WASHINGTON, DC – The Democratic Party’s resounding victories at US midterm elections on November 3 have dealt Republicans a stinging rebuke and pushed President Donald Trump into lame-duck territory, with an incoming Congress poised to frustrate his legislative agenda and intensify scrutiny of the Iran war.
With his domestic power sharply circumscribed, analysts say Trump may increasingly turn his attention abroad, where the White House enjoys greater freedom to maneuver. They say the risk is that a politically boxed-in president seeks to reassert his power overseas, including through renewed military action against Tehran.
Steven Okun, chief executive of APAC Advisors, a Singapore-based strategic consultancy, believes the war’s trajectory will prove difficult to change. Trump campaigned against “forever wars,” but “it’s hard to get out of them,” he told Asia Times, noting that the president will retain broad authority over foreign policy despite a Democrat-controlled Congress.
Those Democratic majorities can subpoena administration officials, launch investigations and scrutinize the conduct and cost of the Iran war. Vice President JD Vance cited the conflict as “the reason we lost” the midterms, while Trump acknowledged after the vote that high gas prices had contributed to the Republicans defeat.
The conflict has driven energy prices higher, compounded Americans’ cost-of-living frustrations and dangerously depleted critical US munitions stockpiles. For a president who promised to keep the country out of new wars, the military campaign has become a political liability, alienating voters already struggling with inflation.
Trump has continued to veer between diplomacy and threats of overwhelming force against Iran. Ahead of the vote, he claimed Tehran wanted a settlement “as soon as possible.” But on Thursday, he warned he might “destroy the rest” of Iran, adding that the public would “know soon enough” if he decided to act.
Military action has continued behind the diplomatic rhetoric. US officials acknowledged limited strikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island, near the Strait of Hormuz, on November 2, the eve of the midterms. Early Saturday, Iranian media reported two more missiles striking the island, although their origin and any damage caused were unconfirmed.
Trump’s recent warnings build on a pattern of increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric directed at Tehran, raising the specter of a possible nuclear strike. Throughout the conflict, he has repeatedly threatened to effectively erase Iran’s modern statehood, warning that any failure to meet US terms could trigger strikes so devastating they would require at least “25 years” of reconstruction.
Such threats carry troubling legal implications. In a September report, UN investigators found reasonable grounds to believe that earlier US attacks on a school and sports facility in Iran constituted war crimes, underscoring the potential consequences of another devastating military offensive.
“Another reason for escalation would be personal and legacy-related; he would not want to be remembered for a failed or forever war,” said Nirmal Ghosh, former US bureau chief of Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper. That calculus could leave Trump reluctant to end the war without something he can portray as a decisive triumph.
The timing adds another complication. Democrats will not take control of Congress until January, leaving Trump nearly two months to conduct new strikes before the Democrats can fully wield their investigative and war purse powers in Congress. Even then, their ability to constrain executive military decisions may prove limited.
“I don’t think there’s much that Democrats can do in Congress to stop Trump if he wants to further escalate the war,” said Michael Cohen, a nonresident senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank, recalling how Democratic victories in the 2006 midterm wave election failed to prevent George W. Bush’s subsequent troop surge in Iraq.
That precedent lends weight to warnings Democratic Senator Chris Murphy had issued before Tuesday’s vote, saying the administration had briefed lawmakers on possible renewed operations against Iran. Though officials presented it as short-term, Murphy called the plan “insane,” warning it risked spiraling into a much wider war.
He warned that carrying it out would cause “devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law.” Murphy also cited reports of potential strikes against civilian infrastructure, raising concerns that an expanded bombing campaign would violate international law and worsen the conflict.
Pressure to intensify the war may also come from Israel. Joe Kent, who resigned as director of the US National Counterterrorism Center over the war, claims that Israeli military actions could provoke Iranian retaliation against US forces in the region, putting pressure on Trump to deepen rather than end the conflict.
“Our troops right now are being used by the Israelis as bait to drag us back into this war,” Kent said in a recent interview. He claimed that Israel seeks US participation in a regime change campaign against Tehran, with further American casualties potentially making a withdrawal politically humiliating for Trump.
Cohen of the Stimson Center argued that Washington should abandon the quest for a decisive military outcome. “The goal of the war should be to end the war,” he said, adding that prolonged hostilities offered the US no strategic benefit, destabilized the region and imposed mounting costs on the global economy.
“There is no way to win this. There is no winning play. The only winning play is to get out,” Cohen said. Yet he warned that Trump’s reluctance to disengage without declaring victory could encourage another offensive, potentially provoking Iranian retaliation against pipelines and other energy infrastructure across the Gulf.
Kole Campbell, a risk analyst and former US military intelligence officer, questioned whether another bombing campaign could achieve regime change in Tehran. “There are no known cases in world history in which conventional air power alone has overthrown a government,” he told Asia Times.
