What Will Trump Do Now In The Iran War After Democrats Destroy Republicans In The Midterms?

0:03Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me once again is Dr. Rosemary Kelanic, the director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities. Dr. Kelanic, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you, Brittany. It's good to see you. I'm grateful that you're joining me because I want to talk about where we're at right now when it comes to the war against Iran and what Tuesday night's results mean for the conflict. President Trump has repeatedly used the midterms as a marker for this war in recent weeks. He's repeatedly promised that the war would be over very shortly after the election.

0:34And he's also said that the United States wouldn't strike Iran until after the election. But U.S. forces reportedly conducted limited strikes on Iran in recent weeks, including an attack on a strategic island in the Strait of Hormuz. That came just one day before the midterms. And reportedly, a U.S. official calls that attack on Kashim Island a defensive measure. So to start off the conversation, what do you make of the moment we're in right now? Yeah, so I think it's quite an extraordinary moment, and yet it probably won't change very much in what's going on in the course of the war. What's extraordinary is that we have this major midterm election rebuke of the president, which includes a rebuke of his foreign policy, starting this war with Iran.

1:16that has a direct line arrow to higher prices, inflation and higher prices at the pump, which has made Americans very unhappy in light of these election results. So that's pretty clear. But Congress doesn't have a lot of control over what the president does in foreign policy. And so even a heavily Democratic Congress like this one has limited ability to rein in the president's foreign policy. And that's something that, you know, it's not necessarily as clear to outside observers, say the Iranians, as it is to Americans on Capitol Hill. We haven't had diplomatic relations, normal relations with Iran in almost 50 years.

1:55And so it's not totally clear how well they understand our system. I mean, they understand it on paper, but I think they would be mistaken if they think that the Democratic Congress can actually rein in or change the president's foreign policy. So I think what we're likely to see is a continuation of what's been going on for the past, how many months is it, seven months, eight months, where we have a stalemate. The U.S. can get oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran can continue to attack it. We can't stop them from attacking it. They can't stop us from getting oil out. but it's costly and risky for us to do it.

2:30And it's not something the U.S. can do indefinitely. So ultimately, we're left in the same sort of place that we were in before the midterms. I was going to ask about that because some criticisms Republicans received were that they were just a rubber stamp on President Trump when it came to the war against Iran. But realistically, now that Democrats will have control of the House and the Senate in January. How much sway do they have when it comes to President Trump's war powers here? Are their hands tied? What can they do? And then on the flip side, what does it look like President Trump is going to do?

3:04Because on one hand, he's saying, I'm going to work with Democrats. He's saying that he blames the Republican losses partly on the war against Iran. He's still sticking by his decision, though, to launch that war. He's saying that people, voters, weren't probably willing to do the short-term consequence of paying more for gas. He understands that. He doesn't agree with it, but he thinks that would be a short-term consequence for the long-term. I mean, what do you make of all of that? What can Democrats do, and what does it look like President Trump will do? Yeah, well, so the Democrats don't have a veto-proof majority in either house, and so the president can override, he can, or I'm sorry, they can't override the president's veto.

3:47So anything, any legislation that they pass, the president can veto. If they tried to do, you know, a war powers resolution, they've already done that, and it hasn't been binding. It doesn't necessarily change the president's behavior. Ultimately, they could refuse funding in future appropriations bills if the war continues to sort of go, you know, into next year, well into next year when the appropriations bills come up. If there are supplemental requests for funding that the president has, they could say no to that. That's very difficult for Congress to do. It's hard for them to say no to spending money on security, on national security.

4:27So it matters whether they can make the arguments, the American people, that this war hurts American security more than it helps it. Ultimately, though, if they really want to stop the war, they would have to get Republicans to vote with them against, you know, they could ban funding on continuing the war. But they would need a veto-proof majority to do that, and they're nowhere near that. So the real question is, are Republicans going to jump ship? Is the president unpopular enough that Republicans in Congress would vote against him on the Iran war? Nobody knows yet, but so far they've stuck with him for the most part.

5:04And now he's a lame duck president. And I want to talk about some things that he said earlier this week. He said that the war is going to wrap up very soon. He also then added either they'll make a deal or we'll just end it. And Vice President J.D. Vance, he perhaps spoke a little more eloquently on the Iran war. He said the president and I both feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement. We're going to keep on working at it. You never know. You never know, of course. The Iranians are always a little unpredictable. And as the president always says, he retains kinetic options.

5:39He retains non-kinetic options. Do you think that President Trump, now he's sitting here, perhaps deflated, seeing that this election was really a referendum on him and Republicans? Democrats are in the majority. He's a lame duck president. He's going to be incentivized to end this faster one way or another. And what is that way? Yeah, if they could end this fast, they would have done that six months ago. They don't have a recipe to end this war quickly. In fact, they don't seem to have a recipe to end this war at all, which is part of what led to this midterm disaster for the Republican Party.

6:15You know, I couldn't help but giggle a little when you had the Bantz quote about how the Iranians are a little unpredictable, because the U.S. has been extremely unpredictable, and Trump has been very unpredictable in what he has demanded of the Iranians and threatened the Iranians, etc., etc., etc. I think an important sort of historical parallel to keep in mind is that usually when presidents are lame duck presidents and they lose control of the Congress in the midterms, they tend to focus more on foreign policy because that's the area of their sort of presidential repertoire that they have the most control over.

6:50The president is not going to get any domestic policy items passed now. Certainly not any that are just partisan. He would need significant bipartisan support to do it. So historically, this is when American when American presidents focus most on foreign policy. So that could actually mean that he doubles down on the war, spends more political capital, what he has left on the war, because the domestic policy is just sort of a dead letter going forward. I was wondering about that because I couldn't help but think about 20 years ago in 2006. Voters weren't particularly happy with the war in Iraq.

