Middle East Insider · Issue 076 · Friday, November 6, 2026

Let President Trump Finish the Job

Good morning. Vice President Vance says the Republican Party lost the House and the Senate on Tuesday because of the war with Iran. President Trump says that is largely true and that he would do it again. Both are right about the cause. The lesson is in the eight months: the voters punished a war the United States left unfinished through the fall, not the decision to fight it.

The voters punished the unfinished war with Iran, not the decision to fight it.

Vice President Vance wrote on X on Wednesday: “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.” He set a test for the Republicans who disagree with him: “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.” The answer is that it was worth it, and that what cost the Republican Party the Senate was not the war but the eight months in which the United States neither won it nor ended it. His 614-word post names the war as the reason the Republicans lost and does not mention Iran, Tehran, the bomb or the Strait of Hormuz.

This was an American war. The United States chose it, and no other government, in Jerusalem or anywhere else, had the standing to make that choice for Washington or to tell it otherwise. President Trump’s case on February 28 was for the United States. “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,” he said, and he listed the embassy hostages of 1979, the Marine barracks in Beirut, the USS Cole, the service members killed and maimed in Iraq, and Iranian missiles that “could soon reach the American homeland.” On the bomb: “I’ll say it again, they can never have a nuclear weapon.” None of it depended on what Israel wanted, and the argument for finishing the war does not either.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth set the standard on March 2. The mission was “laser-focused: Destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy their navy and other security infrastructure and they will never have nuclear weapons.” He added: “We set the terms of this war, from start to finish.” The Middle East Forum’s report on the first day called it “a regime disruption campaign,” not a punitive strike.

Then came the pauses. A two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan was announced on the evening of April 7 and took effect the next day; President Trump told the news agency Agence France-Presse it was a “total and complete victory,” and a blockade of Iranian ports followed on the 13th. On April 21 he extended the ceasefire “until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.” The memorandum of understanding he signed with Iran in Islamabad on June 17 gave 60 days for a final deal, ended the blockade within 30, promised “at least USD 300 Billion” for reconstruction and asked Tehran only for “its best efforts” on safe passage. On June 26 American forces struck Iran in answer to an Iranian drone attack on a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz. By July 13 the President was reinstating the blockade, and the 60 days ran out on August 17 with the two sides “further apart than they were then.”

After that the pause became the policy. The Pentagon has disclosed no bombing of Iranian targets since two days of strikes in early September. The November 2 strike on Iran’s Qeshm Island, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, was one the President called “just a minor attack,” adding “It wasn’t war.” On October 8 President Trump wrote that “we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections.” The Iranian regime used the time to set its price. Mohsen Rezaei is the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. He wrote on Tuesday that Washington “must fully and explicitly address Iran’s seven conditions and act upon them; only in this case will the Strait of Hormuz be reopened.”

The cost of those eight months was known before Tuesday’s election. The Pentagon’s revised toll on October 29 was 23 American service members dead and 865 wounded. The Congressional Budget Office put the cost at $38 billion through August 1. Each further month adds $2 billion at the low intensity of May and June and half again as much at July’s, by its estimate. U.S. Central Command’s figure for Congress was $43.6 billion as of September 3. About 1,700 Patriot, 200 THAAD high-altitude and 150 Standard Missile interceptors had been fired by August. United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, the Royal Navy’s shipping-advisory office, logged 35 vessels hit in October, the most in any month of the war. Oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz in the week to the 28th ran at about 49 percent of the pre-war baseline on the preliminary figures of the shipping-data firm Kpler, and tanker crossings averaged 11 a day against 50 before February. Regular gasoline averaged $2.98 a gallon on February 26 and about $4.15 on Tuesday, the highest on any election day since at least 2000.

