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The WSJ has also reported some of the admin's top advisors fear the war will continue throughout the term https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trumps-top-advisers-confront-possibility-that-iran-war-lasts-through-end-of-term-5f4e23d7
Iranian leaders probably cannot help comparing Trump to Carter, and will likely try to hurt him politically in the same way as revenge. Unlike Carter, Trump's on his second term. Midterms are probably a tempting target so they can cripple Trump legislatively.
The recent news on the Iranian backed Houthis making waves in the Red Sea and destroying oil pipelines seem curiously timed to annoy midterm voters with high oil prices.
I would not be surprised to learn that the IRGC has sworn an oath to destroy Trump even if it meant relying on his political rivals to do the heavy lifting. Carter never killed an Iranian ayatollah and they hated him.
“Iran wants the Democrats to win” will backfire as much as work out in either party’s favor.
Democrats winning is objectively better for Iran. They are much more sympathetic to Iran and less so to Israel.
Yes, and Trump will now campaign on “America’s enemies want Democrats to win”. It seems like everyone in this conversation on both sides is really clear about this.
And if/when the Democrats win, which they are predicted to do? Then what?
A thin Democratic majority in the House would not have the power to force Trump to end the war. If anything, war gives Trump leverage over Congress. That is one reason why presidents have tended to go to war.
Since that seems to be the only hope Iran has, if Democrats win the midterms the war will last as long as it takes for this to sink in.
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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?
I’m just basing it on the past. Trump is the most hawkish on Iran we’ve ever had. Obama did the JCPOA. I’d rather deal with Democrats than Trump in Iran’s shoes. They might be cooked though either way. Like you said, Democrats probably won’t give in to their maximalist demands either, but they may get a better deal. They can’t be seen as being too weak though, so they have their own constraints.
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Democrats might unilaterally end the blockade and protection of ship traffic, abandoning the war. At which point Iran is in full control of the strait, a big win for them. They can continue attacking the pipelines at will. And without the threat of bombing and with all their nuclear material they can restart their nuclear weapons program. Another big win for them.
Whether that's better than taking Trump's deal depends on how much the Iranians value their nuclear material and their defiance. And this seems to be "quite high", compared to how much they weigh the welfare of their people.
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Obviously, yes. For Iran, the victory condition in this war is "establish that attacking Iran is a presidency-ending mistake".
This was clear from the beginning, and is sound strategy on their part. The Trump administration is the main obstacle to a peace favorable to Iran. Trump started the war, so any concession to Iran will look like a defeat, so he needs to keep bombing them and hope that they will change their mind, and conduct an expensive escort operation to stabilize the oil price.
Any future administration will have the excuse "the Iran war was a stupid blunder". Unlike the occupation of Afghanistan, this is not something which the US will want to keep up for a few decades, even AIPAC will not be able to make them shrug off the high oil prices.
I think it is reasonable to presume that Biden knew that he was effectively signing over Afghanistan to the Taliban when he had the coalition troops leave, but was doing it anyway because he believed it was the right thing to do (which I concur on).
I am sure that a future president will find a similar fig leaf as Biden handing control to the new Afghan government. "Under this peace treaty, the US will leave the Strait of Hormuz and Iran will guarantee the freedom of navigation, and hand over some of their enriched uranium. Oh, now they are demanding tolls all of a sudden. Who would have thought! We will have to write a sternly worded letter to the UN complaining about that."
At the end of the day, if Iran manages to charge as much as $1.5 per barrel, that is a rounding error for gas station customers. And Iran would have some incentive to not take 10x as much because then it would risk getting bombed again (or annoying China, for that matter).
So Iran lost? Attacking Iran was not a presidency-ending mistake.
Well, now that the predictions that Trump would cede the Straits to Iran have not played out, I guess it’s only natural to push the timetables back. America hasn’t surrendered yet, but will definitely surrender. Someday, a few years from now. Eventually.
We don’t have the answer to this question yet. The war is still ongoing. If Iran’s regime is still in power and attacking shipping after the midterms and the Democrats take the Senate and House will you update or will you still claim that it was an obvious victory for Trump?
