The demands of the Iran war also caused President Donald Trump to delay by several weeks his highly anticipated trip to China, deepening worries that the U.S. is once again getting distracted at the cost of its strategic interests in Asia, where Beijing seeks to unseat the U.S. as the regional leader.

Those skeptical of the U.S. involvement in the Middle East say the war is preventing Trump from adequately preparing for his summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping next month, when economic interests are on the line, and they warn that a failure to focus on Asia and maintain strong deterrence could lead to greater instability, if China should believe the time is ripe to seize the self-governed island of Taiwan.

“This is precisely the wrong time for the United States to turn away and be sucked into another intractable Middle East conflict,” said Danny Russel, a distinguished fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Rebalancing to Asia is highly relevant to America’s national interests, but it has been undercut by many bad decisions.”

Others defend the president’s approach, arguing that the forceful steps he is taking elsewhere, including in Venezuela and Iran, serve to counter China globally.

“Beijing is the chief sponsor for the adversaries that President Trump is dealing with sequentially, and it’s wise to do this sequentially,” Matt Pottinger, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the first Trump administration, said in a recent podcast.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also said conflicts may not be confined to a single theater, suggesting that China could call upon its “junior partners” elsewhere to divert U.S. attention if it should move against Taiwan.

“Most likely it will not be limited, something in the Indo-Pacific to the Indo-Pacific,” Rutte said, speaking Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Institute in Washington. “It will be a multi-theater issue.”

Repercussions in Asia of the Iran war

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently led a bipartisan group of senators to Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, where they heard concerns about the impact of the war on energy costs and about the departure of U.S. military assets, including missile defense systems from South Korea and a rapid-response Marine unit from Japan.

She sought to reassure them of the U.S. commitment to deterring conflicts in Asia and shoring up regional stability.

“Failure is not an option,” Shaheen told The Associated Press after returning from Asia. “We know China has already said they intend to take Taiwan by force if they need to, and they’re on an expedited time schedule. And we also know that what happened in Europe, in the war in Ukraine, in the Middle East is affecting those calculations.”

Kurt Campbell, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration, said he’s worried that the military capabilities that the U.S. had patiently accumulated in the Indo-Pacific region might not return in full even after the Iran war ends.

The longer the conflict goes on, the more it will pull resources and focus away from Asia, said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the U.S. strategy in Asia. He added that future arms sales to the region also will be negatively affected.

“The United States has expended substantial numbers of munitions in the Middle East and will have to keep an increased force presence there, some of which has been redirected from Asia,” Cooper said. “Meanwhile, Xi Jinping’s wisdom in preparing a ‘war time’ economy by stockpiling and adding alternate energy sources has shown itself to be beneficial.”

Shaheen said the U.S. defense industry will struggle to meet the demand to replenish the weapons stockpile. “We’re working on a number of strategies to improve that, but at this point, timelines for weapons delivery are slipping,” she said.

The senator from New Hampshire said she’s encouraged that Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are stepping up their own defense.

After 15 years and 3 presidents, pivot to Asia remains elusive

Obama’s strategic rebalance to Asia reflected his understanding that the U.S. must be a player in the Pacific to harness the region’s growth and ensure continued U.S. leadership in the face of China’s rising influence.

“After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia-Pacific region,” Obama said in a speech to the Australian Parliament. “So make no mistake, the tide of war is receding, and America is looking ahead to the future that we must build.”

But the strategy was set back when a proposed trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership with key U.S. regional partners failed to get through the U.S. Senate. After Trump first took office in 2017, he withdrew the U.S. from the partnership and launched a tariff war with China.

His Democratic successor, Joe Biden, kept Trump’s tariffs on China and tightened export controls on advanced technology, while strengthening regional alliances to counter China.

Middle East again grabs US attention

By the time Trump rolled out his national security strategy in late 2025, the U.S. strategy in Asia had been narrowed to military deterrence in the Taiwan Strait and the First Island Chain, a string of U.S.-aligned islands off China’s coast that restrict its access to the Western Pacific.