7:25Republicans suffered major losses in the midterms. Democrats took control of the House and the Senate. Shortly thereafter, President Bush announced that he was replacing his defense. Secretary Rumsfeld was out. He replaced him there. Do you see that here with Defense Secretary Hegseth? It's quite possible. I mean, he might be impeached by the Democratic Congress anyway, but Trump might make him a fall guy for the war. He certainly has done that before with members of his administration where he's fired them. and blame them for policy missteps. I think it's going to be a difficult argument to make to claim that it was all Hegseth's idea.

8:05And ultimately, if you scapegoat somebody in your administration, the best way to make that convincing is then to also change your policy to suggest that it really was that person's policy, that person's gone, we're going to do something different now. So it's possible that he fires Hegseth, but it won't make much of a difference if he fires Hegseth and continues on this strategy of no strategy of just sort of intermittently bombing Iran and hoping that a settlement is reached. That hasn't worked for months now. It probably won't change anything going forward if that's what he does. To that point, reportedly in recent weeks, we've seen, like I said at the top, the United States conduct strikes against Iran just as recently as this week, one day before the midterms, which a U.S.

8:51official reportedly called a defensive measure. Is that moving the needle at all in this war? No, it is clearly not moving the needle at all because Iran has been highly resolved. We've bombed them many times and they haven't given up. Right. So it's not going to get them to give up. It also hasn't succeeded in stopping Iran's ability to threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran can continue to attack tankers and container ships and whatnot and actually sink some container ships, right? Seriously damage these vessels. And no amount of bombing that the U.S. does is ever going to get rid of that capability because it's a guerrilla style capability, right?

9:29It's cheap means that are easy for them to rebuild. They can hide all these attack boats and mines and stuff in the caves and shoreline along the Strait of Hormuz. They have missiles. They have drones. It's impossible to stop it kinetically. So this is this is completely irrelevant. All these bombings do nothing to help the U.S. win the war. To your point about President Trump and the United States looking a little unpredictable in this conflict in the past however many months, eight, nine months, Politico had President Trump on the phone last night as election results were coming in. And he was asked about the Iran war and he was specifically asked if he was going to escalate it.

10:09He said, we're going to take a look and do what's best for the country. From your perspective, if you're saying kinetic actions are not working, what do you think is best for the country? And the best thing to do is to end the war. And you can do that in two ways, right? Trump could just throw his hands up in the air and say, I'm done. I've had it with this. You know, I'm going to let countries in the region figure out how to get oil to the Strait of Hormuz. And if other partner countries want to help out, like Europeans or wherever, great, that's fine. But the U.S. is not going to do this blockade anymore.

10:39And we're not going to do, you know, getting oil through the strait using American military power and using the American taxpayer to pay for that security when the whole world benefits from it. Right. So right now the U.S. is footing the bill for something that benefits the whole world, right? He could just say, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to walk away and let regional powers figure it out and let oil markets figure it out. That's not a great option, but it's better than what we're doing now, right? Right. The other option is he could reach an actual negotiated settlement with Iran, which would be better if it could be durable.

11:15But that involves giving some things up. Right. But if we actually leave in exchange for something. Right. He could say, well, we're going to leave. We're going to let regional powers figure this out, et cetera, et cetera. We're going to lift the blockade in exchange for Iran stopping attacks on shipping through Hormuz. Great, great, great, great, great. If they do that, they might actually be able to get some kind of concession from Iran in terms of letting nuclear inspectors back into the country to figure out what's going on and make sure that they don't proliferate to nuclear weapons. Now, it may be a lost cause.

11:45It could be that Iran has concluded that they should get nuclear weapons because of Trump attacking them repeatedly for eight months now. It's not clear. But either way, the U.S. needs to stop being the chauffeur for the world's oil going through the straightforward news. It's expensive. It doesn't keep prices that low. The U.S. taxpayer is quitting the bill and doesn't like it. And frankly, countries in the region need to figure this out with Iran on their own because the U.S. cannot be the global policeman anymore. The American people don't want it and we can't afford it. You and I have been talking about this war now for months.

12:21I have been lucky enough to be getting your expertise here as we reach different milestones, whether it be time or different points in this war. So I am curious, my final question to you would be, what do you think is missing from the international conversation when it comes to this stalemate of a conflict? Yeah, so what I would like to see a lot more discussion of, and I'm surprised it hasn't been discussed more in the United States, is ways to make the Persian Gulf just less relevant overall, right? I mean, oil is yesterday's fuel. It's yesterday's fuel. It's still going to matter for decades longer.

12:57But this is a war-torn region. Of course, the U.S. has caused a lot of problems and started a lot of wars. But the world as a whole would be better off if it decreased its dependence on oil, period, from anywhere by adopting EVs and other new technology solutions. right you can plug them into a coal powered grid that doesn't really matter you know it's still better for climate change you still pollute less and then you don't need to rely on this energy from the middle east anymore right if we can as a community as a country of the united states and as a global community move away from oil which is that's actually at our fingertips to do that now technologically speaking um then the middle east would just matter a lot less and that would be better for the United States and better for everybody.

13:45And it surprises me that that's not discussed more, I think because it gets tangled in sub-partisan politics about climate change. But there are real national security reasons for doing it. Other countries have done it. China has done it for national security reasons. And the US should be doing it too, right? They've fared way better than anyone expected going into this conflict. Dr. Kalanick, as usual, I always appreciate you coming on. Thanks so much for the conversation. Sounds great. Thank you, Brittany. Thank you.