Historic Republican defeats in the midterm elections have left President Donald Trump with even fewer options to quickly end the war with Iran, 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 expected to stick to the broad demands they made during negotiations.
“Iran has been very reluctant to have reasonable discussions about peace,” said Leslie Shedd, a nonresident member of the Atlantic Council and former senior adviser to Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas.
Trump could launch U.S. airstrikes against Iran, but the Iranian government has already absorbed thousands of such strikes.
In the unlikely scenario that Trump takes the extraordinary step of dropping a tactical nuclear weapon at a nuclear storage site beneath Pickaxe Mountain, it would not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, which is deeply buried and also extends across the country, experts said. The first attack from Nagasaki with a nuclear weapon of any size would create long-lasting radioactive fallout and threaten to destabilize existing arms deals between nuclear powers.
As Democrats win more congressional seats and Republicans show growing skepticism about the Iran war, lawmakers returning to Washington next week could insist on a war powers resolution or cut funding.
The other options proposed to Trump – a US bombing campaign, a reduction of US forces in the region and a unilateral declaration of victory – will not change the strategic reality.
Iran has shown that the United States cannot stop it from intermittently closing the Strait of Hormuz and driving up global energy prices.
“Conscience or the cost of living, the Americans said NO TO WAR, and we agree with this message,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Wednesday in response to the midterm election results, according to Reuters.
“The fundamental problem is that the Iranians have no interest in reaching a peaceful resolution,” said Alexander Vindman, a former Trump National Security Council official who served as a witness against Trump during his first impeachment. “They want to inflict enough pain to make sure the United States and Israel don’t do this again. »
“Even if Pickaxe Mountain were completely neutralized, Tehran does not rely on a single underground facility,” Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and an expert on international security, wrote on Substack.
“Iran relies on a vast network of hardened, underground, and deeply fortified technical facilities. This highly dispersed infrastructure is intentionally designed to resist foreign surveillance and protect critical assets from possible precision strikes,” Pape wrote.
Iranian officials will also likely see the scale of Trump’s midterm defeat as validation of the fundamental strategy against the United States: inflicting economic pain by driving up energy prices.
More articles
David Rohde
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for international reporting. Previously, he was national security and law editor for NBC News.
Gn headline
