Gas prices on Wednesday hit their highest-ever price for this point in the year according to GasBuddy.

Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, reported in a post on X that gas prices have never gone above $4 per gallon after August 12 in any year.

On Wednesday morning, the average fuel price was just over $4 per gallon. The last time fuel cost nearly that much around mid-August was in 2022 when the national average gas price was $3.98 per gallon.

Gas prices have remained high for the majority of the year thanks to President Donald Trump’s ongoing war in Iran. Despite Trump's promises that fuel prices will "drop like a rock" once the war ends — and his frequent claims the the war has effectively ended and that Iran's military is destroyed while the U.S. controls the Strait of Hormuz — prices have continued to climb.

Approximately 20 percent of the oil used by the rest of the world travels through the Strait of Hormuz, which still appears to be under the control of Iran. The U.S. Navy is currently blockading the strait.

Iran and Oman are currently negotiating an agreement to reopen the strait. An Iranian official explained on Saturday that Tehran is demanding the U.S. end its blockade, lift its sanctions, and pay war reparations before it agrees to open the strait.

Trump appeared hostile to Iran's terms, countering with his own demand that the nation pay "for all the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts."

He reiterated his displeasure with Iran's conditions on Wednesday, claiming again on Truth Social that the U.S. has "total control over the Strait of Hormuz."

"I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT," he wrote. "Our Naval Blockade is being called, by everyone, 'A WALL OF STEEL,' and there is nothing Iran can do about it."

Trump's inability to end the war he started alongside Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has left him taking criticism even from some of his former advisers.

“The moment is extremely dangerous, and the Trump administration is showing uncertainty and incompetence,” Elliott Abrams, who worked for Trump during his first administration, told Politico.

An anonymous current U.S. official told the outlet that Trump "fundamentally misunderstands" Iran's leadership, and have wrongly "felt like they can just keep applying pain and Iran will crumble, but the regime is not going to crumble.”

With no end in sight, the Trump administration has released millions of barrels of reserve oil to try to avoid the blowback from increased fuel prices.

In March, Trump authorized the release of 182 million barrels of oil held in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to alleviate expected fuel shortages and price increases associated with the war. That release has brought the SPR to its lowest point since 1983, according to the Department of Energy.

The Independent has requested comment from the White House.