How the upcoming U.S. and Israeli elections could lead to the third round of the Iran war

There is little doubt that the United States and Israel are about to renew the war on Iran that they started without provocation, or any real planning, back in February. The question is only about the timing. In fact, by the time you read this, the war may have resumed in full force. More likely, though, it will be delayed until after the U.S. midterm elections. That will put it after Israel’s elections as well. Israel may find itself with an entirely new leadership after its upcoming elections on October 27, which, while still seeing Iran as a hated enemy, might have different ideas about how to attack that enemy. The United States is even more uncertain following the midterm elections on November 3. Donald Trump will remain president and free of electoral concerns, as he will not be allowed to run in the next election. But a Congress hostile to this war can make it harder for him to continue his current course. Conversely, an indecisive Congress unwilling to confront Trump on the war could unleash his worst tendencies. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both have personal interests that the war might serve. Both could seek to undermine their country’s election results, and a war that escalates into a global economic crisis could give them the cover they need. Iran and the Israeli election Netanyahu has been pushing hard for a renewed war. In a public phone call with Trump, Netanyahu told him, “We have a job to finish.” Beyond the bombast, there have been concrete actions. The United States and Israel have been busy drawing up plans for another attack on Iran even if it seems that Netanyahu is not content to wait as long as Trump wants him to. Trump has repeatedly said that the U.S. would not attack Iran before the midterm elections . Given his history, there is no reason to take Trump at his word. To the contrary, Trump has repeatedly broken such promises, sometimes due to impulsiveness, sometimes because he lied intentionally to try to get Iran to drop its guard. Moreover, Trump has not said that he would continue to block Israel from attacking before the midterms. But in this case, there is good reason to believe that Trump is telling the truth. Nothing is certain, but the United States is moving a considerable number of troops and a third aircraft carrier to the Gulf . By most accounts, they are slated to arrive in late November. That works for Trump, but less well for Netanyahu. For Trump, an escalation against Iran will be useful for months, from the election until the beginning of January, when the new Congress would be seated. Netanyahu has less time. The Israeli election will take place next week. Many analyses in the United States have misunderstood how a renewal of war affects Netanyahu’s position. Had it happened a few weeks before the election, Netanyahu might have been able to postpone the election (which would require approval from 80 of 120 members of the Knesset), or sway some voters toward his camp. Now, with only a few days left, those prospects are very dim. But an Israeli election is not like an American one where votes are cast, someone wins, and that’s supposed to settle the matter. Israel’s unstable coalition politics mean the real intrigue happens after the votes are counted, as the leaders of the top parties jockey for the right to form a coalition government. Netanyahu is not going to win this election, according to almost every poll that has been conducted recently and since the beginning of the year. The parties that would join with his Likud coalition simply won’t have enough seats to form a majority unless a real miracle happens. But the opposition, although in a better position, also doesn’t have a good chance of forming a majority coalition. Their only hope, which is not available to Netanyahu, is support from the parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up around 20% of the population. But that is complicated. The opposition leader, Gadi Eisenkot, has vowed not to form a government with Arab parties. But he could form a government with less than a majority of seats by getting support from Arab parties outside the governing coalition. That’s a fraught path in as racist a society as Israel’s. Even the non-nationalist, conservative United Arab List (called Ra’am) would trouble some of Eisenkot’s other coalition partners. And it is hard to imagine parties led by right-wing figures like Avigdor Lieberman or Naftali Bennett agreeing to a coalition that gets any support from the Joint List, which is much more representative of Palestinian national sentiment than Ra’am. And even with Ra’am’s support outside the coalition, the opposition could still fall short of the 61 votes needed to form a government. Netanyahu is counting on the opposition’s inability to form a coalition. If that should happen, Netanyahu can try to poach parties or even individual Knesset members from the opposition to reach a majority. That would be difficult, but possible. Or he could simply ride the impasse to another round of elections, leaving him in charge of a caretaker government, the most likely scenario at present. In either case, a hot war with Iran is a significant boon to Netanyahu. Under the threat of Iranian missile attack, Netanyahu can make the case that Israel needs continuity to win the war, to stop Iran’s nuclear program, and all the other accusations Netanyahu will make. If polls don’t show he is gaining ground, he can also propose a national unity government, and a hot war will absolutely bolster that case. Netanyahu needs