President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu paid the political price for initiating war with Iran. American and Israeli voters rejected their militaristic foreign policy. Al-though the electoral message favors peace in the Middle East, the chances of establishing peace remain remote because both leaders regard war as a necessary and legitimate tool to achieve their aims.
The mid-term elections in the US weakened President Trump’s position in Congress. Democrats won a clear majority in both chambers: 54 of 100 Senate seats and 253 of 435 House seats. With the majority in Congress, Democrats will be able to block Trump’s agenda and investigate his administration. However, this does not guaran-tee a resolution of the confrontation with Iran, because Democratic control would not automatically remove the president’s power to order military action.
President Trump still retains executive authority to continue the war with Iran. He will likely keep using military force or other coercive means to bend Iran to his will. In-stead of dialogue, diplomacy, and de-escalation, he will rely on threats or force. So far, force against Iran has proved counterproductive, and President Trump has failed to achieve anything through invasion and blockade.
Republicans, including Vice President J.D. Vance, said the Iran war was a factor in their party losing a majority in Congress in the midterm polls on November 3, 2026. Vance said, “The reason we lost is the war.” The troubling factor is that Trump has distanced himself from his party’s poor performance in the mid-term election. He is not prepared to accept voters’ deep anger over living costs, tariffs, and war against Iran. He said, “I don’t view it as a hit on me.” He is therefore defending the military campaign and is ready to use the veto power to block the Democrats’ initiatives in Congress against his policies.
The mediating states are struggling to avoid the Epic Furry-2. However, Trump is signaling plans for massive strikes against Iran before January 2027. US forces struck the Iranian island of Qeshm twice last week. The strikes targeted surface-to-air missiles used against US assets. American officials described the strikes as de-fensive operations rather than a resumption of major hostilities. The conflict has not escalated because Iran has shown restraint. Continued limited strikes may invite Ira-nian retaliation, leading to a devastating war.
Israel’s elections have also failed to provide a clear political mandate. Netanyahu’s Likud-led coalition won 53 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, so his parliamentary ma-jority was lost. Netanyahu needs nine votes to form a government because 61 seats are required to govern independently.
The Arab parties unexpectedly performed well and secured 19 seats. Palestinian politicians have emerged as the kingmakers because the anti-Netanyahu bloc can-not form a government without them. But they are equally constrained because Ne-tanyahu cast Palestinian-Israeli politicians as enemies within, tacit allies of Hamas.
The election results do not change thinking in Tel Aviv and Washington. They will remain concerned about Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile capabilities, and re-gional proxies. They view Iran as an existential threat and have therefore invested substantial military, diplomatic, and political resources to roll back Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and limit its influence in the Middle East.
The probability remains of a full-scale military confrontation in the region because of Israel’s military adventurism. After the general elections on October 27, 2026, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became a caretaker chief executive. According to legal experts at the Israel Democracy Institute and the Tachlith Institute, a caretaker prime minister can lawfully take the country to war. So Netanyahu could plan a maneuver, a false flag operation, or some drastic action to force Iran.
The US and Israeli air power has limits, meaning it cannot change the regime or de-stroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Neither has enough ground forces to conduct ground operations; Iran is far too big. Moreover, the mid-term election results un-derscore the shift in the Trump administration’s approach to Israel, and Trump stated that the US would stop $3.8bn in military aid to Israel.
To conclude, an exit from the war is possible if all parties sincerely choose dialogue, diplomacy, and de-escalation. They return to the Islamabad Memorandum of Under-standing between the US and Iran, signed in June 2026, which accommodates both sides’ interests, such as nuclear weapons and the Iranian demand that economic sanctions be lifted and Iran’s frozen assets released. Thus, the situation is unpre-dictable because either diplomacy prevails or conflict escalates.
—The writer is Vice Chancellor of the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. ([email protected])