The American voters answered the price and the duration. In the Associated Press’s Voter Poll about six in ten said the United States made the “wrong decision” in taking military action against Iran, a verdict on the choice to fight. About a third called the war “crucial” to their vote for Congress, well below the roughly half who said that of the cost of living. Fox News’s survey with NORC at the University of Chicago found that “More than two-thirds said it was very important to avoid a prolonged conflict in Iran, while half said the same about stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” and that nearly twice as many preferred ending military involvement to bring down gas prices as wanted it restarted, with six in ten Republicans the exception. The New York Times reported that the final survey by the President’s pollster Tony Fabrizio found the top two answers from Republicans not planning to vote were ending the war and addressing inflation, and that a summer slide deck from James Blair, who left the White House to oversee the midterm strategy, showed the Democratic lead growing during active hostilities, shrinking while the talks under the Islamabad memorandum ran and spiking when the ceasefire collapsed. The President said the same on Wednesday: “The price, not the war, the price.” An election removes no threat. The uranium that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cannot locate was as enriched on Wednesday morning as on Monday night, and the Strait of Hormuz was as closed.

The pattern in American politics is old. President Harry Truman’s approval stood at 22 percent in February 1952, the lowest Gallup has ever measured, with the Korean War stalemated. Dwight Eisenhower won the presidency that November after promising on October 24 to concentrate “on the job of ending the Korean War, until that job is honorably done” and saying “I shall go to Korea.” The war that was finished went the other way: once the 1991 campaign against Iraq ended, President George H.W. Bush recorded 89 percent approval in early March, then the highest Gallup had measured.

The list the Vice President shared, an unnamed pollster’s four answers from Trump voters who defected, reads: “1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel.” He endorsed it as the reason many of them voted for Democrats. The first item, “End the war,” is a slogan, not a policy. A policy would say what becomes of Iran’s enriched uranium, the Strait of Hormuz and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ missile launchers, and the Vice President’s post says nothing about any of the three. On March 3 he wrote: “Iran can never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. That is the goal of this operation and President Trump will see it through to completion.” The goal has not been met: the uranium is unaccounted for, and Rezaei said on Iranian state television that the regime is debating whether to keep its ban on the bomb if hostilities resume. “End the war” now means the seven conditions Rezaei set out, and the Qatari mediators’ two-day draft has the United States lifting the blockade and releasing some frozen funds at the start, Tehran answering with an official invitation to the IAEA to send inspectors to the bombed sites, the Strait of Hormuz reopening on day two, and nuclear talks only after that.

The Middle East Forum’s essay on Curt Mills, the executive director of The American Conservative magazine, published the morning after the vote, gave the rules of the postwar settlement on the Republican right: “Strength keeps the peace better than apology does,” and “Pressure short of war is the alternative to both appeasement and invasion.” Mills posted on election night that Republicans “should end the Iran War,” and on November 1 he had promoted, six times, a piece in his magazine headlined “J.D. Vance Is the Man to End the War.” Asked in October about a nuclear-armed Iran, he called it “similar enough to the North Korean situation.” The Vice President has not said whether he would leave Tehran the uranium, the strait or the launchers on the day the war ends. Until he does, his first item is what Mills posted on election night.

The Iranian regime has said what it thinks Tuesday’s result means. Rezaei wrote that “The Iranian nation handed Trump a strategic defeat on the battlefield and in the Hormuz” and “a POLITICAL DEFEAT in Washington.” The speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, wrote: “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message.” Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s written message of Wednesday warned that anyone hoping “shifts in [America’s] political parties and factions may bring about a change” is “gravely mistaken,” and that if the strikes are repeated “the response will be much more extensive.” The Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project write that Tehran’s leaders “view the November 3 midterm election results as evidence that Iran’s military strategy imposed political costs on the sitting US administration.” An end to the war on those terms is appeasement of the Islamic Republic, whoever proposes it. The Vice President’s first item and Ghalibaf’s “NO TO WAR” ask for the same event, and only the Iranian side has named its terms. An end on those terms would not keep American gasoline prices down for long. The price at the pump follows the Strait of Hormuz, and a passage reopened by Iranian permission can be closed the same way.