“Still attacking shipping”? Iran is barely attacking shipping now. America has oil moving through the straits and Iran has not sunk anything. This is hardly “presidency-ending”. If nothing else has changed a year from now then yes America has obviously won.
Is it possible for Trump to lose to you? I'm dead serious, what is a Trump loss to you in the Iran war. You will never make a prediction that you can be held down on. You just declare anything a victory and you can never lose! You do realize you actually have to win a war to win it right? The war isn't over yet, so nobody has won yet. It's tautological. Define an explicit loss scenario for Trump on the Iran War, please. I suspect you won't respond to this with one. You will just say Trump won.
Yes, Trump did already win. We destroyed Iran’s MIC and displayed the capacity to do it again at will. They do not even control the Straits of Hormuz, which is what everybody said they would do before the war broke out. America has secured oil through the Straits while blockading Iran. Iran can’t sink American ships. Iran can’t destroy American capabilities. We did this easily and cheaply, against basically all pre-war prognostications and expectations. This is all basically what Trump has said about the war all along.
I have made the same predictions over and over and over again. Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons. Iran will not toll the Straits of Hormuz. Iran will alienate the rest of the Middle East against it. Iran’s proxies in the Middle East will be destroyed. Iran will not sink American ships or kill America’s leaders or otherwise be capable of forcing America to change course.
I can go back and time and dig up a dozen different comments where I have made these predictions over and over and over.
Please admit you were wrong as I am sure you didn’t mean to lie. Thanks!
They aren't destroyed though? How is this a win?
President Trump (March 2): “Our objectives are clear. First, we’re destroying Iran’s missile capabilities… and their capacity to produce brand new ones — pretty good ones they make. Second, we’re annihilating their navy… Third, we’re ensuring that the world’s number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon… And finally, we’re ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”
Trump's own words. Only one of these is done. The rest is TBD, so by his own definition the war isn't over. The US hasn't won yet.
Please admit you were wrong as I am sure you didn’t mean to lie.
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That would be a null result, because the party with the presidency almost always loses seats in mid terms, especially during a lame duck term
That’s why I added the caveat that Iran’s regime is still in tact and that it is a Blue Wave. At least I think I did. I’m just responding on my phone. So what I’m saying is if it is a historically bad defeat AND Iran’s regime is still in power. There are a ton of confounding variables here, but I still would like to see them respond to this. I’ve asked him to make concrete predictions before and he just ignores me. I want him in the record with a condition that would be an L for Trump. Still nothing yet after multiple attempts.
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My feeling is that oil prices are generally thought to influence voter sentiment significantly.
If the median voter (who had previously elected Trump) decides to vote for the Democrats it will not be due to ICE enforcement or corruption or trans bathroom laws or abortion or other culture war hot topics. All of these were clearly labeled ingredients on the tin of the Trump soup, after all.
On the other hand, Trump ran on a platform of isolationism, warning people that Harris would start new wars. The median voter will not hold kidnapping Maduro or blowing up some non-military vessels against him (because the MV clearly does not care about international law), but he might not be too happy about the gas price hike.
If MAGA loses the mid-terms and the single most salient issue is the Iran war and its economic repercussions, then I would award a partial victory to Iran for that.
You are correct that Iran-driven petrol prices are likely the biggest fixable issue for republicans, but grocery prices are even bigger- mostly due to beef. There's not a whole lot Trump can do about that one, or would have been able to, however.
I am not sure how fixable the oil prices are, at this point. I mean, Trump could make peace with Iran, but Iran is very unlikely to accept any peace deal where he could claim victory.
So either he will get blamed for the high oil prices or for losing a war of his own choosing.
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Unless... he starts sneaking a little "Soylent Green" into the beef supply...?
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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?
For the record, while I dislike Trump's Iranian war, and it is probably his worst policy in terms of QALY loss (though cutting USAID might have a similar impact), it is hardly the only thing I dislike about him. Sinking civilian ships suspected of smuggling drugs, including attacks on shipwrecked sailors who survived the initial attack is qualitatively more evil than any intentional behavior he displayed in Iran so far.
So it is not "I don't care about the boats, therefore the median voter does not care about them either", but more like "my model of the median US voter says he cares nothing about international law or norms of civility, but cares about gas prices".
