As he takes stock of his Republican Party’s midterm drubbing, President Donald Trump now faces the difficult question of what to do about his unpopular 8-month-old war against Iran.
For weeks, Trump has threatened to return to a full-scale bombardment of Iran once the U.S. elections were in the rearview mirror if Tehran did not come to a settlement under terms acceptable to him.
In his first comments on Wednesday after Democrats’ resounding election victory — a wave powered in part by the American electorate’s dissatisfaction with the war — Trump largely agreed with Vice President JD Vance, who publicly ruminated on the war being a catastrophe for Republicans.
“It’s largely true because it drove gasoline up a little bit,” Trump said. Still, he doubled down on his decision to launch the conflict despite its big political cost. “At the same time, if I had to do it again, I’d do it again,” he said.
The strikes, and counterstrikes, have caused tens of billions of dollars of damage in the region. And the conflict has reached into the pocketbook of families around the globe with elevated gas prices and rising costs in just about every sector.
Now, as Trump ponders his next move, the stakes couldn’t be higher for Iran, the Middle East and the global economy writ large.
Trump may be less restrained, but the conflict is now more complicated
While oil is flowing again from the Strait of Hormuz with the help of U.S. Navy escorts for international tankers, the conflict has spread to the Red Sea with Iran-backed Houthi rebels and a Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting it out.
The situation in the Red Sea remains particularly volatile. The Houthis are attacking Yemeni civilians and Saudi infrastructure, and are looking to bolster ties with militant groups across the Horn of Africa.
The attacks by the Yemen-based Houthis on areas controlled by the internationally recognized Yemeni government have also worsened a growing humanitarian crisis.
The threat that the region faces from Iran and its proxy groups, noted a senior Yemeni government official, “did not change overnight” with the U.S. elections, urging Washington to avoid hasty decisions. The official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the basis of anonymity.
“There’s reason to suspect that Trump may feel less restrained given that the political damage is done,” said Brian Haggerty, a former senior analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency who focused on Middle East security issues. “At the same time, the strategic calculus or the strategic logic of what you hope to achieve through an escalation of strikes against Iran is no different today than it was a week ago or a month ago.”
Trump has at least a few options, analysts say
Haggerty, who now works with Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank, said Trump could choose to maintain something close to the current posture, with the U.S. military carrying out what it calls “defensive strikes” while continuing its naval blockade to restrict the flow of Iranian oil to the global market.
Another option is striking Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, a facility linked to its nuclear program that is buried deep underground in central Iran, said David Schenker, who served as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in Trump’s first term. Trump has repeatedly suggested he was considering targeting the site.
Schenker said Trump could then walk away and contend he had done sufficient damage to Iran’s nuclear program — and perhaps try to pursue a “fig leaf agreement” that restores freedom of navigation to the Strait of Hormuz, offers Iran some degree of sanctions relief, and punts additional nuclear talks to the future.
Yet another option would be to follow up on threats Trump made earlier in the war to launch massive attacks on Iranian infrastructure. “The Iranians may believe the president is wounded and constrained by Congress, but the opposite can also be true,” Schenker said.
But such escalation would likely exacerbate the oil and energy price problem that many voters cited as a reason for supporting Democrats on Tuesday, Schenker said.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil tumbled below $95 on Wednesday after the election, touching its lowest level in two months, a signal that markets do not expect major strikes.
Regional officials are on high alert for what Trump does next
Middle East officials had been hanging on Trump’s every word in the weeks leading up to the U.S. elections, looking for clues on how the Republican leader was weighing his next steps.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed for renewed strikes on Iran during a call over the weekend with Trump, who would not commit to taking military action, according to a person who was briefed on it.
Three Middle Eastern government officials said on Wednesday that Trump and his administration had seemed to be signaling to Iran that its leverage would only diminish after the U.S. elections were over.
Administration officials had privately suggested in diplomatic channels that Trump might be more willing to restart strikes after Nov. 3 because he’d have little left to lose politically, according to the officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
After Tuesday’s electoral shellacking, there was lingering concern that Trump might be more emboldened to carry out full-scale or new limited strikes against Iran, the officials said.
A fourth official said the results of the election gave mediators a measure of optimism about finding a pathway to resolving the conflict.
Meanwhile, Vance appeared to more forcefully pin the electoral debacle on the Iran war than his boss Trump, who initially blamed the GOP’s candidates for the big loss.
“The reason we lost,” Vance said of the midterm elections in a lengthy social media post, “is the war.”
Vance, a potential 2028 presidential contender, had been among the most skeptical inside the White House on the wisdom of launching the war but got on board with Trump’s decision once he made it.
Voter data shows Iran had an impact but was not the top issue
Several Democratic candidates who scored upsets on Tuesday noted voter discontent with the Iran war in their victory speeches.
“Wherever I went, I heard the same thing,” said Sen.-elect Josh Turek of Iowa. “They would say, Josh, I’m struggling just to keep food on the table, keep a roof above my head, pay my electric bill. And with this war in Iran, I’m struggling just to keep gas in my tank.”
About 6 in 10 voters said the U.S. made the “wrong decision” in taking military action against Iran, according to The AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 voters in the United States.
Most of those voters dissatisfied with the Iran war backed the Democratic candidate in their local U.S. House race, but the survey suggested the Iran war was not the top issue for most voters.
Only about one-third of voters said the war in Iran was “crucial” to shaping how they voted for Congress. That was well below the roughly half who said that about the cost of living or government corruption.
Nearly all voters who backed the Democratic candidate in their local U.S. House race said going to war with Iran was the “wrong decision,” while roughly 8 in 10 voters who backed the Republican candidate said it was the “right decision.”
Meanwhile, about 6 in 10 voters nationally said they were “very concerned” about the cost of gasoline and diesel, the poll showed — and about two-thirds of that group voted for the Democratic candidate in their local U.S. House race.
But Trump, for his part, said even in hindsight he’d approach Iran exactly as he has.
“I can tell you that as far as that war is concerned I would have done nothing different,” the president said.
AP writers Collin Binkley, Hannah Fingerhut, and Kathleen Foody contributed reporting.
—Aamer Madhani, Linley Sanders, Samy Magdy and Matthew Lee, Associated Press