Trump is rapidly losing control over his war with Iran

The historic Republican losses in the midterm elections have left President Donald Trump with even fewer options for ending the war with Iran quickly, experts say. Trump has said he would consider resuming strikes against Iran after the midterms. But U.S. airstrikes are unlikely to make the Iranian regime capitulate, and the country’s leaders are likely to stand by expansive demands they have made in negotiations. “Iran has been very unwilling to have any reasonable discussions about peace,” said Leslie Shedd, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former senior aide to Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas.

Trump could launch U.S. airstrikes against Iran but the government there has already absorbed thousands of such strikes. In the unlikely scenario that Trump takes the extraordinary step of dropping a tactical nuclear weapon on a nuclear storage site beneath Pickaxe Mountain, it would not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, which is deeply buried and also spans the country, experts said. The first attack since Nagasaki with a nuclear weapon of any size would create long-lasting radioactive fallout and threaten to destabilize existing weapons agreements among nuclear powers.

With Democrats winning more seats in Congress and Republicans showing increasing skepticism in the Iran war, lawmakers returning to Washington next week could insist on a war powers resolution or cut funding. Other options for Trump — a U.S. bombing campaign, a reduction in U.S. forces in the region and a unilateral declaration of victory — will not change the strategic reality. Iran has shown that the U.S. cannot stop it from intermittently shutting down the Strait of Hormuz and driving up global energy prices.

“Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and ‌we endorse this message,” Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf posted Wednesday on X in response to the midterms election results, according to Reuters. “The fundamental issue is that the Iranians have no interest in coming to a peaceful resolution,” said Alexander Vindman, a former Trump National Security Council official who served as a witness against Trump in his first impeachment.

“They want to inflict sufficient pain to ensure that the U.S. and Israel don’t do this again.” “Even if Pickaxe Mountain were completely neutralized, Tehran does not depend on a single underground facility,” Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and international security expert, wrote on Substack. “Iran relies on a widespread network of hardened, underground, and deeply fortified technical facilities.

This highly dispersed infrastructure is intentionally designed to withstand foreign surveillance and protect critical assets from potential precision strikes,” Pape wrote. Iranian officials are also likely to see the scale of Trump’s defeat in the midterms as a validation of core strategy against the U.S.: inflicting economic pain by driving up energy prices. “Iran’s strategy has been built explicitly around the idea of imposing economic costs — which then translate into political costs — such that the U.S. is forced to de-escalate and deterred from attacking again in the future,” Gregory Brew, a senior Iran and oil analyst for the International Crisis Group, wrote on X. “They can — they believe — absorb costs more successfully than a U.S. president answerable to voters,” he added.

“Tuesday provided evidence that this strategy, broadly speaking, has been successful.” In one success for Trump, a U.S. Naval blockade of Iranian ships trying to enter or exit the Strait of Hormuz has placed intense economic pressure on Iran’s regime and economy. But Iranian officials are likely calculating that Congress will pass a war powers resolution to curtail Trump’s war or cut funding for the U.S. military effort in the Gulf. Diplomats from Persian Gulf countries continue to mediate talks between Washington and Tehran.

The economic pain those countries experience remains far greater than that of Americans. Iranian officials sent the U.S. a proposal regarding its nuclear program this week, Reuters reported. But Trump is likely to demand the complete dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program in any talks as a way to cement his own legacy. Iran has resisted that demand for decades. A final option for Trump — a bombing campaign and a declaration of victory — will not change the strategic reality that has emerged in the nine months since the war began.

“The Iranians are still going to control the Strait of Hormuz. They can hit targets at will,” said Vindman, who is also a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. “There is no easy way out of this.”