Campbell warned that further strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities could have the opposite of their intended effect. Additional attacks would “very likely drive Iran to begin or restart a nuclear weapons program,” he assessed, if US and Israeli strikes had not already supplied that incentive.
For all Washington’s destructive power, Campbell argued, another sustained bombing campaign could at most further degrade or delay Iran’s nuclear capabilities, not eliminate them. Achieving that military objective, he said, would require a ground invasion of the Iranian mainland, exposing US forces to potentially devastating casualties.
Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, said Washington’s operational successes obscured a deeper strategic miscalculation. “The military won, if you will, the war that they decided to fight, which was a war of destruction,” she said at a Washington forum on Thursday.
But Iran fought on different terms, using missiles and drones to threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, strike regional energy infrastructure and damage US bases. Grieco argued that Iran had blunted America’s air superiority by imposing economic and military costs that Washington has struggled to absorb.
Tehran’s underlying calculation, Grieco suggested, was that Iran could withstand devastation longer than Americans would tolerate economic disruption. Washington was fighting a “war of choice,” she said, while Tehran regarded the conflict as existential, betting that American resolve would eventually falter.
Prolonging the war would also further strain Washington’s dwindling weapons inventories. US strikes on Iran expended large numbers of Tomahawk cruise missiles and JASSMs, long-range weapons Grieco described as “the very things that are most needed, particularly in the Indo-Pacific,” where US forces face competing strategic demands vis-a-vis China.
That strategic strain extends to missile defenses. A September Congressional Budget Office assessment estimated that the US had expended between half and two-thirds of its combined inventory of certain interceptors, including Patriot and THAAD missiles, since June 2025. Replenishing those stocks could take at least five years, it said.
Those shortages could give the incoming Democratic Congress another avenue to challenge the war. “I do think the power of the purse still matters,” Grieco said, pointing to Democrat-led investigations and spending restrictions that could constrain a prolonged campaign, even if lawmakers cannot immediately prevent fresh strikes.
She also raised the possibility of legislation requiring congressional authorization before the White House draws further on scarce interceptors and long-range missiles. Such restrictions could force a more explicit debate over whether additional attacks justify sacrificing military readiness elsewhere.
Beyond congressional pressure, the central question is whether Washington can negotiate an end to the hostilities. Grieco suggested that the most realistic outcome would resemble the failed June memorandum of understanding, which envisaged reopening the Strait of Hormuz as Washington lifted its blockade, while leaving the nuclear dispute unresolved.
Such an agreement would fall short of the clear-cut victory Trump has repeatedly sought. Grieco warned that criticism of any concessions to Tehran, even from known opponents of the war, make it politically easier for Trump to escalate the conflict than to negotiate a face-saving exit.
That dilemma could prove particularly awkward for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime critic of concessions to Iran and one of the administration’s most vocal advocates of military pressure. He could struggle to justify any settlement resembling terms that Washington had previously rejected. Reports suggest he may resign to start pursuing a run for the presidency in 2028.
Vance, widely regarded as Trump’s leading potential successor, has begun distancing himself from the conflict, arguing that disaffected Republican voters want an end to the war and a reassessment of Washington’s relationship with Israel. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis remains another possible contender, although the field is far from settled.
Political strategist Adam Swart told Asia Times that the midterm defeat had weakened Vance and Rubio, whom he called the “two most obvious heirs to Trump.” With both tied to the administration’s increasingly unpopular war, their divergent positions on Iran could become a defining fault line in the Republican presidential contest of 2028.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faces perhaps the heaviest pressure following the midterm rout. Republican Representative Thomas Massie plans to force impeachment articles next week unless Hegseth resigns, accusing him of waging war against Iran without congressional authorization. Hegseth has vowed to stay, and Trump continues to defend him.
“Basically, push Hegseth out,” Cohen said, suggesting Trump could blame his defense chief, “declare victory and go home.” He predicted that enough Republicans might support impeachment by next week, but wondered whether Hegseth could invoke Trump’s own possible impeachment to maintain presidential protection.
Yet removing Hegseth could offer Trump a politically convenient explanation for the war’s unfulfilled objectives, though it would do little to resolve his underlying strategic dilemma. Iran retains the capacity to disrupt regional energy supplies and impose economic costs, while Washington has yet to establish what more military action could realistically achieve.
Trump’s predicament is that neither escalation nor compromise offers an obvious political win. Renewed warfare risks prolonging the economic pain that contributed to the Republican defeat, while a negotiated settlement risks exposing how little Washington has achieved after months of costly military operations.
For Grieco of the Stimson Center, the war ultimately illustrates the limits of overwhelming military power. Washington has demonstrated its ability to devastate Iranian territory, she observed, but not to dictate the political outcome of the conflict. “American military power, as awesome as it is, cannot compensate for bad strategy.”
Eoin Higgins is the 
