Juan Cole Informed Comment
However the midterms turn out, the 120th Congress must cut off money to Trump for his ongoing Iran War. As an unresolved geopolitical issue, it threatens the future of the United States like no other issue.
In mid-September, Senate Republicans voted to allow Trump to continue his war on Iran, after several GOP House members had joined the Democrats in invoking the War Powers Act.
If Michiganders want a reason to vote against Mike Rogers for Senate, they just have to consider that Rogers would give Trump anything he wanted on the Iran War front. Rogers called the Iran War a “win-win-win” for the US. So much winning. He has flip-flopped now that high gasoline and diesel prices, caused by Trump’s attack on Iran, have made the GOP about as welcome in the voting booth as a skunk at an office party. He says he wants to see the war “wound down.” But would he vote to deny Trump the money to continue to prosecute the war? I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
Since February 28, when Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump murdered dozens of high Iranian officials from the air, including the clerical leader Ali Khamenei, and initiated 13,000 strikes against Iranian targets with no provocation, the world has been on a knife edge.
We only avoided a global recession because China deeply cut its petroleum imports, from 11.5 million barrels a day to under 9 million barrels a day, releasing instead massive amounts of oil from both private and government strategic petroleum reserves. The US and Europe also released petroleum from reserves. These maintained enough oil on the market to keep prices of Brent crude around an average of $96 a barrel, which is a drag on the economy but not an existential crisis. The price averaged $69 a barrel in 2025, though, so the Iran War has had an inflationary impact that many ordinary families in the US and around the world are feeling.
But the war isn’t over. On Monday, the US military staged several strikes on Iran’s Qeshm island. Iran continues to report that tankers in the Persian Gulf have struck mines as they attempted to transit the Strait of Hormuz, though many observers believe the ships are more likely to have been hit by drones than to have struck mines. There may not be any Iranian mines remaining.
Then the prominent conservative commentator Tucker Carlson warned that outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been urging Trump to drop nuclear bombs on Iran. One doesn’t know what to make of this allegation, which Netanyahu’s office has denied. On the one hand, Carlson is well connected in Washington among people close to Trump, since he used to be in that camp himself. On the other hand, pundits make their living on the internet by seeking clicks and eyeballs, which sometimes drives them to sensationalism.
But this kind of report is as serious as a heart attack. And, let’s face it. Is there really any doubt that Netanyahu is capable of trying to get the US to nuke Iran? No, no there is not. And is there really any doubt that Trump is stupid enough to fall for this attempt to manipulate him? No, no there is not. So what Carlson is saying has to be taken seriously. Very seriously.
Iran has made it clear that it would retaliate for any such action, and the retaliation could have severe effects on the world economy. Tehran has shown that it can and will lash out at Arab Gulf neighbors that collectively used to export some 20% of the world’s petroleum through the Strait, and 20% of the world’s liquefied natural gas.
And this time, much of the world’s reserves have already fallen dramatically, so that China and Europe and the US won’t be able to continue to cushion the blow.
Trump is extremely erratic. He has already done irreparable damage to American scientific and technological research and has deeply undermined the Constitution by usurping the power of the purse that it awards to Congress. Parliament’s control of government spending is a centuries-old norm we inherited from the British.
Photo by KAMRAN gholami on Unsplash
Trump has instead been acting as a dictator, and the 119th Congress let him do it. They let him cripple the National Institutes of Health. They co-created a measles health crisis in which children have died. They sentenced millions to death by acquiescing in Elon Musk’s destruction of USAID.
But worst of all, they stood idly by while he took us to war against Iran, and the GOP majority in the Senate opposed a Democratic attempt to stop funding for the war in September.
This crisis is not like the Vietnam War or Iraq or Afghanistan, where the US could withdraw after failing to achieve its objectives, with no further harm to the continental US. If the Persian Gulf goes up in flames, it could lead to an economic downturn as bad as or worse than the Great Depression.
Whether by pressuring Republican members of Congress or by voting them out, the US electorate needs to bring this conflict to a negotiated end before it literally blows up in their faces.
Juan Cole’s Informed Comment delivers independent, expert analysis of war, the Middle East, climate change, and U.S. foreign policy. Help sustain this work
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