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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.
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.
What? My position is that they do seem to care, and are wrong to care.
Sentiment and policy outcome are two very different things. In the GOP, the populists are strong and fighty enough to occasionally force an issue they care about. In the DNC, they're either too unagentic (in the case of migrant anti-Israelism) or too thoroughly 'buckbroken' (in the case of redditor anti-Israelism) to meaningfully contest the party establishment. AOC being made to vote in favor of an Israel aid bill that was already going to pass by a massive margin is a pretty useful case study.
Ok, and in your view, what are they doing to influence the outcome of the elections? And what would they do differently if they were desperate?
I guess that means your answer is "yes"?
Aside from all of the recent moves that can conceivably be dismissed as having some other motivation, they penned a 24 page "letter to the American public" in which they explicitly stated that they wanted to influence the midterm elections in favor of the Democrats and that voting for them was what they wanted Americans to do.
I'm not joking, by the way, you can Google this. It's utterly baffling that that's the message they'd write to the dozen or so Americans willing to read a 24 page letter from the Iranian government in full, but it is indeed what they wrote.
Well you don't seem to deny that as of late there has been growing anti-Israel sentiment in the Democratic party. Nor do you seem to deny that the Iranian leadership is desperate. (Not desperate in the sense of being on the brink of collapse, but desperate in the sense of being extremely squeezed financially.) Those two facts offer a reasonably good explanation for this letter you cite.
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