the stalemate that comes with the opposition failing to form a government. Yet, if he gets it, and there are no Iranian or Hezbollah missiles raining down on Israel, his failings will only come under even more scrutiny, and he will stand even less chance in the next round of elections. So he needs a war even more than usual . Netanyahu’s push for an early resumption of the war, against Trump’s preferences, was motivated by several factors. First, given Trump’s indecisiveness and strong tendency to flip-flop, he wanted to lock in American support for renewing the war. Second, he wanted to refocus the war’s guiding principle on regime change , an idea he has been banging on in recent days but that has largely fallen out of favor in Washington, even among the most hawkish voices. Finally, Netanyahu knows that the U.S. is planning a quick, impactful strike. He also knows this is almost certainly not going to happen, and he wouldn’t want it to. He wants prolonged engagement to maximize both his own political gains and the chances of stressing Iran to the point of threatening the Islamic Republic’s continued existence. Time is not on his side, as he knows that this may be his last chance to defeat Iran. So, Netanyahu pushed to rekindle the war earlier this month , knowing that it would almost certainly last until well after Israel’s election. Iran and the U.S. midterms Trump is probably sincere about his desire to hold off the attack on Iran until after the midterms, but this is just another indication of how little he grasps the depths of his own failure. The damage to the Republican chances in the midterms is done, and resuming the war on Iran won’t make things much worse. But, even more than with Netanyahu in Israel, the Republicans are about to take a beating at the ballot box. The only question is how bad it will be. It is overwhelmingly likely that the Democrats will take back the House of Representatives, and they stand a good chance of taking the Senate as well. For Trump, even though he is not on the ballot, this will be a humiliating loss, and we have already seen how he reacts to such things. This is where a renewed war on Iran comes in for him. Trump is sure to do all he can to throw the results of the election into doubt, and to stir up suspicions as he did in 2020. With a smaller base of support now than before, and no pandemic, he will need to sow even more chaos than he did then. A war with Iran will do that for several reasons. First, the war itself will be intense and will immediately send shock waves through the global economy. But that will only be the start. Iran has been clear that it is going to respond more forcefully than before and that it will calibrate that response to the intensity of the American and Israeli attack. Iran has warned that they will target data centers , which they know are important to Trump, as well as underwater fiber networks that are key to the internet . That will cause disruption across many different industries. And that will be added to Iran’s targeting of Gulf energy infrastructure if the U.S. and Israel target theirs. They could also target civilian infrastructure, including desalination plants, which would devastate the entire region. None of this will matter to Israel, which will see it as pressure on the Gulf Arab states to join in the war effort. Israel wants to see as much chaos as possible, because that is the road to the regime change in Iran they crave. But Trump should be concerned about the potential crash of Gulf economies and the massive impact this will have on the entire world. Crippling Gulf infrastructure will send oil prices soaring much higher than they already are. It will greatly expand the fertilizer-export crisis from the region and could further devastate the liquefied natural gas market. Global inflation could surge, and the measures used to date to keep prices from that kind of massive inflation are unlikely to be sufficient. Yet the chaos it will cause in the United States might offer Trump an advantage in forestalling the seating of a new Congress, or increasing his opportunities to once again cast doubt on the election results. These efforts are unlikely to get Trump what he wants. His base is too small, the country is more aware of this potential, and many of the foot soldiers Trump had six years ago now recognize that he betrayed and used them. But an attack on Iran will succeed in causing global devastation, beginning in Iran itself, and quickly expanding outward. Israel, too, is much more vulnerable than it was last time around. The protective ring of American installations and support from places like Saudi Arabia and Jordan in intercepting Iranian missiles and drones is severely diminished. Many American bases are gone, and the Americans stationed in the region have few interceptors left. Israel has managed to save many interceptors of its own, having relied on American missiles against Iran. But even they had to use quite a few to defend against attacks from Lebanon. More to the point, because Iranian missiles will have a much clearer path to Israel than they did before, more missiles will be shot down above Israeli space, meaning more debris will fall on Israel, while more Iranian missiles are likely to get through Israel’s defenses since so many more will get into range. Perhaps Trump is not thinking about how to use a war to undermine elections in the U.S. Maybe he is tired of losing the war and is desperately grasping at the idea that this time the bloodshed and destruction that have repeatedly failed will work. That sad fact is the very definition of murderous insanity.