Will the United States’ withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal have any major or lasting impact on life in Butler County? Not likely, but any global conflict involving energy markets threatens to affect all of us.

Half a world away in the Middle East, a sense of deepening gloom fell Tuesday as President Donald Trump announced his decision to pull out of the deal initiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, addressing a petroleum conference In Tehran, warned that his country could face “some problems” for two or three months, “but we will pass through this,” Rouhani said.

Trump stated his reasons: “The Iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror. It exports dangerous missiles, fuels conflicts across the Middle East, and supports terrorist proxies and militias such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and al-Qaida. Over the years, Iran and its proxies have bombed American embassies and military installations, murdered hundreds of American servicemembers, and kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured American citizens. The Iranian regime has funded its long reign of chaos and terror by plundering the wealth of its own people. No action taken by the regime has been more dangerous than its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them.”

For the Iranian people, economic hardship is nothing new, despite the influx of cash that coincided with the Obama arms settlement. With runaway inflation already gripping the economy, the head of Iran’s Central Bank, Valiollah Seif, told state television that the U.S. decision “does not create a problem.” But the Iranian rial was already trading on the black market at 66,000 to the dollar, far beyond the government-set rate of 42,000 rials to the dollar, according to the Associated Press. Many Iranians say they have seen no benefits from the nuclear deal; indeed, many joined a nationwide protest in December and January during which at least 25 people were killed and nearly 5,000 arrested.

For the typical Butler County resident, the impact is much less consequential — higher gasoline prices, and the various measures of hardship that higher gas prices bring.

Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, said killing the nuclear deal “may inflict more pain on motorists, as it may lead to sanctions placed on Iran and their oil production, which would likely push oil prices higher.”

The annual switch to summer gas blends is about complete, DeHaan said, and so is the yearly bump in prices that the switch brings.

In fact, GasBuddy recorded an actual decrease of a half-cent in average gasoline prices last week, the first drop since November. It may be the last decrease we’ll see for weeks to come.