Trump says midterms won't affect his Iran war strategy

Full text

President Donald Trump dismissed the idea that the upcoming midterm election could influence how he goes about fighting Iran, following over a week of escalating strikes and three U.S. soldiers being killed over the weekend.

The president, taking questions in the Oval Office on Tuesday alongside Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, posited that Iran is “probably” trying to impact the results of the elections, before saying that “they won’t have any impact on me.”

“No, the election — I can’t think about that having to do with this,” Trump continued. “I think people are very impressed.”

Republicans have repeatedly expressed consternation over the electoral implications a return to all-out war could bring, with oil prices on the rise once more. Shipping traffic has again ground to a virtual halt in the Strait of Hormuz — a vital channel for the world’s oil — which has been one of the core points of contention between Washington and Tehran.

The price of gasoline stood at $4.02 Tuesday morning, according to AAA. That’s 16 cents higher than the average for last week, 88 cents higher than last year and $1.04 higher than the week before the war. Oil and gasoline prices have climbed after the U.S. and Iran resumed attacks following the disintegration of a cease-fire earlier this month .

Trump may not be influenced by the escalation, but Republican lawmakers entering what was already expected to be tough midterm elections may beg to differ, said Jason Roe, a Michigan-based Republican strategist.

“I think a lot of Republicans held their tongue over the so-called ceasefire because it started to bring down gas prices, and I think that’s probably the number one issue that, to a degree, is within our control that we need to get a handle on if we are going to hold our majorities,” Roe said.

“To a degree, Republicans are willing to accept a questionable ceasefire if it brings gas prices down, because continuing the back and forth that we’ve been witnessing the last few weeks into November — it is not going to reassure voters that Republicans have a handle on the situation, and it could … very well be the reason that we lose,” Roe said.

The White House continued to project calm, saying its current strategy will lower prices.

“As the U.S. military degrades the terrorist Iranian regime’s ability to attack commercial vessels and disrupt the free flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz, oil and gas prices will plummet back to pre-conflict levels,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers. “President Trump remains committed to unleashing American energy dominance, cutting costs, and putting more money back in the pockets of hardworking American families.”

Still, factors are piling up that oil market analysts said could increase the pain at the pump Americans experience going into the midterm elections. The global supply of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel has already tightened as Ukraine, seeking to drive Russia out of its territories, sends drones to damage or destroy Russian refineries.

Refineries in the U.S. have been running at full tilt to export fuel and replace what was lost from destroyed refineries in Russia and the Middle East. But there are worries that many U.S. refineries may have skipped necessary maintenance to stay online while demand and prices stayed high, said Bob McNally, head of energy consulting firm Rapidan Energy and former energy adviser to the George W. Bush administration. That, he said, increases the chances of an outage that could further spike prices.

The U.S. is also in its hurricane season, when storms can damage the fuel makers clustered around the Gulf Coast. Tropical Storm Bertha is already churning off the Gulf Coast, home to most of the country’s refineries.

“The consumer has to brace for higher prices,” McNally said. “At some point the data catches up to you, and I think the data eventually matters more than words.”

Trump sought to project strength in his remarks, referring multiple times to the damage American strikes have inflicted on Iran and sparring with a reporter who asserted that there are no signs Iran is ready to cease fighting.

“You don’t know what the dialogue is behind the scenes,” Trump retorted. “They want to meet desperately to try to end it because they are getting decimated.”

Trump also announced that the U.S. would be striking Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain “pretty soon and very heavily” after reports that Israeli intelligence had spotted Iran moving nuclear centrifuges into the mountain .

The president’s remarks preceded a meeting with Aoun, the Lebanese president, in which he is expected to ask for the U.S. to support its armed forces as it tries to rip power back from Hezbollah in parts of the country and for help getting Israel to withdraw from Lebanon.

Trump celebrated the temporary framework the two countries signed in June, though he said that “we’ll be looking at that” in response to a question about whether he was prepared to ramp up pressure on Israel to withdraw, following reports of IDF soldiers firing warning shots in the so-called pilot zones created by the agreement.

Two American soldiers were killed over the weekend during Iranian strikes on U.S. bases in Jordan, and another was killed in Iraq during a “controlled detonation” of an Iranian drone, adding to the pressure to end the conflict before the November elections.

Trump on Tuesday appeared to cast blame for the soldiers’ deaths on what happens “when you let other people do your job.”

“We have the best equipment in the world, we’ve stopped almost everything,” the president said. “But when you let other people do your job — with the United States we let other people do the job — and sometimes it doesn’t work out so well, but, we will be going and paying our respects at Dover.”