After midterm loss, Trump is left to weigh his next move in Iran war that contributed to GOP debacle

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.

And in an Oval Of­fice ex­change with re­porters Thurs­day, Trump sug­gest­ed that the elec­tion loss­es aren’t weigh­ing on his cal­cu­la­tions.

“If we have to do the rest of the Iran thing, we’re very much locked in,” Trump 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.

Iran, of course, al­so has a say, an­a­lysts note.

“Once you start a fist­fight, you can stop throw­ing punch­es. That doesn’t mean the oth­er com­bat­ant will stop throw­ing punch­es,” said Bradley Bow­man, an an­a­lyst at the Foun­da­tion for De­fense of Democ­ra­cies. “We can try to end the war, but what do we do if the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic of Iran con­tin­ues to at­tack ship­ping in the Strait of Hor­muz?”

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. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by AAMER MAD­HANI, LIN­LEY SANDERS, SAMY MAGDY and MATTHEW LEE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Samy Magdy re­port­ed from New York. AP writ­ers Collin Bink­ley in Wash­ing­ton, Han­nah Fin­ger­hut in Des Moines, Iowa, and Kath­leen Foody in Chica­go con­tributed re­port­ing.