On the day that I spoke with Flowers, Donald Trump said that he had told Israel not to repeat its strike on Iranian gas fields, and Benjamin Netanyahu said that the country would hold off. But the tit-for-tat attacks were another sign that the war, and its economic consequences, was spiralling out of Trump’s control. Just as the President has inexplicably failed to anticipate Iran’s moves to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for oil and L.N.G., and to target energy infrastructure in other Gulf states, he and his advisers appear to have overlooked the enduring influence of the Middle East in the global energy supply chain, and how disrupting this chain can harm the U.S. economy. A “National Security Strategy” document that the White House released in November notes that in recent years energy supplies “have diversified greatly, with the United States once again a net energy exporter.” And it said that as “American energy production ramps up, America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede.” Yet ordinary Americans, who have seen the price of gasoline jump by almost a third in a few weeks, find themselves, once again, hostage to events in the Gulf. And the economic challenges facing many of America’s allies in Europe and Asia, which rely almost entirely on imports of oil and gas, are even more acute.