United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly asserted that the seven-month-long war with Iran will end ‘immediately after’ the November 2024 midterm elections in the United States, framing the conflict as an attempt by Tehran to influence the vote.
‘They’re desperate to try and affect the election,’ he told reporters on Wednesday, referencing a recent rally.
Trump’s latest claims of Iranian capitulation are not new. Tehran has thus far withstood sustained strikes by the US and Israel intended to eradicate its military capacity, as well as a naval blockade of Iran’s ports intended to choke the country’s economy. In late August, the US ratcheted up the economic pressure even further, threatening secondary sanctions on Iran’s trading partners.
‘It was a statement that was more likely meant for an internal [domestic] audience,’ Ali Alavi, an Iran lecturer at SOAS University of London, said of Trump’s predictions of Iran’s post-election collapse. ‘It was Trump’s method of communicating that the only reason it seemed as though he was failing in his Iran policy before the midterms is because Iran wanted it to be perceived as that way.’
The cost of Iran’s failure to capitulate is being felt across the United States ahead of the midterms, which could see Trump’s Republican Party lose one or both houses of Congress.
Petrol prices – a key measure of the cost of living in the world’s largest economy – have climbed to a national average of $4.27 a gallon according to the American Automobile Association, up nearly 30 percent from a year ago.
Trump’s approval rating has also plunged from the high-40s when he returned to office in January 2025 to the low-to-mid 30s today.
The US electorate’s pain extends beyond the pump. A 2026 LendingTree survey found that 29 percent of buy-now-pay-later users had used the loans to buy groceries, while 47 percent said they had paid late on a buy-now-pay-later loan at least once in the past year.
Separately, economists at the University of Michigan have found that rising fuel costs and inflation linked to the war on Iran are weighing on consumer confidence and purchasing power.
‘Iran has prepared for a long war,’ Sanam Vakil, director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa programme, said. ‘It may be that part of that was a secondary plan to hold out long enough to destabilise the US midterm elections once it realised that negotiations with the current administration were not going anywhere.’
Top Democrats, including the party’s Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, have been explicit in their calls for Trump to end the war on Iran.
Given Republican difficulties over the Iran war and other issues, Center for American Progress international policy analyst H.A. Hellyer described the situation ahead of the November 3 congressional midterms as one where the Democrats aren’t as much poised to win as the Republicans are positioned to lose.
‘The question really is one of [voter] turnout,’ he explained. ‘It’s not that many members of the Republican base will suddenly switch to supporting the Democrats, as much as they’ll stay home and not vote.’
Foreign policy, Hellyer said, rarely influenced voters, but ‘economics matter’.
‘The price of things, like the petrol they get from the pump, matter – and it’s this that might swing [the election],” he added.”
Source: Al Jazeera