The national security document says it’s in the economic interest of the U.S. to secure access to advanced chips, which are sourced primarily from Taiwan and are needed to power everything from computers to missiles, and to protect shipping lanes in the South China Sea.

“Hence deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority,” the document says. “We will build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain.”

The Middle East, it says, should be getting less attention: “As this administration rescinds or eases restrictive energy policies and American energy production ramps up, America’s historic reason for focusing on the Middle East will recede.”

Then came the Iran war.

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The first reason is simple: volume. In the first half of 2025, about 20.9 million barrels per day of oil moved through the strait, equal to roughly one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption and about one-quarter of all maritime oil trade. More than 20% of global LNG trade also passed through Hormuz, much of it from Qatar. The International Energy Agency describes the strait as one of the world’s most critical oil transit chokepoints and warns that alternatives can reroute only a portion of what normally moves through it.

At first glance, that might sound more important to Asia than to the United States, and in direct import terms, it is. The EIA says the United States imported about 0.4 million barrels per day of crude and condensate through Hormuz in the first half of 2025, just 7% of U.S. crude and condensate imports and about 2% of U.S. petroleum liquids consumption. But that statistic can be misleading. Oil is priced in a global market. When a waterway carrying one-fifth of the world’s oil supply is threatened, the United States does not get a pass because it imports less directly from the Gulf than it used to. American drivers, trucking companies, airlines and consumers still feel the shock through higher global crude prices and higher transportation costs.

That is exactly what recent events have underscored. Reuters reported this month that the EIA expects U.S. gasoline prices to remain elevated for months even after flows through Hormuz eventually recover, and AP reported oil prices jumping sharply after the latest U.S. move involving Iranian ports, with U.S. crude rising 8% and Brent gaining 7% in early trading. In other words, Hormuz matters to Americans not only because of where the oil goes first, but because of what happens to the price of energy everywhere when the route is disrupted.

The second reason Hormuz matters to the United States is alliance politics. Most of the oil and gas moving through the strait is headed to Asia. The EIA estimates that 89% of the crude and condensate that transited Hormuz in the first half of 2025 went to Asian markets, while the IEA says Japan and South Korea, both close U.S. allies, are particularly reliant on crude flows passing through the strait. A serious interruption there does not just threaten energy supply; it threatens the economic stability of countries that anchor the U.S. alliance system in the Indo-Pacific. That gives the passage strategic importance well beyond America’s own direct imports.

There is also a military reason. The U.S. does not just see Hormuz as an energy corridor. It sees it as a test of whether international waterways remain open to civilian commerce. CENTCOM has called the strait “an international sea passage and an essential trade corridor,” and said roughly 100 merchant vessels transit it on a typical day. That language matters. For Washington, freedom of navigation is not an abstract slogan. It is a principle tied to deterrence, maritime order and the credibility of U.S. power. If a hostile actor can threaten or close a chokepoint like Hormuz, the concern in Washington is not limited to fuel markets; it extends to the broader question of whether the rules of global commerce can still be enforced.

Shipping itself is another part of the story. The International Maritime Organization notes that the strait operates through an established traffic separation scheme designed to manage dense vessel movement and reduce collisions. When security deteriorates, the problem is not only that fewer ships move through. Insurance costs rise, crews face greater danger, routes become less predictable and delays ripple outward into supply chains. The IMO said in March that attacks and threats in and around Hormuz were endangering commercial vessels and seafarers, underscoring how quickly a military crisis can become a trade crisis.

Then there is the spare-capacity problem, which gets less attention but may be just as important. The IEA notes that a prolonged disruption in Hormuz could strand not just oil exports, but much of the world’s usable spare production capacity, most of it held by Saudi Arabia. That matters to the United States because spare capacity is one of the few real shock absorbers in an oil crisis. If the route that carries both supply and emergency backup barrels is compromised, markets become more fragile and price spikes become harder to contain.

