After the Republicans’ defeat in the midterms, US President Donald Trump says he will soon decide whether the war against Iran will be resumed. After a meeting with his security advisers, Trump told journalists at the White House that the US controlled, with regard to Iran, “everything we wanted to control. And now we will make a decision”, as zdfheute.de reported on Friday, 6 November. The aim of the war, begun in February together with Israel, was to prevent Iran from building an atomic bomb.
“Do we want to go further” with the strikes, so that “something like this never happens again?”, Trump said. “I would rather not destroy the rest of the country, if possible, but maybe I have to do it,” the president added. The Iranians would find out “soon enough”. n-tv.de quoted Trump on Thursday with the same remarks; the broadcaster interpreted them as an announcement of a forthcoming decision on Iran.
Centcom apparently preparing new combat operations
According to zdfheute.de, the US news outlet Axios quoted a US official as saying that the responsible US regional command Centcom is currently pushing ahead with preparations for a possible resumption of larger combat operations in Iran. However, it had not yet received new instructions from Washington. While Trump is considering the next step, mediators have recently been in Tehran for talks several times again. Trump himself had also recently spoken of possible negotiating successes.
After the Republicans’ defeat, the leadership in Tehran struck a combative tone. “Attacking Iran brings no victory,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ismail Baghai wrote in English on the platform X. Iran cannot be intimidated by threats. According to zdfheute.de, many Iranians do not expect major changes from the election result.
The war as an election issue – and a driver of prices
The midterm elections brought a heavy defeat for Trump and his party: according to the political scientist Stephan Bierling, the Democrats have taken the majority in both chambers of the US Congress from the Republicans. Bierling told t-online.de that Trump had “started the Iran war without sufficient planning and preparation” and had tried unsuccessfully to end it. The war and the associated rise in energy prices had “of course hit the lower income base in the US much harder than the upper income base”. According to Bierling’s assessment, little will change for Trump as a result of the new majority in Congress: he had already governed past the chambers until now and would continue to do so with decrees and directives.
The costs of the conflict are also being felt in Germany. Since the start of the Iran war at the end of February, petrol and diesel have become massively more expensive, according to the Berliner Zeitung. A litre of Super E10 cost an average of 2.114 euros nationwide in October, even though energy tax was lowered at the start of the month. Diesel, at 2.289 euros per litre, was more than 20 cents above Super E10. Whether it will become cheaper depends in the coming days less on Berlin than on Washington, the newspaper wrote on Tuesday.
Trump had recently made contradictory statements. Asked by reporters whether he was considering an attack on Iran after the midterm elections, he answered “No” in Washington on Monday, as the Handelsblatt reported. He also believed that Iran wanted an agreement and that such an agreement “could come about”. The Berliner Zeitung had previously reported that US representatives and allies had been saying for a week that Trump would be presented with options for new attacks after the midterms; Trump himself had declared that he would not attack before 3 November.
According to the Handelsblatt’s assessment, it is open what price in the form of concessions to Iran Trump would be prepared to pay for an end to the conflict. In the same report, the newspaper said that the Iran-backed Houthi militia had again claimed an attack on the airport of the Saudi capital Riyadh. Military spokesman Yahya Sari declared that a missile had hit the airport directly; there was initially no confirmation from Saudi Arabia.
Separately from Iran, according to n-tv.de, Trump reported a “very big” deal with Russia that could affect not only Ukraine but possibly “all of Europe”. He had previously met Kremlin adviser Kirill Dmitriev at the White House without prior announcement. On the content, Trump said: “I can’t tell you what I talked about.” According to the broadcaster, First Lady Melania Trump had previously received representatives of Moscow and Kyiv at the White House and had spoken out in favour of a lasting ceasefire in Ukraine.
Editor’s note: Whether and when Trump will actually decide to resume the attacks cannot be inferred from the information available. Centcom’s preparations have so far been documented only by a US official quoted by Axios.
