Midterms May Not Check Trump's Iran War, Analyst Warns

Brett McGurk has served four presidents—two Republicans and two Democrats—in senior national security posts. His warning, published by CNN, is blunt: even a Democratic wave on November 3 may not limit President Donald Trump’s war with Iran. Trump will remain commander in chief for another two years, and the White House will still make the biggest decisions.

McGurk, now a CNN global affairs analyst, reached that conclusion through a lesson he lived. On January 10, 2007, President George W. Bush announced a surge of additional troops to Iraq. It was one of the least popular decisions of his presidency. McGurk watched the reaction from National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley’s West Wing office, where Hadley had ordered pizza and flipped through channels after the speech.

What Voters Said, and What Happened

Voters had just spoken. Democrats swept both houses of Congress in the 2006 midterms, a result Bush himself called a “thumping,” driven largely by opposition to the Iraq War. Sen. Dick Durbin, giving the Democratic response, said, “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 the surge “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.”

Bush pressed ahead anyway. He fired his secretary of defense, appointed new generals and a new ambassador, and doubled down on a war much of Washington considered lost. Congress tried to push back with withdrawal timetables and funding cuts. Bush vetoed them, and lawmakers lacked the votes to override. McGurk’s point is simple: Congress isn’t in the chain of command.

The pattern isn’t new. McGurk noted that Nixon escalated in Vietnam in 1972 while Democrats controlled both chambers, that Clinton ran a 78-day NATO air campaign in the Balkans in 1999 after the House refused to authorize it, and that Obama launched extended operations in Libya in 2011 without congressional approval.

Tehran Is Watching the Ballot Box

Iran appears to believe November 3 will decide its fortunes. 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 election. An Arab diplomat described Tehran as “obsessed” with the elections. Iranian state television tracks Trump’s approval ratings and speculates that Republican losses would force concessions.

McGurk’s response: weakening a president politically isn’t the same as constraining him strategically. Congress holds the power of the purse, but lawmakers need two-thirds majorities in both chambers to override a veto—numbers Democrats will almost certainly lack, even in a wave. Lawmakers are also reluctant to cut funding for troops already in harm’s way. Democratic majorities could still launch investigations and hold hearings.

Three Roads for Trump

McGurk sketched three options. Trump could pull back, declare objectives met and accept a costly accommodation to reopen shipping. That might ease energy prices, but it would let Iran claim victory and rebuild its nuclear and missile programs. He could hold the current course of blockade and responsive strikes: a near-stalemate in which Iran can no longer close the strait but still threatens ships and regional infrastructure. Or he could expand the campaign alongside Israel, including greater support for Saudi Arabia against the Houthis in Yemen, possibly paired with an Israeli-Saudi agreement.

Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. forces in the region, previewed a tougher posture in September: “If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher cost – taking out three of yours.” McGurk said he’d advise maintaining economic pressure, responding more forcefully to attacks and keeping a path to a negotiated settlement open. Presidents nearing the end of their terms, he warned, often grow more ambitious, not less.

“Presidents make the final decisions, not their advisers,” McGurk wrote. A politically weakened Trump, he said, could become more determined to settle the conflict on his own terms. “Tehran might want to remember that history.”

Why This Matters: The analysis exposes a gap between voters’ power and the war power. If an election can’t restrain a president in an active conflict, the public’s main lever over decisions of life and death sits mostly out of reach—a concern for anyone who believes war should rest on democratic consent. The costs fall on service members already deployed, on Americans paying higher energy prices tied to Hormuz shipping, and on regional civilians exposed to escalation. The record McGurk cites suggests that Congress has repeatedly sidestepped authorization and oversight, leaving investigations and hearings as the main tools of accountability. Whatever voters decide on November 3, who answers for this war remains an open question.