Rubble lies around damaged houses following a reported attack near a wedding gathering in Kuhistik, Sirik, Iran on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON--Top aides to President DonaldTrump are pushing to keep the Iran war from escalating before November's midterm elections to staunch Republican electoral losses, four people familiar with the discussions said, a strategy already under strain as the U.S. and Iran exchanged back-and-forth attacks overnight.
White House officials will consider ramping up military action after the November 3 vote, said the sources, who requested anonymity to describe internal thinking, though any return to full-scale conflict is far from a given. The U.S. military said its latest strikes were retaliation for recent attacks on American forces and marine traffic in the region.
For now, the sources said, the administration wants to rely on applying more economic pressure on Iran in an effort to extract concessions in any future negotiation that months of military action failed to secure. "We are keeping the pressure on Iran," one White House official said. "But November is a priority."
Keeping the war mostly contained until then would help prevent the unpopular conflict from dominating the news as Trump's Republicans campaign to defend thin majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, said the sources, three of whom are White House officials.
Only 31% of Americans approve of the war, while some 63% disapprove, according to a late August Reuters/Ipsos poll, and voters are particularly unhappy about high gas prices. A tactical pause could also give the U.S. military some breathing room to replenish its heavily depleted munitions stockpiles, the sources said.
But pulling off the play-it-cool strategy looks more difficult by the day. While the conflict remains much less intense than it was during the spring or during a flare-up in the middle of the summer, both sides have exchanged tit-for-tat strikes in recent days.
Iran's leaders, emboldened after months of disrupting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and facing little internal unrest, will likely keep striking at U.S. and allied Gulf targets, including military bases, vessels and energy infrastructure, at least periodically, analysts said. The U.S. will face pressure to retaliate, potentially leading to an escalatory spiral that brings both sides back to a full-scale air war - whether the administration wants it or not.
Over the weekend, the U.S. struck rocket launchers on Iran's Larak Island, prompting Iran to fire missiles toward Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. hit more Iranian targets around the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday in the biggest outbreak of fighting since July, a fresh outburst of violence that killed military personnel and civilians in Iran.
"The regime has every incentive to disrupt the 'calm' - which is no real calm, after all, since the administration's explicit aim is to increase economic pressure massively on Iran," said Barbara Leaf, who served as the top State Department official for the Middle East under former President Joe Biden.
