The war between the US and Iran is not going particularly well for either side. President Trump was unable to conduct the negotiations he had hoped for and reach a final agreement on the Strait of Hormuz. And Iran’s military infrastructure – and much of its economic infrastructure – has been reduced to rubble.
A timetable that is familiar to both sides looms over the conflict: the midterm elections.
For Trump, this means that the Middle East conflict must reach a point that is pleasing to voters before November. For Iran it means That makes life difficult for the Oval Office and waiting for the president in the hope that he will lose some of his political clout.
This is the current state of affairs According to Wilbur Ross, Trump’s former Commerce Secretary in his first term. I only speak with AssetsRoss said the president must weigh the risks: either face the wrath of voters if oil prices remain high because of the Iran conflict, or withdraw from the region and risk it being used against him.
Of course, there will be other forces shaping voters’ perceptions in the run-up to the midterm elections – Ross highlights immigration issues as the most important – but there is no denying that affordability has become a political lightning rod and was the issue on which Trump made key promises during his campaign.
Ross emphasized that, by and large, the Iran conflict has been relatively short-lived so far. However, it has dragged on in the eyes of Wall Street and voters, given Trump’s rhetoric from the start that it would be over within a few weeks.
“We’re coming up on the midterm elections, and so there’s an unusual political factor that both sides are certainly aware of. The Iranians seem to be betting that they can outlive the president, and that’s been a hallmark theory of their previous discussions,” Ross explained. “The war itself is over in some technical sense. Iran has no air force, it has no real navy, it has no air defense, so in that sense it is over. The question is: Can we win the peace? And that’s what Hormuz is about.”
Consumers are already paying for the renewed escalation in the Middle East as Iran borders the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for oil exports from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. With ships reluctant to travel through the strait – despite Trump’s insistence that the strait is controlled by the US – supply is stalling while demand remains at the same level, driving up prices. And in the last 24 hours, the Houthis – a Yemen-based terrorist group acting on behalf of Iran – have begun attacking ships in the Bab al-Mandab Strait on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula.
The biggest political risk Trump faces heading into the midterms is oil, Ross adds: “If the price of oil at the pump goes back up to $5 a gallon, that will make the midterms very, very difficult. And if he loses both houses in the midterms, he will be impeached.”
Should there be a split – perhaps with Democrats controlling the House and Republicans controlling the Senate – then Trump would face a shift in power, meaning his prerogatives to make or wage war could be limited, Ross said.
On the other hand, Ross adds: “If he withdrew without the issue being resolved, and [Iran] Impose a few big fines or what have you on Hormuz, then the Democrats have a very nice storyline: “What was the war about?” Look what we got in return: we have high oil prices and we have no peace.’ People say, ‘Oh, he needs to retire before the midterms,’ I’m not so sure that’s true.”
Even if Trump was motivated to withdraw from the conflict in the midterm elections, that does not automatically mean that prices will fall. “I can’t imagine that he would pull out the Iranians and suddenly say, ‘Well, we’ve decided to play well, then there won’t be any restrictions on Hormuz,'” Ross explained. “That won’t happen. The intermediate exams are a factor, [but] I think it probably affects the Iranians more than the Americans.”
The Big Oil Option
President Trump has also started He’s putting his former allies in the world of big oil to the test. In a true society post Last month, the president wrote that even though oil prices are “dropping like a stone, major oil companies are not lowering their price at the pump in line with the significantly lower prices they pay for oil.”
Consumers are being “hollowed out” The President added and therefore said: “I have directed the DOJ to begin investigating immediately. Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than I see!”
Ross said Big Oil could expect the president to keep up the pressure to lower prices, emphasizing that once military action occurred, prices at the pumps also jumped, adding, “It’s not really justified for the pump price to go up on the same day because the oil didn’t find its way.”
“I would expect that [Trump] would put increasing pressure on them to do two things,” Ross explained. “First, not to increase the margins of the gas stations themselves, and second, to produce more.” For them, the increase in their production was relatively limited.”
Data from the US Energy Information Administration Figures released earlier this month show the U.S. will produce an average of 13.8 million barrels per day in 2026, up only slightly from 13.6 million barrels per day a year ago.