Top aides to US President Donald Trump are pushing to keep the war with Iran from escalating before November's midterm elections, in an effort to limit Republican losses, four people familiar with the discussions told Reuters. The strategy is already under strain, the news agency reported, as the United States and Iran exchanged attacks overnight.
According to Reuters, White House officials will consider ramping up military action after the 3 November vote, though sources cautioned that a return to full-scale conflict is far from certain. The US military said its latest strikes were retaliation for recent attacks on American forces and shipping in the region.
Political pressure behind the pause
For now, Reuters reported, the administration wants to rely on economic pressure to extract concessions in any future negotiation that months of military action have failed to secure. One White House official told the news agency, "We are keeping the pressure on Iran."
Containing the conflict until November would help stop the unpopular war from dominating the news as Republicans defend narrow majorities in the Senate and House, Reuters reported, citing sources including three White House officials. Only 31% of Americans approve of the war, while about 63% disapprove, according to a late-August Reuters/Ipsos poll cited in the report, with voters particularly unhappy about high petrol prices. A pause could also give the US military room to rebuild depleted munitions stockpiles, sources said.
A fragile calm
Reuters noted that the "play-it-cool" strategy is becoming harder to sustain by the day. Although the conflict remains far less intense than during the spring or a mid-summer flare-up, both sides have exchanged strikes in recent days. Analysts told the news agency that Iran's leadership, emboldened after months of disrupting Strait of Hormuz shipping with little internal unrest, is likely to keep striking US and allied Gulf targets periodically, including bases, vessels and energy infrastructure. This raises the risk that Washington will face pressure to retaliate, potentially triggering an escalatory spiral neither side originally intended.
Reuters reported that the US struck rocket launchers on Iran's Larak Island over the weekend, prompting Iran to fire missiles toward Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. The US then hit further Iranian targets around the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, in what the news agency described as the biggest outbreak of fighting since July, killing military personnel and civilians in Iran.
Barbara Leaf, a former top State Department official for the Middle East under Joe Biden, told Reuters that Tehran has every incentive to disrupt the current calm, since the administration's explicit aim is to sharply increase economic pressure on Iran.
Trump the wild card
Reuters reported that Trump's approval rating has fallen from 40% to 33% since the conflict began, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Sources said the president is not currently pushing for escalation but is known to change course unexpectedly. He threatened on Tuesday to escalate further if Iran retaliated against the latest US strikes, warning on Truth Social that any Iranian response would be met with force "at a much harder and higher level," while adding that an even larger strike remained available if needed.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Trump said he did not expect the renewed campaign to last long, and reiterated that the midterms were not shaping his Iran strategy, telling reporters, "I'm not running. My party is running."
Strategic strain
Reuters reported that the war, now in its seventh month, is increasingly constrained by logistics as well as politics. One senior White House official told the news agency the "timetable has changed," while another said the election calendar was effectively driving Iran policy. Reuters had separately reported in August that the military had used nearly all of its supply of certain precision missiles, and the Washington Post reported on Sunday that the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force had warned the defence secretary in a written assessment that prolonging the war was unsustainable and would weaken military readiness elsewhere. The Pentagon has said it has "everything it needs" to carry out its mission.
White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales told Reuters that Trump had "destroyed Iran's military capabilities" and was crippling its economy through naval blockade and sanctions, adding that the administration would continue advancing US interests and would never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Reuters reported that some of Washington's Gulf allies, several of which had earlier pushed for tougher action against Iran, urged the White House to de-escalate after a round of attacks in late July. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are among the senior aides who favour keeping the conflict "quiet" until November, according to two White House officials cited by the news agency.
Limits of the economic squeeze
The administration has instead intensified an economic isolation campaign, threatening countries that trade with Iran with heavy sanctions while maintaining its Strait of Hormuz blockade, Reuters reported. But analysts and officials told the news agency the approach has limits, since decades of sanctions have battered Iran's economy without deterring its leadership. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that the pressure campaign could itself provoke Iran into lashing out militarily, while major powers including China have not joined the US effort to isolate Tehran.
Alex Plitsas, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Reuters the new sanctions package was designed to add economic pressure on top of the blockade to push Iran back to the negotiating table, after the administration judged this preferable to further military action, but noted that China's refusal to cooperate raised doubts about how effective the campaign would be.
Source: Reuters
