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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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