Someone remind me what the US objective is here… art of the deal experts… keep big oil happy with high oil prices? lower price at the pump (and elsewhere) for midterm voters? profit from weekly swing trades and grifting? make sure Israel can do „its thing“? Ensure maximum vanity effect due to breathless news reporting?

Besides looting the Treasury, handing over the country to Putin and outlawing the democrat party?

The short term goals are these:

-Ensure Iran never has a nuclear weapon
-Reduce/eliminate their ability to project power in the region. That means reducing their capabilities to develop and launch ballistic missiles and cutting them off from their terror proxies.

The longer term goals are these. By "longer term" I mean a couple of years:

Put the United States on a much stronger footing vis a vis China in the event of an invasion of Taiwan by:
-Reducing China's influence on world trade choke points
-Increase the United States' influence on these same choke points
-Realign global energy markets to reduce the influence of bad actors operating in shadow markets (Russia, Iran, Venezuela)

That last point is going to cause some consternation and some "See! It's all about Big Oil!". That's certainly one way to think about it.

Another way is this:

Why would anyone who rails against Putin want him to be able to sell his oil despite sanctions? Why would anyone who thinks China is an economic rival think that allowing them to buy oil from bad actors at lower prices is a good thing?