Midterms Won't Change Who Commands the Iran War

Tehran is betting the November 3 midterm elections will weaken President Trump enough to end the war on Iran’s terms. Brett McGurk, a CNN global affairs analyst who held senior national security posts under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, says the bet misunderstands how American war powers work. Trump will remain commander in chief for another two years, McGurk wrote, and the White House will still make the most consequential decisions on Iran.

Iran’s Election Gamble

A Washington Post report published Monday said Iranian officials are escalating attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to raise energy prices, punish American consumers and weaken Trump and the Republican Party before the vote. An Arab diplomat called Tehran “obsessed” with the elections. Iranian state television has followed Trump’s approval ratings and speculated that Republican losses would constrain the war and force concessions from the United States.

The tactic shifts the cost to ordinary consumers, who pay more for energy while Iran’s leaders wait for a political payoff. McGurk’s answer is blunt: weakening an American president politically doesn’t mean constraining him strategically.

What Congress Can and Can’t Do

McGurk points to the 2007 Iraq surge as the template. Democrats had just swept both houses of Congress in the 2006 midterms, an outcome Bush called a “thumping,” driven largely by opposition to the Iraq War. Bush announced the surge on January 10, 2007 anyway. Sen. Dick Durbin said in the Democratic response, “Escalation of this war is not the change the American people called for in the last election.” Sen. Barack Obama pledged to “actively oppose the president’s proposal.” Even Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel called it “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.”

Bush pressed ahead. He fired his secretary of defense, appointed new generals and a new ambassador, and doubled down on a war much of Washington had written off. The surge dramatically reduced violence and stabilized Iraq, McGurk wrote. Congress tried to force withdrawal timetables and cut funding for troops. Bush vetoed the measures, and Congress didn’t have the votes to override him.

The constitutional math hasn’t changed. A president can veto legislation restricting military operations, and Congress needs a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override. Even a Democratic wave in November would almost certainly fall short, McGurk wrote. Lawmakers are also reluctant to cut funding for forces already in harm’s way. Nixon escalated in Vietnam in 1972 with Democratic majorities opposed. Clinton ran a 78-day NATO air campaign in the Balkans in 1999 after the House refused to authorize it. Obama launched extended operations in Libya in 2011 without congressional approval. Democratic majorities would complicate Trump’s position through investigations, hearings and possible restrictions, McGurk wrote, but they wouldn’t remove his authority.

Trump’s Three Options

McGurk lays out three paths. The first is a pullback: declare the main objectives achieved, reduce operations and accept a costly accommodation to restore normal shipping through the strait. That could bring near-term political and economic relief if energy prices fell. But Iran could claim victory and rebuild its nuclear and missile program, undercutting the logic of the campaign. Trump’s decision to keep the blockade despite the political costs makes a sudden retreat after November unlikely, McGurk wrote.

The second is staying the course. The United States has blockaded Iranian ports while helping commercial vessels move through the strait, increasing Gulf oil flows while imposing growing economic costs on Iran. The result is close to a stalemate: Iran can no longer close the strait, but it keeps threatening ships and regional infrastructure. Washington believes the blockade will soon force concessions at the table, including on the nuclear program. Both sides think time is on their side.

Trump could try to break the deadlock by answering attacks more forcefully. Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. military forces in the region, previewed that approach in September: “If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher cost – taking out three of yours.” The aim would be to set clear expectations, deter further attacks and support negotiations.

The third path is expansion. Trump might decide Iran is the defining foreign policy challenge of his second term and widen the campaign with Israel against Iran and its regional partners, including more support for Saudi Arabia against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. He could also pursue an Israeli-Saudi agreement expanding the Abraham Accords. McGurk, who describes such a deal being in sight shortly before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks in his new book “Brink,” says it remains possible but extraordinarily difficult. Saudi Arabia would need new security assurances from Washington, and Israel faces hard decisions on Gaza and on the “pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” in U.N. Security Council Resolution 2803. Israel’s own elections later this month may decide whether a deal is possible.

The Adviser’s Advice

McGurk wrote that presidents nearing the end of their terms often grow more ambitious, not less. If he were in the White House, he said, he’d likely advise keeping economic pressure on, responding more forcefully to Iranian attacks and preserving a path to a negotiated settlement. The goal should be a sustainable strategic outcome, with means matched to the end. “Presidents make the final decisions, not their advisers,” he wrote. Of Tehran’s election strategy, he added: “Tehran might want to remember that history.”

Why This Matters:

Iran is wagering that American domestic politics can accomplish what its military can’t. The record McGurk lays out suggests otherwise: Congress can hold hearings and posture, but the Constitution leaves day-to-day command of a war with the president, and overriding a veto takes numbers Democrats are unlikely to have. For consumers, the immediate stakes are energy prices, since Iran’s shipping attacks are aimed squarely at them. For markets and allies, the lesson is that foreign policy continuity doesn’t hinge on a single election. That’s a form of institutional stability. It also puts responsibility squarely on one office. If Trump holds the blockade and pressure builds on Tehran, the November vote may matter far less to Iran’s fortunes than its leaders hope.