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Something very strange is going on. Iran is negotiating its surrender. The war is over and Iran has lost.. I have been assured that the United States has destroyed Iran's ability of their proxies to project power in the Middle East.
Yet somehow, despite this war goal being accomplished and the war being over, Saudi Arabia is still being attacked by Iran's Proxies..
At least 12 people were killed and over 300 injured in a Houthi missile attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Saturday, October 10, 2026. This marks the third strike on the facility in one week and the deadliest attack in a Gulf Arab country since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February.
In response, President Donald Trump stated the U.S. is considering joining Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against the Houthis, while the U.S. Embassy issued a security alert urging American citizens to avoid the Riyadh airport.
So to summarize, it looks like the war is expanding, Iran's proxies continue to be able to strike US allies, and Iran's proxies are escalating the conflict instead of backing down.
With early voting opening up soon for many states, what are the chances Iran has an October surprise in store for Trump? Trump has stated that the U.S. will not resume military strikes on Iran before the November 3, 2026 (midterm election). The U.S. military is deploying roughly 9,000 to 10,000 additional troops to the Middle East, including the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and the USS Makin Island amphibious readiness group, which departed San Diego on October 4–5, 2026. This surge brings the total U.S. military presence in the region to over 60,000 personnel and establishes three aircraft carrier strike groups in the theater for the first time since April 2026.
So Iran knows that Trump wants the Iran War to quiet down before the Midterms, but he is preparing to escalate once it is over. Why would they play along with this? I believe there is a good chance they will escalate and cause Trump and Republicans political embarrassment soon. But maybe this doesn't matter, because for some reason, the Houthis don't count. So I guess everything is going according to plan. So this all could just be nothing.
I'm genuinely confused about why the Iranians (apparently) care about the midterms. Didn't we just get through four years of the Democrats letting Israel do whatever it pleased? Congressional dems have already shown that they have no intention of doing anything that might put a stop to the war, and see it as someone they don't like taking a hit to do something they wanted done anyways.
The Russians, in contrast, seem to understand now that the political establishment is pretty thoroughly neoconservative regardless of the sentiments of the American people, which is why they're willing to take cash to do something that helps the political fortunes of an administration that hasn't been very friendly with them.
I do think that either country could achieve a lot by pointing out that Lindsay Graham openly mocked Trump to the press while selling him on this war, presenting him as gullible and dismissing the voices of his supporters. Reminding him that the neoconservatives he's taking hits for despite him might make him less inclined to do as they say.
Consider that Iranian have an institutional memory of using American elections to their advantage.
Back in the early days of the Islamic Revolution, when the Mullahs had just thrown off the yoke of the Shah only to face invasion by Saddam, Jimmy Carter put an arms embargo on Iran, seeing the Islamic Revolution as a dangerous pathogen to be stopped. The Iran Hostage Crisis weakened the public's perception of Carter as president significantly during the last years of his presidency. Carter would successfully negotiate a deal for the release of the hostages during his presidency, but they would not actually be released until Reagan was inaugurated some months later. Reagan would, of course, then sell arms to Iran illegally during the Iran-Contra affair. Many have made the argument or presented some evidence that this was the result of back-channel negotiations between Reagan's foreign policy team and Iran: help us win the election by refusing to release the hostages while Carter is in office, and we'll deal kindly with you after we're in power.
Now the important thing is not whether we think that the Iranian's actions during the election were the proximate cause of Carter's electoral loss, or even whether Reagan sold arms to Iran because of some backroom deal. What matters is whether the Iranians themselves believe this version of events.
And it's not so crazy as a theory of foreign policy. Consider the famous 2012 open-mic incident in which Obama told Medvedev that he would have more flexibility to deal with some issues after the election.
It's probably fairly routine for American administrations to, sub rosa, tell international partners not to screw things up too badly before an election, after which they can take a freer hand.
