United States President Donald Trump has claimed that the seven-month-long war with Iran will end “immediately after” the US midterm elections in November, framing the ongoing conflict as an attempt by Tehran to influence the vote. 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. 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.
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. Irrespective of their claims of military success, both the US and Israel face a reckoning with an electorate that their leaders had promised easy victory: the US and Trump in November’s midterms and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu in a crucial general election in October.
Iran, ruled by an unelected Supreme Leader and with no legislative elections scheduled until 2028, faces no such countdown.
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