President Donald Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright refused to rule out expert predictions that Americans could see $5 a gallon gas prices as the Strait of Hormuz deadlock continues to pressure markets and instead deflected to make a case for the necessity for war and attacked Democratic lawmakers who, he said, don’t seem to be “worried” about Iran.

Wright appeared on NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday to speak with host Kristen Welker, who grilled him on rising energy prices that began after Iran effectively shuttered the key energy trading route through the strait, which carries around one fifth of the world’s supply and has, as a result, spiked oil prices globally.

After insisting that prices would come down once the Strait of Hormuz was opened, Welker pressed Wright with a report from JP Morgan Chase that warned gas prices could spike further and spike higher than they are already “as refiners prioritize jet fuel production at the expense of other products.”

“Should Americans be prepared for the possibility of paying $5 a gallon for gas?” Welker asked.

“Look, again, I can’t predict the price of energy in the short term or even the medium term, but what we’re doing is ending a 47-year conflict,” Wright said.

“Iran has fought death to the United States for 47 years, death to Israel, and as we saw when the conflict broke out, they attacked all of their neighbors in the Middle East that had no involvement in the conflict whatsoever. If you have a hostile, unstable power like that, you simply cannot allow them to have nuclear weapons. That was a consensus opinion all my adult life,” he continued.

Rounding on the political opposition, he added: “I’m shocked to see Democrats come out of the woodwork now, somehow not worried about Iran getting nuclear weapons.”

“I know you’re saying you can’t predict how high gas prices will go, but I don’t hear you ruling out the possibility that they could in fact go to $5 a gallon,” Welker pressed.

“Well, I’m just avoiding price predictions,” the cabinet official replied.

Wright’s cautious reply comes just three weeks after he told CNN anchor Jake Tapper on State of the Union that “prices have likely peaked and they’ll start going down.”

He admitted at the time that Americans may not see prices below $3 a gallon until “later this year” or “next year.”

Watch above via NBC News.

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