I actually suspect that some of Trump's public signaling around the midterms, particularly his statements that "we're going to end the war after the midterms," reflected not a plan to escalate, but a plan to de-escalate and sign a deal, with the midterms acting as a signal to Iran: hey you just need to make it to November without rocking the boat and then we'll give you what you want, but we can't sign that deal now because it will cost us the election. Not that anything the Trump admin says to anyone, let alone to Iran, is reliable evidence of their intent to follow through, but it seemed to me that was the signal they were trying to send.
Anyway all of this is to say that the Iranians might believe, rightly or wrongly, that they can use the elections as leverage to negotiate with America on the war. They may be incorrect, but that doesn't mean they don't think it. If politiical actors were always right and never made incorrect strategic guesses, we wouldn't be in this war to begin with.
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One view would be that Iran, Israel, and Russia all have intelligence agencies, an inside view on diplomatic processes, and a ton of skin in the game, whereas the average American media consumer is mostly interested in tribal signaling. So, if they are behaving as if there is more of a difference between the Democratic and Republican parties than you think there is, perhaps they are more likely to have an accurate view.
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The goal for Iran is to establish that attacking them is a mistake which will cost the ruling party their majority.
From where I stand, this is very sound reasoning with regard to their long-term interests. They correctly model both US parties as being more interested in clinging to power than following the long term interests of the US (whatever these may be) in foreign policy.
If Trump had known how messy his special military operation would get, he would not have attacked Iran. (Unless Bibi has way more dirt on him than I think.)
While it was psychologically important for Trump to negotiate a better deal with Iran than Obama's deal, he will not sacrifice his presidency on the alter of keeping Iran from having nukes. The plan was clearly to bomb Iran, hopefully get a regime change, or at least shock and awe them enough that they will agree to terms which Trump can easily sell as a victory. "Look at me, I am a decisive Republican president who gets shit done, not some pussyfoot Democrat who is too chickenshit to bomb our enemies in case the bombs have a disparate impact on minorities." Only it turned out that Obama had good reasons not to go to war with Iran -- squeamishness about bombing Muslims was certainly no fault of his.
It is also in the short-term interests of Iran to get the Democrats back into power. They do not own the war, and they can probably concede the strait to Iran without the Republicans making a stink. By contrast, Trump needs the war to continue until he gets out something which he can sell as a victory or he dies, whatever happens first.
Traditionally, both the Republicans and the Democrats have been against a Russian hegemony, but Trump was always lukewarm in his support of Ukraine. Presumably because he thought him negotiating a peace deal would win him the Nobel, but also MAGA is politically closer to Russia than to Western Europe. Besides, while the Western leaders treat him with disdain just because he threatened to end the Persian civilization, the non-democratic leaders take him as serious as anyone.
In so far as psychoanalysing a regime with multiple decision-makers makes sense, I think there is a much simpler explanation. Trump presents his regime more generally as personal (whether or not you think it is), and in particular has presented the US decision to attack Iran as a decision that he took personally because the rest of the US elite was too weak. For Khamenei Jr or whoever else is making the decisions in Iran to treat the conflict as being with Trump personally makes sense, and in that case "We want to hurt Trump personally" is a good and sufficient reasons for adjusting tactics around the mid-terms.
I think Trump thought that Mossad had a cunning plan to make a regime change happen. I am struggling at work at the moment and we have also just acquired two rescue cats, so I don't know if my planned effortpost on this point will ever happen.
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This doesn't strike me as plausible. The GOP establishment doesn't care in the slightest about losing the midterms, and, even before the war, it seemed to be actively trying to throw them. They could've passed any number of bills, including voter ID, that would've motivated supporters and demoralized opponents, but instead they passed a left-leaning housing bill and blocked Trump from making recess appointments.
The neocons who convinced Trump to engage in this war are thrilled with the outcome. They plan to blame the midterms on immigration enforcement and see if they can get an amnesty on top of everything else.
I think it's pretty clear that he was talked into the war on that pretense, and then, up until the MoU, it seemed very clear that he was intent on getting out of it. I defended him quite a bit on that point; he'd made a bad decision and trusted people he shouldn't have, but he seemed appropriately upset with Israel and wanted to withdraw.
