The sweeping defeat of many Republican candidates in the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday, including in states and seats that had been GOP strongholds for decades, could accelerate U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to renew strikes against Iran before Democrats take control of Congress in January, Israeli security and foreign-policy experts told JNS.
As election results came out, Trump stated that “I wasn’t on the ballot and if I was, we would have won in a landslide.” He also said that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who lost a governor’s mansion typically considered very safe for Republicans, had been a “RINO,” or Republican in name only, “in the last six months of his political life.” Trump’s endorsed candidate for Senate, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, is thought to have underperformed to such an extent—losing by 12 points—that it cost Abbott the race.
On Wednesday, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said that a pollster, who is “one of the smartest people I know in politics,” told him that voters who abandoned the Republicans would return if the GOP focused on four main things: “end the war, focus on cost of living/inflation, put America first and change our relationship to Israel.”
Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday night that “Iran was a piece of it,” but that he doesn’t regret going to war against the Islamic Republic. “I did the right thing,” he told the paper. “I would have done it again.”
Brig. Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi, founder and chairman of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, told JNS that the midterm election results “might accelerate Trump’s decision to act against Iran now and try to finish the job until January, before the new Congress will be in place.”
The results could have significant implications for Israeli national security, particularly given the congressional role in providing military assistance to the Jewish state throughout the war, according to Avivi.
“For Israel, the relationship with Congress and the Senate is very, very important, and they have taken very meaningful decisions during the war to assist Israel,” he told JNS. “We’ll have to see how this will look in this new reality.”
Avivi said that a decisive victory against Iran could also improve Republicans’ prospects in the 2028 presidential election, particularly if Trump succeeds in “bringing down the Iranian regime and dismantling the Shia axis.”
“It would be wise to continue until there is a clear victory, because if President Trump stops now and loses the war, that would be even worse,” Avivi told JNS. “I think he’s thinking about his heritage, and his heritage will be defined by whether he wins decisively against Iran or not.”
Martin Sherman, founder and CEO of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies and a senior researcher at the Israel Defense and Security Forum, put the probability of renewed U.S. strikes against Iran at “greater than 50%.”
“There’s a good chance that he would do that,” Sherman told JNS. “Or one would hope he would.”
Sherman said that rising fuel and energy prices amid the war against Iran helped drive U.S. voters toward Democrats, despite what he said is the greater threat of a nuclear Iran.
“The Democrats seem to have been able to convey a message that the price of fuel is outrageous, and that’s everything,” he told JNS. “When you compare the consequences of a $1 rise in fuel prices compared to a nuclear Iran, I think the answer should be easy.”
Eytan Gilboa, a professor at Bar-Ilan and Reichman Universities and expert on U.S.-Israel relations, agreed that Trump could face greater congressional resistance to military action against Iran once Democrats assume control.
“Until Jan. 3, he does not have a confrontational Congress on his head, and he can do whatever he wants,” Gilboa told JNS.
Gilboa said that Trump still prefers a diplomatic resolution but that substantial differences remain between Washington and Tehran.
“What Iran is prepared to concede is very far from what Trump demands,” he told JNS.
Negotiations involving Pakistan and Qatar have focused on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and addressing Iran’s nuclear program, including a possible return of international nuclear inspectors, according to Gilboa.
“Trump has this window of opportunity,” he said.
The professor warned that congressional opposition could make further military operations more difficult after Democrats take control of both houses of Congress.
“Trump would like very much to close the Iran issue by the end of the year, either through diplomacy and an agreement or through force or a combination of the two,” Gilboa told JNS. “The time for critical decisions is short.”
Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told JNS that there is “a strong chance that we will definitely see something” happen with Iran in the weeks leading up to January.
U.S. and Israeli Intelligence indicated that Tehran was rebuilding its ballistic missile and drone capabilities, resuming uranium enrichment and continuing to support terrorist proxies, according to Diker. (Diker co-hosts a podcast for JNS.)
He agreed that the war contributed to Republican electoral losses, and told JNS that the Trump administration failed to convince voters of the threat that the Iranian regime poses.
“The American people vote their pocketbooks. They vote their gas bills,” he said.
The Trump administration didn’t adequately explain “why the Islamic Republic has posed and poses a direct threat to the United States,” he told JNS.
“It is clear that the Islamic Republic was very close to a nuclear device before the June 2025 airstrikes, and they kept rebuilding and reenergizing their asymmetric-warfare, terror-proxy strategy and execution all over the world, not only in the Middle East,” he said.
“The president understood that the Iranian regime poses a major threat, all the way back since 1979, when they kidnapped and held hostage 52 American diplomats for 444 days,” he said. “They killed several thousand Americans since then.”
“The problem is that when the American people see their gas bills at $4.35, 45% greater than a year ago in 2025, and when they see consumer prices rising because of supply-chain problems due to this ongoing war with the Iranian regime, they get impatient,” he said.
“America, as a culture, is an impatient culture,” he said. “They want to win now. They want to solve things now.”
Despite the looming Democratic takeover of Congress, Diker said that Trump would retain significant authority to pursue military action against Iran.
“He has two years left to do some real damage against the Iranian regime,” Diker said.
Jonathan Rynhold, director of Bar-Ilan’s Argov Center for the Study of the Jewish People and the State of Israel and deputy head of the university’s political studies department, told JNS that the real power of Congress is “the power of the purse, the power of funding and the threat of not funding things.”
Those powers give “them leverage in negotiations over the budget and things like that,” he said. “But those are really long-run issues, not immediate issues.”
The U.S. president has 90 days to carry out military actions against Iran under the War Powers Act before Congress is allowed to stop it, Rynhold told JNS.
“An issue with Iran would be whether all of this counts as a new military action, if something new happened, or whether it’s a continuation,” he said. “I think it would be new, particularly if it went to the Supreme Court, which is where the Republicans remain strong.”
“But the real issue is going forward when Trump’s no longer president,” Rynhold told JNS. “Bipartisanship has ended.”
Mark Regev, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, told JNS that the Democratic takeover of Congress could push Trump to devote more attention to foreign policy during his final two years in office. (Regev co-hosts a podcast for JNS.)
Regev said that former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also lost control of Congress during the final years of their presidencies.
“If they lose control of Congress, it’s very difficult for them to have a domestic agenda that leaves a legacy,” he told JNS. “Where do presidents in the last two years still have the ability to function and leave a legacy? It’s in foreign affairs.”
Clinton sought diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East and North Korea, while the younger Bush pursued his democratization agenda in the Middle East, according to Regev.
“I think, from the point of view of Israel, we’re going to have a president now that is going to be totally focused on foreign affairs until he finishes his term,” he told JNS. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because the president wants to finish Iran.”
JNS asked Regev if Trump might renew strikes against Iran before the new Congress takes office in January.
“It’s quite possible,” he said. “The ball is in the Iranian court.”
“Trump says very sincerely he prefers a diplomatic solution, but if the Iranians continue not giving him any serious movement on the diplomatic issue, I think the president could well decide he has to apply a bit of military pressure,” Regev said.
“It’s called coercive diplomacy,” he told JNS. “They don’t agree, so a bit of pressure, economic pressure, military pressure. Maybe they will agree.”
