Trump’s Iran Strategy Reaches a Critical Crossroads After Midterm Defeat

President Donald Trump spent the final weeks of the US midterm campaign predicting that the war with Iran would end "right after the election." With the votes now in, his Republican Party is reeling from losing both chambers of Congress in a rout that his own vice president blamed squarely on the conflict. "The reason we lost is the war," Vice President JD Vance wrote on X on November 4.

Trump called the assessment "largely true" but said he would make the same decision again because "you can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon." That leaves Trump, with roughly two months before a Democratic Congress takes control of the budget and committee subpoenas, facing a set of less-than-ideal options negotiate, escalate, or sit tight.