After Israel sabotaged the MoU, though, he doesn't seem to be trying anymore. As far as I can tell, he's just endlessly repeating the "Iran's weeks away from a nuke" line that AIPAC's been peddling since decades before I was born. The gasoline deal indicated that he does personally care about the midterms, but I think the neoconservative entryists are running the asylum at this point, and the beliefs of Trump himself don't appear to have any bearing on the Iran war's execution at all. Given what the Biden admin was like, I don't think the Dems would be any different, especially seeing as the odds of a competitive Republican candidate ever emerging again shrink by the day.
As the saying goes, congressional Republicans are openly pro-Israel and not-so-secretly gay, congressional Democrats are openly gay and not-so-secretly pro-Israel.
I think the marginal Republican senators not voting for Trump's policies are retiring senators who were successfully primaried by MAGA (Cassidy, Cornyn), too chicken to contest a primary against MAGA (Tillis), or undead (McConnell). All of these guys have reasons for their recalcitrance which do not apply to the GOPe as a whole. "I'm going to use my lame duck vote to push back against the guy who ended my political career" may be an ignoble motive, but it is not exactly a surprising one.
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I honestly think he would, under my "Boomer Common Sense" model of Trump. "Sacrificing the presidency" is talk for nerds writing papers in college. It's entirely the wrong framing. Do you, or do you not, act to stop an avowed mortal enemy that is currently much weaker than you from getting the city-destroying superweapon?
Yeah. Duh. Common fucking sense. Even arguing about it is the province of bloodless dorks and proof of why they should never have any real power.
I understand that framing may be difficult to process for someone who has contorted themselves into pretending that "Western leaders" have only come to disdain Trump since Iran, but I think it explains his actions much better than either the "8-D Chess" stuff MAGA used to argue or whatever iteration of "screaming chicken dumb dumb poopy pants" projection that the libs are on these days.
This might hold up if Trump hadn't claimed to have obliterated the city-destroying superweapon program several months prior with Midnight Hammer.
I don't see how that counters my position at all. I didn't say Trump's Boomer Common Sense was infallible, just that it's a more reliable predictor his actions than "cartoon super genius" or "cartoon baby villain".
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Why would this change anything? The Iranian regime obviously wants Nuclear weapons. Until they are completely destroyed or have changed their strategic calculus, every action to destroy or delay their nuclear capability is just mowing the grass.
I brush my teeth twice a day every day. The fact that I have to keep doing it doesn’t mean it’s not important or I don’t actually ‘mean it’.
Not every military action will be decisive. Not even a minority of them.
One of my favorite books on military strategy is “The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire” by Luttwak and a running theme is the Byzantines dealing with the same nomadic tribes over and over again, bribing them to attack each other or annihilating one army while holding another one at bay.
There currently exist some permanent, existential enemies of the US and the Islamic Republic is certainly one of them, and they’ve proven themselves in the regard over and over again since 1979.
The fact that Israel benefits from this has acted basically just as a derangement of the plain, obvious truth the Islamic Republic is anti-American by nature.
Brushing your teeth every day, applied to Iran's nuclear ambitions, would mean that we have to go bomb a uranium deposit or something every few years. Fine, whatever.
Trump seems to be attempting to extract a single tooth in the belief that it will remove the chance of cavities in all our other Iranian teeth, which will not work and is a pretty deranged dental philosophy.
Destruction of the Iranian regime would be the tooth extraction in this analogy, yes. Or filling a cavity. This seems basically precise.
You still have to brush your teeth in this analogy.
Using America’s military resources to quash the plans and designs of America’s enemies on a regular basis is good military hygiene. If you have to repeat it multiple times it doesn’t mean you’ve failed, if you think that you’ve failed to understand a huge portion of the spectrum of military action.
This has happened basically since time immemorial.
As someone generally against nation building / neoconservatism, Iraq & Afghanistan really mind-raped a lot of westerners into thinking every military action in the greater Middle East is either some expression of goy-inservitude or some hopeless forever war secretly backed by corporations.