So why is the Strait of Hormuz important to the United States? Because it sits at the intersection of energy, inflation, military deterrence and alliance stability. America may no longer depend on Gulf oil the way it once did, but it still depends on a world economy that does. As long as a fifth of the world’s oil and a major share of LNG pass through that narrow channel, events there will continue to shape U.S. policy, U.S. prices and U.S. strategic calculations. The strait may be thousands of miles away, but for Washington, it is never really distant.

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Maduro landed Saturday evening at a small airport in New York following the middle-of-the-night operation that extracted him and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home in a military base in the capital city of Caracas — an act that Maduro’s government called “imperialist.” The couple faces U.S. charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.

The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela’s autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval. Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, meanwhile, demanded that the United States free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader as her nation’s high court named her interim president.

Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Rodríguez, who didn’t give a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured, but none were killed.

Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.

Trump says US will ‘run the country’

The Trump administration promoted the ouster as a step toward reducing the flow of dangerous drugs into the U.S. The president touted what he saw as other potential benefits, including a leadership stake in the country and greater control of oil.

Trump claimed the U.S. government would help lead the country and was already doing so, though there were no immediate visible signs of that. Venezuelan state TV aired pro-Maduro propaganda and broadcast live images of supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference. He boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”

Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges, and the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife that painted his administration as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S with cocaine. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro as the country’s leader.

The Trump administration spent months building up American forces in the region and carrying out attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean for allegedly ferrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. campaign began in September.

Early morning attack

Taking place 36 years to the day after the 1990 surrender and seizure of Panama leader Manuel Antonio Noriega following a U.S. invasion, the Venezuela operation unfolded under the cover of darkness early Saturday. Trump said the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights” in Caracas while forces moved in to extract Maduro and his wife.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had rehearsed their maneuvers for months, learning everything about Maduro — where he was and what he ate, as well as details of his pets and his clothes.

“We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again and again,” Caine said. “Not to get it right, but to ensure we cannot get it wrong.”

Multiple explosions rang out that morning, and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas. Maduro’s government accused the United States of hitting civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets. The explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they saw and heard.

Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro. Rodríguez, however, stressed during a Saturday appearance on state television that she did not plan to assume power, before Venezuela’s high court ordered that she become interim president.

“There is only one president in Venezuela,” Rodriguez said, “and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”

Some streets in Caracas fill up

Venezuela’s ruling party has held power since 1999, when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, took office, promising to uplift poor people and later to implement a self-described socialist revolution.

Maduro took over when Chávez died in 2013. His 2018 reelection was widely considered a sham because the main opposition parties were banned from participating. During the 2024 election, electoral authorities loyal to the ruling party declared him the winner hours after polls closed, but the opposition gathered overwhelming evidence that he lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

In a demonstration of how polarizing Maduro is, people variously took to the streets to protest his capture, while others celebrated it. At a protest in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, Mayor Carmen Meléndez joined a crowd demanding Maduro’s return.

“Maduro, hold on, the people are rising up!” the crowd chanted. “We are here, Nicolás Maduro. If you can hear us, we are here!”

In other parts of the city, the streets were empty hours after the attack.

“How do I feel? Scared, like everyone,” said Caracas resident Noris Prada, who sat on an empty avenue looking at his phone. “Venezuelans woke up scared. Many families couldn’t sleep.”

In Doral, Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, people wrapped themselves in Venezuelan flags, ate fried snacks and cheered as music played. At one point, the crowd chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”

Questions of legality

linger

Whether the United States violated any laws, international or otherwise, was still a question early Sunday. “There are a number of international legal concepts which the United States might have broken by capturing Maduro,” said Ilan Katz, an international law analyst.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council, acting on an emergency request from Colombia, planned to hold a meeting on U.S. operations in Venezuela on Monday morning. That was according to a council diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a meeting not yet made public.

Lawmakers from both American political parties have raised reservations and flat-out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling. Congress has not approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.

Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he had seen no evidence that would justify Trump striking Venezuela without approval from Congress and demanded an immediate briefing by the administration on “its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”

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