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Secretary Chris Wright Tells CNN the U.S. Is Not Targeting Iran's Energy Industry

March 8, 2026 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:07:24

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

CNN reported that people in Tehran woke to smoke-filled skies and raining oil after the Israeli military struck fuel sites in the capital overnight. Asked whether targeting Iran’s oil industry would be a new continuing strategy for the U.S. and Israel, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said no: there are no plans to target Iran’s oil industry, its natural gas industry, or anything about its energy industry, he said. The strikes were Israeli strikes on local fuel depots, and the U.S. is targeting zero energy infrastructure, according to Wright, who added, as he put it, that the goal is to end a 47-year war.

Asked about the health impacts of the strikes on fuel sites, Wright said there are of course air-quality impacts, but he focused on what he described as the thousands of American soldiers the Iranian regime has killed over the years — opening its regime by kidnapping 66 Americans and holding them hostage for over a year, killing hundreds of Marines in Beirut three years later, and continuing through IED bombs in Iraq. He called it a murderous regime that had recently killed somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 of its own citizens protesting it, which he said is a far greater worry than a few days of lower air quality in Tehran, according to the interview.

The interview then turned to gas prices at home, noting two of the ten largest single-day price increases in history that week and a 36% one-week spike in the price of oil, the largest since 1983, as the program stated the figures.

Why it matters

Wright’s CNN appearance draws the administration’s public line on the Iran campaign’s limits: Israeli fuel-depot strikes are not a U.S. strategy against Iranian energy infrastructure, even as home gas prices spike.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins Jake Tapper on CNN - March 8, 2026”, 2026-03-08 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-03-08). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.