“IRAN militarily is effectively over,” the US president declared on Monday following talks with the Qatari prime minister. “We’re just keeping it the status quo … at the behest” of Iran’s neighbours. The Gulf states include some of Donald Trump’s biggest benefactors, and they have borne the brunt of Iranian military retaliation. Trump has also acknowledged that the domestic unpopularity of the US-Israeli war on Iran contributed to the comprehensive thrashing his Republican Party received in last week’s midterm elections, yet insisted he had no regrets because the goal of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon remained paramount. That’s an absurd premise in a variety of ways; besides, Iran is unlikely to consider the conflict over as long as it is militarily menaced by a superpower or its regional proxies.
What’s notable, though, is that unlike most US aggressions against faraway nations, the majority opinion opposed the assault on Iran from the outset. The co-belligerent’s bloodlust presumably put the kibosh on jingoistic impulses. In a CBS interview on Sunday, Trump admitted that one reason for the midterm drubbing was that “there’s a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel”. There’s nothing ‘incredible’ about popular distaste for a genocidal power, especially when your tax dollars are enabling its egregious excesses.
It’s true that anti-Israel sentiment paid dividends for candidates across large parts of the US, but the infamous American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other pro-Zionist PACS also scored many successes even as their biggest bets didn’t pay off. AIPAC’s chief bête noire was Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, who in his victory speech thanked the committee, which contributed nearly $40 million to his opponents, for “giving me the opportunity to beat you twice” — in the primary and on election day.
What will the Democrats do with their mandate?
On election eve, Trump announced that nearly $4 billion in annual aid would no longer flow to Israel. That’s unlikely to have affected anyone’s voting intentions, given that presidential pronouncements are notoriously unreliable. But even if there is a halt, far larger avenues of military assistance will remain open, including clauses in the $1.5 trillion 2027 defence budget that effectively embed the Israel Defence Forces in the Pentagon. It’s hard to imagine any serious objections from the AIPAC-aligned Democratic leadership personified by Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries in the House of Representatives.
A growing number of incoming Democratic senators and representatives are keen to dispense with the services of this discredited duo. For the moment though, that’s just wishful thinking. But things could change. The realisation seems to have seeped in that unless the Democrats, with large majorities in both Houses of Congress, begin to deliver on campaign promises, there could be a backlash in 2028. The key issues are mostly domestic, from blatant corruption and the cost of living (exacerbated by the Iran conflict) to healthcare costs, unregulated AI, resource-hungry data centres, and the impunity of tech plutocrats. Elon Musk poured nearly $500m into the midterms, all in vain; he focused on Texas, which turned a bright blue. But the question is whether he can be held to account for his role as head of the now disbanded department of government efficiency, among other misdeeds.
The anti-Trump Republican Congressman Thomas Massie has already introduced articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth, hoping that Trump will fire him before the Democrats assume congressional power in January. Massie’s efforts won’t pay off, but will the Democrats do any better? Will they hold Stephen Miller to account for his dedication to deporting ‘illegal aliens’ by brutal means?
Several of the Democrats freshly elected to national office — and many more at the state level — will strive to do their best by their constituents. All too many others, however, have yet to be disabused of the notion that gravitating to the centre is the safest option, even if no measurable progress is achieved. The New York Times editorialised at length on Monday about the wisdom of combining economic ‘populism’ with social conservatism. This is a blueprint for a bridge to nowhere. The Democrats ought to have realised this long ago, but perhaps it’s not too late.
Miller took over as Trump’s chief of staff, indicating a doubling down on his worst impulses, just as the president rescinded his acceptance of last week’s results. It’s a pity that Trump’s invitation to Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White to serve as his press secretary so that the “violent Fighter and Warrior” and his employees could “defend us against the Lunatic Left” turned out to be a joke. Fleetingly, I was reminded of how the Roman emperor Commodus ultimately encountered a wrestler.
Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2026