I asked Claude, and while the Gulf states did not allow attack runs on Iran to be launched directly from their soil, Gulf allies like Saudi Arabia happily allowed tanker planes to launch which enabled the whole operation. I will concede that some attacks of Iran were a clear breach of international law, but so was the US/Israeli attack.
For someone who is so agnostic about what might cause the median voter to vote against MAGA in the mid-terms (where I would claim poll interviews might offer some insight into motivations), you seem very willing to accept that Iran was itching for a fight in which they got the shit bombed out of them.
I think that the null hypothesis for Iran's behavior would be that in the absence of the US/Israeli attacks, they would have continued to behave similarly to how they had behaved in past decades. Always supporting their regional militias, sometimes launching a few missiles against Israel (just like Israel likes to launch attacks against Lebanon or Iran -- must be a local cultural thing).
The claim that the Iranian regime was planning to wreck the global economy for their own sinister purposes seems about as plausible as the claim that Poland was planning to conquer Germany in 1933.
The saner version would be that Israel would have murdered the Ayatollah with or without US support, and that would have provoked a similar Iranian response. On reflection, this would point to a skill issue on the part of the US at controlling their client states. "If you attack, you get to intercept all the missiles launched at Jerusalem yourself this time, because no US ship or Gulf client state will get involved by shooting them down" would likely have been enough to keep Bibi from trying.
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There's also a world where "Trump is too much of a coward/hates brown people/is in bed with authoritarian regimes to do anything about Iran killing thousands of protesters" becomes a talking point.
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Seeing as how Iran supposedly tracked Trump's location in Turkey, I'm wondering why ground troops haven't already been sent to enact regime change in Iran. They don't seem likely to forgive and forget unless they can charge massive tolls per barrel.
If invading Iran was politically feasible, Trump would have done so already. GWB had 9/11 to drum up support for his wars.
Iran assassinating Trump would have some poetic justice, but I was against turning geriatric evil men into martyrs when Trump did it to the Ayatollah, and would likewise judge it net-negative when done by Iran.
Trump's actions did nothing to disabuse the Iranian regime of the notion that the US and Israel are their mortal enemies, but to be fair they already had that idea beforehand (and for good reason).
Still, I think that the regime is not so stupid as to see the US as a single entity. My guess is that they are a lot more anti-Trump than they are anti-US in general.
A future US president could offer Iran better terms than Trump can (because he must appear to have won his war), and Iran likewise has more incentive to offer them better terms.
I could be wrong, and it could be that killing their leader has put Iran on the warpath forever and as long as any IRGC member is left alive they will fire each missile at US allies as soon as they get it, but I doubt it. Iran knows it can not hope to wipe out the US, and so far has behaved somewhat rationally in foreign politics.
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It's hard to say what Biden's actual beliefs on the matter were as the withdrawal agreement and the details of it were hashed out by the previous administration in 2020. Biden was stuck to a May 2021 withdrawal deadline, just a few months into his term, which they extended but it's not like he could just ignore the deal either, as most of the withdrawal had already occured before inauguration with 80% of troops pulled.
A lot of the military bases in the area were already closed down, allied nations had their own plans to withdraw already drawn up, it was a whole clusterfuck that got inherited.
Ok, I might have used Biden as a stand-in for DC more generally. (I do not think it was a signature Trump policy though, more like "in his first term there were still plenty of things running normally".)
I still think that the intelligence community had a rather good idea that if the US were to pull out, Kabul would fall to the Taliban rather sooner than later. Probably there is a heart-warming story of some small CIA analysist trying to warn the administration that the Afghan army will collapse immediately, and being confused at getting stonewalled.
Basically the problem is that the post major conflict state building is delegated to the State Department. They have been consistently unable to build functional states. They are too egotistical to admit this. They are too powerful for anyone else in government to say it.
So the strategy has been to tell the WH that things are going great and the US should be able to withdraw in a year or so. As that deadline approaches, senior DOS people call a panicked evening meeting with POTUS and insist that due to unforeseen complications things will need to be pushed back another year. Meanwhile they never even started planning the withdrawal.
With Biden either due to his health or stubbornness they couldn't get the panicked evening meeting. So they ended up having to execute a withdrawal they didn't actually even start planning.
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