Dean
Flairless
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User ID: 430
Dean
Flairless
1d ago
Define 'better for Iran.'
Sympathy only matters if that translates into a meaningfully policy change, as opposed to policy paralysis that leaves a 'loosing' status quo in even longer because- even though sympathetic- the Democrats aren't willing to make the sort of concessions Iran has been demanding. Or worse, escalation, as the sort of provocations/escalations that Trump might have been willing to turn a relatively blind eye towards due to his unique considerations lead the Democratic replacement to consider a political threat if they don't respond.
It's certainly popular in democracies too wishcast 'the foreign adversary will drop it's demands for unpopular concessions when my party comes into power, and it's in their own interests to do so,' but that, uh, has a mixed record at best.
Meanwhile, 'better for Iran' comes in the context of Iran having an economic crisis where the status quo policy is that Iran's situation gets worse the longer it continues. Trump was/is willing to strike a deal of ambiguous advantage, but some of the tradeoffs of the deal get inherently worse for Iran because greater and greater costs are incurred and are functionally irreversible. Inflation that already occurred is not going to be reversed to restored the consumer economy or businesses that already shutter. Every additional month blocking the strait to demand tolling rights is another month the Arabs progress on pipeliness to bypass the strait altogether. It's also a situation of worsening leverage- the closer Iran comes to a position where it's concerns (economic-driven social unrest) are more likely, the worse leverage it has.
It's also a dynamic that even 'sympathetic' Democrats might happily accept, since if they work from a position of expecting to come into power in 2029, then their relative prospects for a 'successful' Iran deal get better the worse things get for Iran in the first place. Especially since they can claim impotent opposition for two years, while minimizing political costs by not actually pushing for policy change, while maximizing political points with the sympathetic-to-iran/hostile-to-israel electorate by talking about how bad that is. Like most 'vote for me to fix the problems' sympathy pitches, the election incentive isn't to actually fix the problem. No one votes on the basis of gratitude as much as future gains.
At which point, Iran- rather than getting a deal months ago under a Republican trifecta, or in the next two years under a Trump-led split government, gets to start trying to make a deal in earnest after another two years of inflation and related economic issues...
...but perhaps the sympathetic democrats will agree to cover the bill for that?
Meanwhile, the people who were convinced that the ICE enforcement was going to lose the midterms will get to feel vindicated for that, and the No Kings/#Resistannce protestors can claim credit, or corruption, or culture war hot topics, or boat bombinngs, and every other issue of interest that people can feel validated in as the 'he might have won if not for that.' It's positively banal for people to feel their issue of interest is what motivated the demos against the policy-person of mutual dislike.
It's an evergreen argument, but it doesn't refute the null result premise that a mid-term loss of trifect would be expected regardless. That would require a basis to believe the null hypothesis would be invalid in the 'better alterative' of getting your preferred policy- that without an Iran War, Trump wouldn't lose his trifecta.
And even that presume the Iran war itself was meaningfully avoidable as an election spoiler. We know from history-that-did-happen that the Iranian response to the initial attack was to attack countries not involved in the attacking. We also know that Iran has expected the countries it has blockaded and whose ships it has kept attacking in the Strait of Hormuz to pressure the US to stop the Iran blockade, a policy they are not part of. That would support, rather than counter, Rubio's 2 March claims that the administration thought US forces in the region would be attacked by Iran when the next round of the Iran-Israel conflict started.
Would the Iran War be any less of a mid-term spoiler if Trump had decided to take the attacks, and then fight, but from a worse initial posture? Or if Trump just took attacks, and kept taking attacks, opening up not just the obvious ridicule but also strategic critique of using/not using so many interceptors as the Iranians grew confident they wouldn't be retaliated against? Or perhaps Trump would be certain the win the midterms if only people who never knew there were an Iran War saw the Trump administration try to exert direct control over Israeli foreign policy in the midst of an active conflict between Israel and elements of the Iranian state... with the comensatory compromises that would be involved to buy off/assage Israeli compliance?
Or would Trump have lost midterms regardless of what did happenn, and whatever would happen be the easy-to-point-at spoiler?
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