly, you know, Iran is going to have some things that they’re going to be able to do during the conflict,” Turner said. “But if you don’t undertake the conflict, if you just step back and watch, as the Obama administration was going to do while Iran became a nuclear power and they became North Korea, we wouldn’t be looking at the Strait of Hormuz,” he added, claiming that if Iran had developed nuclear weapons the world would be “held hostage by a terrorist state.”
“They still are being significantly diminished,” Turner said, “and their ability to be able to be marching toward a nuclear state is being eliminated.”
US President Donald Trump, during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. The annual Davos gathering of political leaders, top executives and celebrities runs from Jan. 19-23. (Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(DAVOS, Switzerland) — President Donald Trump, speaking Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland amid heightened tensions with Europe, notably ruled out using military force to acquire Greenland.
“We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won’t do that,” Trump said.
“I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force,” Trump said.
Still, Trump said no other country can defend Greenland but the United States and said he is seeking “immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States.”
“I have tremendous respect for both the people of Greenland and the people of Denmark, tremendous respect. But every NATO ally has an obligation to be able to defend their own territory, and the fact is, no nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland other than the United States. We’re a great power,” Trump said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., leaves a meeting of the House Republican Conference at the Capitol Hill Club on Wednesday, January 22, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — California Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa has died at the age of 65, according to House Republican leaders.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media traveling on Air Force One while heading to Miami on March 7, 2026. President Trump and other members of the government attended the dignified transfer of six soldiers from the 103rd Sustainment Command who were killed in action by an Iranian drone strike on March 1 in Port of Shuaiba, Kuwait, during Operation Epic Fury. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Ten days into the U.S. war with Iran, Americans are starting to feel the economic fallout as oil and gas prices soar.
Gas prices skyrocketed to a national average of $3.47 on Monday, up nearly 50 cents from last week, according to data from AAA. Plus, oil prices on Monday surpassed $100 a barrel for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 before falling lower later in the day.
President Donald Trump has dismissed the higher cost, telling ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce it’s “a little glitch.”
“I think it’s fine. It’s a little glitch. We had to take this detour,” Trump told ABC’s Bruce in an interview on Sunday before going on to tout the U.S. military campaign against Tehran.
In a social media post on Sunday night, Trump argued: “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace.”
Yet the cost of living remains one of the biggest issues heading into the 2026 midterms, where Trump and Republicans are seeking to maintain narrow majorities in Congress.
A poll released by NBC News on Sunday found Trump received his lowest ratings in the poll on his handling of inflation and the cost of living as 36% of registered voters approve and 62% disapprove.
On Iran, the NBC poll found a majority of registered voters (54%) disapproved of Trump’s handling of the matter.
Trump, on the 2024 campaign trail, vowed to bring gas down below $2 a gallon. During the first year of his second term, Trump routinely pointed to the drop in prices at the pump, including in his State of the Union address last month.
“Gasoline, which reached a peak of over $6 a gallon in some states under my predecessor and was, quite honestly, a disaster, is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places $1.99 a gallon,” Trump said in his speech on Feb. 24.
Now, gas prices are closing in on $3.50 a gallon and are expected to continue to keep rising the longer the Middle East conflict lasts.
Patrick De Haan, a petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, told ABC News Live that Americans are currently experiencing “sticker shock.”
“Gas stations are seeing their costs go up in real time again today, as oil markets are jumping, and that’s going to be in another round of price increases over the course of this week, prices could jump another 15 to 35 cents a gallon for gasoline over the next three days, as long as nothing changes,” De Haan said. “And it’s going to be worse for the price of diesel, which could jump 35 to 50 cents a gallon, that would put it close to nearly a $5 a gallon national average.”
Some Democrats are seizing on the price jump to criticize Trump and the administration for the handling of the war.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has called for President Trump to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to alleviate the financial burden for Americans.
“American families are suffering from higher prices as the effects of Trump’s reckless war become pain at the gas pump and beyond as high gas prices trickle down making everything more expensive,” Schumer said in a statement on Sunday. “They cannot afford to simply wait and hope prices come down. The President has a solution right here at home, and he should use it.”
“Trump promised a Golden Age in America. Meanwhile. Republicans are crashing the economy, gas prices are out of control and the extremists are spending billions dropping bombs in the Middle East. You deserve better,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also a New York Democrat, wrote on X on Monday.
Trump was asked over the weekend if he would use the SPR to bring some relief, but declined to say, instead criticizing former President Joe Biden’s use of the reserve. Biden released oil from the SPR several times over the course of 2022 as prices increased due to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“I filled it up and he brought it down to the lowest level it’s ever been. We will start at the appropriate time, which is basically a gut instinct, we will start filling up,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday.
“Biden used them so that he could get some extra votes in the election,” Trump added.
Analysts previously told ABC News that the SPR is a “valuable resource” for the administration to bring some relief to Americans and assuage market fears, but likely wouldn’t be enough oil in the long term to make up for the 20 million barrels of oil currently being prevented from passing through the Strait of Hormuz every day.
Trump told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade in an interview on Sunday night that ships holding at the Strait of Hormuz need to “show some guts” and push through the channel.
Several war-risk insurers have canceled their coverage for vessels amid the widening conflict. Trump said the U.S. government was going to provide some risk insurance and guarantees, and if necessary the U.S. Navy would escort tankers through the strait.
Like Trump, several Republicans are contending that higher gas prices will be temporary.
“The prices will come back down as soon as we get out of Iran, as soon as we finish turning them into fish food, which will be pretty soon,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy said on Fox News on Sunday.
How long the Iran war will last remains an open question. President Trump initially estimated four to five weeks for the U.S., though he later said the timeline would be whatever it takes.
On Sunday, Trump told ABC’s Bruce: “I don’t know. I never predict. All I can say is we are ahead of schedule both in terms of lethality and in terms of time.”
GasBuddy’s De Haan told ABC News Live that the longer the conflict lasts, the more time it will take to see oil and gas prices to get back to their previous levels
“Every day the situation continues, it could add another several weeks to the recovery time,” De Haan said.
ABC News’ Isabella Murray, Nicholas Kerr, Soo Youn and Max Zahn contributed to this report.
