Gas just hit $4 a gallon again — and every cent of that hike traces straight back to Washington's decision to escalate overseas rather than put American families first.

The national average for regular gasoline reached $4 per gallon on Monday, according to AAA, up from $3.14 a year ago. The driver isn't household demand or a booming economy. It's a shooting war with Iran and a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz that has choked off the waterway carrying 20% of the world's energy supplies. The bill for foreign entanglement arrives at the pump.

Oil prices have surged more than 15% in a single week and over 20% in two weeks, according to NBC News. Brent crude, the international benchmark, hit $90.95 a barrel Monday, while U.S. crude climbed to $84.04. Since January, both benchmarks are up roughly 45%.

The timeline tells the story. On July 7, Washington revoked a sanctions waiver on Iranian oil. The next day, President Trump declared the ceasefire with Iran was "over." Days later, he announced he was "reinstating the Iranian blockade" in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. military said the blockade targets "vessels transiting to or from Iranian ports and coastal areas."

Trump also floated a 20% fee on all cargo shipped through the strait — an idea shipping companies and international maritime organizations swiftly rejected as a violation of international law, NBC News reported. Trump later said he'd drop the fee, but oil kept climbing on near-daily U.S. strikes against Iran and Iranian retaliation.

The result: ship crossings through the Strait of Hormuz collapsed to a three-week low. On Thursday, just eight ships transited the waterway, according to MarineTraffic and Kpler data cited by NBC News. Before the war, the average was roughly 130 ships per day.

JPMorgan Chase commodities analyst Natasha Kaneva wrote Thursday that "rather than pursuing full closure, Tehran appears intent on establishing authority over navigation itself through mandatory transit protocols and transit fees." The back-and-forth, she wrote, "is hardening into a standoff over who controls the Strait, and has abruptly stalled the traffic recovery that began in early June."

Russia's war on Ukraine is compounding the squeeze. HSBC commodities analysts noted that Russia — the world's second-largest diesel exporter after the U.S. — banned exports of key refined products on July 8 through the end of the month, as Ukrainian attacks knock out Russian refining capacity. Russia is now looking to import diesel itself: less supply, more demand.

Jet fuel has followed the same trajectory. Before the Iran war, it averaged $2.50 per gallon. As of Friday, it sat at $3.57 — a 43% jump, per the Argus U.S. jet fuel index.

Gas prices first crossed $4 in late March, then dipped below that mark in mid-June when the U.S. and Iran reached an interim deal and crude oil prices eased. Even then, Trump expressed frustration that pump prices weren't falling as fast as oil prices, the New York Post and AP News both reported.

The AP and the Post framed the story as a consequence of mutual escalation — "as the U.S. and Iran launched more attacks." NBC provided the policy timeline connecting specific Washington decisions to specific price spikes. Both noted that affordability will be a central issue in the midterms, and that higher energy costs ripple into groceries and other goods.

What none of the outlets pressed: the basic arithmetic that every missile launched in the Strait of Hormuz is a dollar extracted from an American worker's paycheck. The national average masks the reality — drivers in some states have been paying well above $4 for weeks. The war tax doesn't itemize on your receipt. It's just there, at the pump, every time you fill up.

The question heading into November is straightforward: how long will voters tolerate financing a standoff over a waterway 7,000 miles away while they can't afford to fill their own tanks?