Iran is the biggest winner of Tuesday’s election

Iran is the biggest winner of Tuesday’s election — or at least, that is what Tehran will likely conclude.

Recall that last month, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesperson Gen. Hossein Mohebbi, in a 25-page letter to the “Honorable People of the United States of America,” encouraged “Americans to vote against President Trump ahead of the midterm elections to change U.S. policy toward Tehran and accept the offer of a “peaceful coexistence.”

They did. Iran got the regime change they wanted. What happened? As the saying goes, “American’s love a winner.” For whatever reason, Trump took on Iran but failed to deliver a decisive blow, opting instead to play for the tie and make “a deal,” as he likes to say.

Trump told the American public that the war with Iran — Operation Epic Fury — would “last four to five weeks but could “go far longer than that.”

And it has — 250 days. Nearly 36 weeks.

Epic Fury lasted just 38 days — a little over five weeks.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many of the regime’s senior leaders were killed in the opening airstrike. The assumption was that the regime would collapse and the Iranian people would eventually rise up and “take over [their] government.”

But it did not collapse. The regime remained in power, thanks in part to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij paramilitary. Regime survival was their mantra. When Trump demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” they dug in deeper. Forty-seven years of autocratic theocracy and indoctrination provided the foundation for their resistance.

Trump told us his objectives had been achieved: “obliterate Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and production capability, annihilate its navy, sever its support for terrorist proxies and ensure the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism never acquires a nuclear weapon.”

Conventionally, Tehran was defeated. The U.S. destroyed Iran’s Navy and Air Force, along with its nuclear threat capability. Iran’s anti-aircraft systems and missile-building capabilities were largely knocked out as well.

As important as that is, the regime has remained in power and continued to exert influence over what it could control: the price of oil.

Initially, Iran was able to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and attacked oil refineries in neighboring Gulf nation states. Then they leveraged their proxies — Houthi rebels in Yemen and Shia militias in Iraq — to attack Saudi Arabia’s oil refineries and their East-West pipeline. Houthi rebels would later threaten shipping at other key choke-points — the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Gulf of Aden.

Asymmetrically they were still in the fight. And as the White House would have to learn, air power alone was not going to defeat the regime — something more than a century of military aviation should have already made clear.

Trump’s forever cease-fire was initiated on April 7. It has now reached 212 days — 30 weeks. It provided Iran the breathing room it needed to maneuver and played to its strength, which is negotiations.

With the assistance of mediators from Pakistan and Qatar, Tehran simply outplayed the Trump negotiation team of Vice President J.D. Vance, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. The Iranians dragged the non-shooting war out to election day, driving up the cost of oil and diesel and shifting the burden onto American voters where they could least afford it — their pocket books.

By the time the White House had shifted its primary effort from the military instrument of national power to the economic instrument, they were running short on time.

As successful as Operation Economic Outcast was, it was implemented too late to bring the war to a close prior to the election, even if we did help Gulf partners get 1.5 billion barrels of crude oil while preventing Iran with a blockade from exporting its own oil.

Iran raised the cost of doing business for the Trump administration — specifically, the cost of insurance and military escorts. For the White House and Iran, the finish line was Nov. 3. Iran outlasted Washington. But the regime, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described as, “run by lunatics — religious fanatic lunatics” with “an ambition to have nuclear weapons” is still in power.

So what’s the plan now? Walking away from Iran and allowing the regime to remain in power cannot be the end state. It simply trades out a forever cease-fire for forever instability in the region.

The solution begins with addressing Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz. Two critical elements must be achieved: Secure the strait and remove the regime from power.

The U.S. has control of the strait but has not secured it. The U.S. has weakened the regime, but has not removed it from power. Iran will likely use the outcome of Tuesday’s elections to harden its negotiating position and save its nuclear weapons program in the process.

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. They are the cofounders of INTREP360 and the INTREP360 Intelligence Report on Substack.