After Midterm Failure, Trump’s Foreign Strategy May Be Even More Dangerous

The loss of his Republican Party majority to the Democratic Party in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives in the 2026 U.S. midterm elections has left President Donald Trump looking like a lame duck to many in the last two years of his tenure -- a particularly unfortunate turn of events, given his first name. However, while the Democrats taking control of both chambers of Congress has meant that Trump’s ability to dictate domestic policy through legislation has effectively ended, there is nothing cartoonish about this continued ability to dictate U.S. moves abroad. Trump retains the legal authority to escalate or de-escalate military pressure unilaterally, notably regarding the war with Iran. He retains the right to dictate the terms of U.S. alliances and treaties, including those related to the Russia-Ukraine War. And he also needs no congressional approval to implement or increase economic tariffs. So, what is he going to do next?President Trump acknowledged that it was “largely true” that the U.S.’s ongoing war with Iran had caused the Republican loss of both houses of Congress. Crucially, though, he had added that he had no regrets and would “do it again” because preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon was a long-term necessity that justified electoral losses. This tallies with comments made in the run-up to the midterms by Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who told journalists that her father-in-law realised that the Iran war could cost him the elections but insisted that losing both chambers of Congress would be worth the cost. “I think he just understands that when Iran gets a nuclear weapon, it doesn’t matter who is in charge of the House, it doesn’t matter the majority in the Senate.” Moreover, this aligned perfectly with the four original objectives of the U.S./Israel-Iran war stated by Trump ahead of the 28 February launch of ‘Operation Epic Fury’, which were agreed to and formally endorsed by every single member of his cabinet at the time, bar none. The first of these objectives was precisely to make it impossible for Iran to build a nuclear arsenal. The second was to degrade and destroy its missile stockpiles and production capabilities, the third was to effect regime change, and the fourth was to finally end the financing and arming of Iran’s proxies. All these aims were endorsed by every member of his cabinet. There is absolutely no reason to expect Trump’s deeply-held view of the importance of his ‘mission’ in this regard to disappear now -- far from it, in fact. For a start, in the president’s view, Iran is now also to blame for his electoral loss, and he does not like losing, or losers. Notably in this regard he has made it crystal clear before that he never wanted to end up like former U.S. President Jimmy Carter who Trump had witnessed being humiliated by Iran during the long-running saga of negotiating for the release of the American hostages seized in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. He believed it had been Carter’s weakness that had emboldened the Iranians and made the U.S. look weak. He also believed that this was the key reason why Carter lost his re-election bid, and that Carter’s legacy would always be defined by that failure in dealing with Iran. Although Trump’s Republicans lost the 2026 midterm elections under his presidency, there is no way he would want them to lose the 2028 presidential elections. Part of this is because he foresees a time when future Trump offspring might take up where he left off in politics, and part of it is because he wants a sympathetic government in place to ensure that any censure or impeachment moves made against him by the Democrats in the coming two years come to nought.Weighing up his achievements as president so far, Trump could count many victories, although not a view shared by his opponents, of course. Looking back to the pre-second-term campaigning documentation (‘Agenda47’ and, less officially, the ‘Project 2025’ document produced by the Heritage Foundation, plus the 2025 ‘U.S. National Security Strategy’), he did much to reverse the ‘Woke’ ideology in the country, to regain control of immigration, to boost energy recovery in oil and gas projects, and to reassert U.S. pre-dominance over China and Russia in many respects. The removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, heavily supported by the U.S. and U.K., and the subsequent lightning-fast replacement of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on 3 January 2026 with a Washington-friendly regime, marked critical turning points in the world order in favour of Western influence and away from that of Beijing and Moscow. He also finally managed to force the non-U.S. members of NATO to pay their fair share of the financing of the collective security organisation and secured a vital stronghold in the High North through a long-term and wide-ranging deal involving Greenland. Trump’s efforts regarding the Russia-Ukraine War have looked more questionable to many across the political divide, but he could argue that his apparently cosy dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin were part of a broader negotiation strategy.All of which leaves Iran. Trump apparently believed that the Islamic Republic’s leadership would collapse almost as quickly as did that of Venezuela, according to a very senior Washington-based source in the U.S. Treasury exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com back in March. In fact, Trump hinted at this himself when he said on 5 August: “In Venezuela, it was a 48-minute war, and we paid for the war with what we’ve taken out... to the victor belongs the spoils, and we are doing the same thing in the lovely Islamic Republic of Iran. We are knocking the hell out of them.” The U.S.’s success in speeding along the removal of al-Assad from Syria (although still subject to very low-key messaging from the White House) further fed into this cocksure attitude from Trump over the U.S.’s ability to do the same thing in Iran. So certain was he that he overrode some military advisers who told him that the first thing Iran would do if attacked by the U.S. in such a manner would be to close the vital oil and gas transit route, the Strait of Hormuz, to cause chaos in the global energy markets. Indeed, Iran had made it very clear that it viewed closing the Strait of Hormuz to international oil and liquefied natural gas flows as a reasonable response to anything it saw as a threat to its political or economic well-being. Specifically, in 1983 during the peak of the Iran-Iraq War, after France supplied Iraq with advanced Super Étendard fighter jets and Exocet anti-ship missiles -- giving Iraq the capability to heavily target Iran's primary oil export infrastructure at Kharg Island -- Iran’s government declared that if Iraqi attacks crippled its ability to sell oil, it would retaliate by cutting off the global energy supply. Then-President Ali Khamenei backed up the government’s warning, saying that if Iran’s oil exports were cut to zero: “The Persian Gulf will be closed altogether, and no one will be allowed to export oil from this region.” The rest, of course, is history.As it stands, there are three basic options -- and any combination thereof -- open to Trump on where to go now in this war. One is to maintain economic sanctions on Iran and hope that the resultant austerity brings Tehran back to the negotiating table, although this alone has never worked in the past. Another is to put American boots on the ground as part of a full invasion, but this looks fraught with dire consequences. The final option is the type chosen by Democratic presidents Barack Obama in Libya and Bill Clinton in Serbia. In the former’s case, Obama began a broader NATO bombing of key integrated air defence systems, C3 (command, control, and communications) infrastructure, logistics and supply chains, and dual-use civil infrastructure over 212 days. In the case of the latter, the same sort of operation was launched, lasting around 78 days. Trump could do all that, leave a carrier fleet in place somewhere near the Persian Gulf after opening the Strait of Hormuz, and then go home.By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.comMore Top Reads From Oilprice.comONGC Moves to Take Over Venezuelan Oilfields, Recover $500 MillionIEA Backs Electrification Efforts at COP31 Climate SummitOil Sinks to $94 as Iran’s $8 Billion Hormuz Deal Heads to Trump