Four months ago, the United States started bombing Iran. Now, according to a Brown University estimate cited by NBC News, Americans have spent an extra $33 billion on gasoline as a direct result. That is not a typo. Thirty-three billion dollars, pulled out of ordinary people's wallets and vaporized at the pump, while the administration that launched the war has yet to do a single concrete thing about it.
The Numbers Are As Bad As They Sound
Since the U.S. first struck Iran on February 28, average national gas prices have climbed 34%, according to NBC News's analysis of AAA data. The week of May 11, the national average hit $4.63 per gallon, which the U.S. Energy Information Administration clocked as the tenth-highest weekly rate in a decade. The last time prices looked like this was 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, and everyone remembers how fun that was.
Depending on how often you fill up and how big your tank is, NBC News estimates this is costing individual drivers anywhere from under $20 to over $300 extra per month. That range sounds wide until you realize the people absorbing that $300 figure are not hedge fund managers. They are people who drive to work because they have to.
Wyoming Got Hit With a Truck
Not every state is suffering equally. An NBC News analysis found Wyoming residents are taking the hardest hit, with gas prices up more than 50% since February, averaging $4.70 per gallon. Utah and Wisconsin are right there with them, also posting increases of at least 50%. Indiana, somehow, has held up the best, with prices up only 57 cents since February.
If you live in Wyoming and you drive a truck, which, statistically, you probably do, the math here is genuinely brutal. A large pickup tank runs around 26 gallons. Fill that up twice a month and even a moderate per-gallon increase turns into a real bite out of a paycheck. There is no remote work option for most of the jobs people in Wyoming actually have.
People Are Changing How They Live
Americans are not just complaining. They are adjusting. Location analytics company Placer.ai found that gas station visits across the U.S. were down 5% in May compared to May 2025, meaning people are either driving less or stretching out how long they wait between fill-ups. When the cost of getting somewhere becomes a real decision, people start making different decisions.
April data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows consumers now expect to spend more on transportation and utilities over the next year, and less on vacations, homes, and electronics. Translation: the war in Iran has quietly reorganized American household budgets. People are not booking trips. They are not buying appliances. They are putting gas in the car and hoping prices come down.
The Administration's Response Has Been a Whole Lot of Nothing
Some states have taken action on their own, pausing gas taxes or delaying scheduled increases to give drivers a little relief. That is state governments doing what they can with what they have.
The federal government? NBC News reports that members of the Trump administration discussed pausing the federal gas tax. Discussed. Talked about it. Had the conversation. And then did not do it. Four months into a war that the administration chose to start, which has driven gas prices to their highest sustained level in a decade, the relief plan so far consists of a meeting that went nowhere.
A Peace Deal Is Maybe Possibly Potentially on the Horizon
There is, theoretically, light at the end of this particular tunnel. NBC News notes that a recent peace deal announcement and a subsequent memorandum of understanding have raised the possibility that the war could be winding down. That is genuinely good news, if it holds, for reasons that go well beyond the price of unleaded.
But even if a deal locks in tomorrow, the $33 billion Americans have already spent does not come back. That money is gone. It got burned in engines on the way to work, on the way to school, on the way to wherever people have to go because they live in a country where most of them have no alternative to driving.
The Dingo Take
Let's be precise about what happened here. The United States launched a military strike on Iran on February 28. That decision, made by this administration, triggered a chain of consequences that includes a 34% spike in gas prices and $33 billion in extra costs absorbed by ordinary American drivers. Those are not acts of God. That is policy with a price tag, and the people paying it are not the ones who made the call.
The federal gas tax pause was apparently close enough to real that NBC News is reporting on it, which means someone in the building knew relief was needed. They just did not do anything about it. Months passed. Prices stayed elevated. Wyoming hit $4.70 a gallon. And the administration that launched the war has spent more energy talking about relief than actually providing it.
A peace deal might bring prices down. It might. But the framing of this as a story about gas prices misses something important: this is a story about who pays for wars. It is not the people who start them. It is never the people who start them.