The congressional Democrats’ answer arrives at the same place by another road. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday: “We are going to end the war,” and that the Founding Fathers “had the power of the purse as one of the ways of deterring a president who does war without the consent of the American people.” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said it is “important for the president, before we even cross over into the new Congress, to end this war in Iran.” Adam Smith, in line to chair the House Armed Services Committee, called it “the illegal war against Iran” and told colleagues that working with Republicans on the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual bill that sets military policy and spending levels, would be “extraordinarily difficult.” Rosa DeLauro, in line to chair the House Appropriations Committee, said “Democrats will absolutely not fund Trump’s war of choice with Iran that has increased costs on American families and made us less safe.” Time reports that House Democrats plan a resolution in the first week of January requiring the President to end the war or obtain congressional authorization. A funding cutoff while Iran holds the Strait of Hormuz ends the war the way the Vice President’s list does, with the same result at the pump.

The American interest is the one the President named in February, and it has not changed. Twenty-three Americans are dead, and the Pentagon’s inspector general has reported as many as 30 MQ-9 drones lost and seven KC-135 refueling tankers damaged or destroyed. Rafael Grossi, the IAEA’s director general, told the United Nations Security Council on October 27 that the agency “has not been able to verify that there has been no diversion” of nuclear material. Satellite imagery analyzed by the Institute for Science and International Security shows the Taleghan 2 building at the Parchin military complex under reconstruction. Yemen’s Houthis are attacking Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh issued alerts on Thursday for Yanbu, its Red Sea oil export hub. Russian President Vladimir Putin received Rezaei in Moscow on Thursday and, by Rezaei’s account, called it “an unjust war” that “should end as soon as possible.” The Congressional Budget Office’s own warning is that the interceptor shortfall “would become especially problematic” against an opponent with a large missile arsenal, and it named China.

Finishing has a definition. The Middle East Forum’s November 2 study of American forces in the region set out five steps: “Do not trade the posture for the strait,” “Let the force arrive before the calendar decides,” “Protect the tankers,” “Refill the interceptors” and “Credit the allies who are carrying the flank.” The end state is a strait Iran cannot close, a uranium stock removed or destroyed under inspection, and launchers and production lines that are not rebuilt. The President has two aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea, a third that will not arrive until mid-November, and eight weeks before the Democratic majorities are sworn in. On Thursday President Trump said: “now we’ll make a decision ... I would rather not destroy the rest of the country if possible, but maybe I’ll have to. You’ll know soon enough.”

The two men the President has put in charge of the war have not moved. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on October 31 that any settlement “can’t be one that endangers our national security or one that doesn’t meet our core concerns that we have that brought us into that in the first place,” that Tehran has shown “ambitions to be a nuclear weapons power,” and “that can never be allowed to happen.” In September he had said Tehran was “under this illusion that Democrats are going to win in November, and the president will no longer be able to do things against them,” and added: “The president has extraordinary powers. Every president does.” On Thursday, in his White House office, he told the New York Times that working for the President to the end of the term has “always been my plan.” The President, he said, “deserves a tremendous amount of credit,” and the decision was “the price of leadership,” meaning “the willingness to do things that may not be politically popular or expedient but are necessary for your country and its long-term future.” Secretary Hegseth said in a video the same day: “when we say that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon, we actually mean it,” and “We are more determined than ever, more resolute than ever, to finish what we have started.” The President said of him on Thursday: “Pete Hegseth has done a fantastic job.”

Congress returns Monday with 20 legislative days in the House and 22 in the Senate. The House passed its version of the defense authorization bill on July 22 by 216 votes to 212. The Senate’s attempt to take up its own version failed on July 14, 50 votes to 46, short of the 60 needed, after Senator Chuck Schumer said the bill “cannot become a permission slip for that recklessness that we see occurring in Iran.” Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Thursday that his immediate focus is getting the bill across the finish line before the end of the year, and Bloomberg Government reports negotiators aiming at passage in December, when military pay and contracting authorities expire. The House-passed bill carries what finishing requires: multiyear contracts of up to seven years for Tomahawk cruise missiles and for THAAD, Patriot PAC-3 and Standard Missile interceptors; the Senate committee’s version adds second sources for the rocket motors. The Pentagon’s budget request asks for 3,203 Patriot interceptors against 341 the year before, and 92 percent of them depend on money Congress has not passed. The administration’s war supplemental request of $67.1 billion, nearly a third of it for munitions, has sat since June 24, and government funding runs out on December 11.