This, plus World War 2 has clouded the mind of many westerners to think that the only good use of military is 100% non ambiguous decisive victory against an aggressive peer opponent.
Sometimes you really can just kill a bunch of people and knock your enemies down a peg. It’s super Lindy.
Yes. Grandparent is espousing the extremely common fallacy that "anything which is not a permanent fix is not worth doing".
Most commonly seen in opponents of taking Ozempic.
"But if you stop taking it you'll gain the weight back".
"Okay, but what if I don't stop taking it".
ChatGPT tells me closest match is the Nirvana Fallacy.
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The term Trump used for the Iranian nuclear program after Midnight Hammer was "obliterated". Not "damaged", "delayed" or "set back": "obliterated". Perhaps English is your second or third language but by using the term "obliterated" Trump indicated that he thought that Midnight Hammer was, in fact, decisive. Unfortunately he left no room for this brand of copium.
You’re telling me, at this point in your life you are surprised when a politician exaggerates for effect? How old are you?
Also. If I obliterate something, does that mean that it can never, ever be resumed in any way in another form, or another place? Or that obliteration removes even the desire that produced the action in the first place?
Is English not your first language?
This isn’t copium. A lot of people have deranged themselves into being unable to understand the simple reality of things, disguising their sophistry as sophistication.
You and @VIM have both been temp banned before for this kind of petty sniping. Stop it. Argue without the snide, condescending pot shots.
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I think it implies a setback much longer than the eight months between the 2025 and 2026 bombings. If it only took eight months between the nuclear program being obliterated and the Iranians needing to be bombed before they get nuclear ICBMs it sounds like the first bombing didn't work very well, it sounds like a minor setback to Iran at most. Maybe that makes the war a good idea! But it raises the question of what the 2025 attack actually did and how the 2026 one will be different.
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New levels of cynicism unlocked. You're upset that a politician lied? Psh.
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You would want to punish whichever party started the war even if both parties were equally likely to have started the war; if you cause either party to lose then it will result in a “lesson” about instigating conflict even 50 or 100 years down the road. Unlike the Trump admin, I think the Iranian leaders actually care about the longterm good of their particular people / nation, so they consider how to secure benefits for their group long after they are individually gone, as opposed to falling into the nihilistic “we are all going to die anyway” boomer-death-spiral ideology (something I also hear from the boomers in my own life). But with that said, the Republicans have tied themselves at the neck to Israel, so Iran has a clear interest in making them lose for this reason alone apart from concerns about war continuation; there’s more than just the war per se, there’s “I don’t want America to give a bajillion bombs to Israel for free” which is the Republican plan.
My point is that the parties are equally beholden to Israel, which is very different from being equally likely to have started the war. If they were just both ideologically neoconservative, you could train them to be anti-war that way, but it's well established that they care more about pleasing Israel than they do about winning elections, so the midterms are a nonentity to them.
They would rather have their pro-Israel opposition in charge of Congress than enact a not-pro-Israel policy themselves.
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My sense is that there is growing anti-Israel sentiment in the Democratic Party. If I were Iran's current leadership, I would want more Democrats in power in the US. Possibly it's won't help the situation, but I think Iran's leadership is pretty desperate at this point.
I don't think either of those things make much sense. If Iran were desperate, they'd probably be directing their appeals to the disillusioned young men of the country who might be able to make something happen, rather than to Karen (43 ans) who would've voted blue anyways. The anti-Israel Dems have proven themselves pretty toothless on a very consistent basis, to the point where Trump's support of Israel has met more intra-party opposition than Biden's.
Keep in mind that everyone insisting Iran's desperate and on the brink of collapse has been insisting exactly that since the first week of the war. My best guess is that the messaging is the product of some high-level leader's daft, out-of-touch cousin who got appointed Secretary of American PR because he's too incompetent to put anywhere else.
If Iran cared about the US midterm elections, what exactly would Iran be doing or not doing, in your view?
Well do you agree that anti-Israel sentiment has grown significantly in the Democratic party even in the last few years?
I'm not sure what your point is here. I'm certainly not trying to argue that Iran is on the brink of collapse.
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