In the run-up to the midterm elections, Iranian state media is gleefully chronicling high prices at American gas pumps — and their impact on President Trump’s political standing.
Outlets like Tehran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency cite polls reflecting voter anger at Mr. Trump over his conflict with Iran.
Iranian officials are piling on. In an open letter to Americans last month, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps wrote that Mr. Trump “keeps on telling Americans that the economy is booming and the prices will soon start coming down,” adding: “This is, perhaps, his biggest lie.”
A few days earlier, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, mocked a spike in U.S. Treasury bond rates. “We’ll return you to 1970s rates, plus high gas prices, diesel shortages and bell-bottoms. Enjoy the nostalgia!” he wrote.
Iran’s leaders clearly relish the political damage Mr. Trump has suffered from the conflict he launched in late February, even as their own economy suffers extreme stress from U.S. sanctions and an American naval blockade.
There are signs that political and economic pressure has pulled Mr. Trump back from the brink of military escalation, and the election result could determine what steps the United States takes next.
“They’re desperate to try and affect the election, so that we can get a nice weak group of people in there, and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon,” Mr. Trump told reporters last month.
It is not the first time Iran has been suspected of maximizing political pain against an American president. After Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took dozens of Americans hostage in November 1979, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Iran was drawing out the crisis “to bring about President Carter’s defeat” in the 1980 election, as a declassified C.I.A. analysis put it that year.
Mr. Carter lost to Ronald Reagan that November, an outcome he publicly attributed, in part, to the hostage ordeal.
For years, Iranian leaders have threatened to kill Mr. Trump, and in March a federal jury convicted a Pakistani national working as an Iranian intelligence agent of entering the United States in 2024 to arrange Mr. Trump’s assassination. Humiliating Mr. Trump in the elections is a way for Iran to get “satisfaction without doing something more drastic,” said Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
Iran’s ability to menace the Strait of Hormuz and attack the energy infrastructure of its neighbors has given Iran valuable insights into how it can exert pressure over the United States and the global economy.
That has also probably bought Iran at least some relief from further attacks in recent months by a president wary of military escalation that could drive oil prices even higher and anger voters who already mostly oppose the Iran conflict.
But any satisfaction in Tehran could evaporate quickly. Iranian leaders have grown more concerned lately about what might come after the U.S. elections, analysts said. With two years left in his last constitutionally allowed term as president, Mr. Trump may feel freer after Nov. 3 to take drastic action that could include a major new round of attacks on Iran.
“Once the elections are done, he may be free to do whatever he wants,” said Mr. Nasr, the author of the recent book “Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History.”
Iran hawks close to the Trump administration are hopeful that Mr. Trump will carry out new attacks, including on Iran’s already-battered nuclear facilities. The military has developed plans for heavy strikes and has concentrated more forces in the region, and will soon have three aircraft carrier groups positioned there.
“While Trump is unpredictable, there are certainly signs that he might hit Iran hard” after the midterm vote, said Michael Makovsky, the president and chief executive of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a hawkish think tank in Washington.
Mr. Trump may hold out “slim” hope for striking a deal before Election Day, Mr. Makovsky added. “But he doesn’t seem to think it’s likely.”
Mr. Trump has both accepted and rejected the idea that electoral politics influence his war plans. Speaking at the United Nations on Sept. 22, he claimed that Iran was the party focused on the U.S. vote, and that it was stalling peace talks.
“I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election.”
“I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election when it comes to Iran; it doesn’t even enter my mind,” he added.
Less than three weeks later, however, Mr. Trump declared on social media that he would not attack Iran “at any time prior to” the November vote.
But Mr. Trump is unpredictable, to say the least, and some analysts believe the opposite might happen. “After the midterms, Trump may no longer feel burdened to pretend to be interested in the Iran war,” Cole Bucy and Nate Swanson, two Iran specialists who have worked on the White House National Security Council, wrote in a Sept. 30 essay in Foreign Policy.
Freed from electoral politics, Mr. Trump “may decide that he can weather the criticism and declare victory, without having to worry about a new forever war to tarnish his legacy,” they wrote.
Mr. Bucy and Mr. Swanson did not rule out the prospect of a major escalation, including a U.S. ground invasion of at least parts of Iran, something they called unlikely.
The ultimate problem for Mr. Trump, Mr. Swanson concluded in an interview, is that “these are all bad options.”
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