The lame-duck Congress can pass the defense authorization bill with its munitions provisions intact, fund the interceptors, and refuse any rider that bars operations against Iran before the job is done. That takes mettle and grit from congressional Republicans tempted to blame the war and from Democrats in both chambers eager to use it against them. The Vice President’s list, Senator Schumer’s power of the purse and Iran’s seven conditions all end the war with the Islamic Republic holding the uranium and the strait. President Trump and Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth have kept to the terms set on February 28. A Congress that handicaps them now hands Tehran the outcome it has worked for since the first ceasefire in April.

I draw three conclusions. First, the war with Iran was right and the pause was the error; the voters punished the eight months, not the opening night, and the precedents of 1952 and 1991 say the same. Second, “End the war” is not a policy until it says what becomes of the uranium, the strait and the launchers; the Vice President’s list and the congressional Democrats’ resolutions both leave those to Tehran, and neither party label makes that safer. Third, the lame-duck Congress has one job that bears on this: pass the National Defense Authorization Act with the munitions money and no Iran rider, and let President Trump finish what he started.

MEF Reports, Out of Range, Poised to Strike: Mapping America’s Force Posture against Iran (Nov 2): The satellite study of 43 bases, with the five steps quoted above and four things to watch, the first of them a third carrier in the Arabian Sea.

MEF Observer, Jordan Is Fighting Iran and the Brotherhood. Washington Should Take Notice (Nov 5): Jordan brought down 261 of 281 Iranian missiles and drones in the war’s first five weeks; the $500 million for its armed forces in the House’s defense appropriations bill is still not law.

MEF Online, The Doha Trap: How Iran Is Using Hormuz to Extort the West (Nov 5): Amine Ayoub: “The diplomatic push in Doha is not a breakthrough in regional peacemaking; it is an exercise in extortion.”

What the lame-duck Congress can pass

Both chambers of Congress sit again from Monday. The last scheduled days are December 17 in the House and the 18th in the Senate, and the 119th Congress ends at noon on January 3. The National Defense Authorization Act: the House passed its version in July, and the Senate fell short of the 60 votes needed to take up its own. Staff talks began in October; the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees take over from Monday, and a negotiated text is expected on the floor in the second week of December at a $1.15 trillion topline for national defense.

War powers: the most senators who have voted to end hostilities is 50, on June 23, for a concurrent resolution that never reached the President’s desk, and a second one failed 49 to 50 on September 24. Representative Gregory Meeks, in line to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says he will bring resolutions to “immediately” end the war to the floor in January, and a majority can make those binding. A veto waits after that, and the Senate sustained all five of the President’s first-term vetoes on hostilities and arms sales.

Money: the continuing resolution that keeps the government open expires December 11; Representative Ro Khanna of California wants a stopgap spending bill that bars funds for combat in Iran, and Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute sees “zero chance” of full-year appropriations without 60 Senate votes.

The nuclear file, as of today

The IAEA’s last verified figure is 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60 percent, as of June 13, 2025; the agency “cannot provide any information on the current size, composition or whereabouts of the stockpile.”

On September 9 the IAEA’s Board of Governors referred Iran to the United Nations Security Council by 23 votes to 3, with Russia, China and Niger voting no. Grossi told the Security Council on October 27 that inspectors work only at the Bushehr nuclear power station and that the Isfahan enrichment plant declared in June 2025 has never been inspected.

About what a gallon of regular gasoline cost in the United States on Tuesday, by the American Automobile Association’s figure as CNBC reported it, the highest on any midterm or presidential election day since at least 2000. On February 26, two days before the war began, it was $2.98. Before this year it had never passed $4 in November.

Corrections Desk. Nothing to correct from Thursday’s edition; errors in this one go to [email protected].

If you know anyone who works for a member of Congress, forward this before Monday’s session.

Reply with the one provision you would add to the National Defense Authorization Act before it passes.