Trump Says He Will Not Attack Iran Before the Midterm Elections

President Donald Trump said Thursday that the United States would not attack Iran before the November 3 midterm elections, openly linking the timing of any further military action in the nearly eight-month war to the American political calendar.

“We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that Washington was having productive discussions with Tehran. According to CNBC, the post also said that Iran would not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon and that the naval blockade of Iranian ports would remain in force.

The post followed reports from NBC News that military planners had been preparing options for resuming major combat and that the president had not ruled out acting before the vote; CNN reported that the options included strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites. Only the night before, at a campaign rally, Trump had said a deal with Iran was not really something he wanted, CNBC reported. The post did not say what the United States would do after Election Day.

The diplomatic track remains uncertain. Trump rejected an Iranian proposal last month to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States has since sent a counterproposal; an Iranian news agency quoted Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as saying Tehran would respond within days, according to CNN. On the same day as Trump’s post, the Treasury Department announced sanctions on 17 vessels it said were part of a shadow fleet moving Iranian oil to Asia, CNN reported.

Markets were not reassured. Brent crude rose about 4 percent to settle near $104 a barrel, with traders also watching reported attacks by Iranian proxies in Saudi Arabia and a hurricane threatening Gulf of Mexico production, NBC News reported. Traffic through the strait, which carried roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas before the war, has fallen to a small fraction of prewar levels. The national average for gasoline was about $4.36 a gallon, and diesel about $6.28, both sharply higher than when the United States and Israel struck Iran in late February.

The war has grown less popular at home. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in August found 31 percent of Americans supported military action against Iran, down from 37 percent in March, CNBC reported, and a late-September survey by the same pollsters found, according to the Guardian, that more than four in five expected a long conflict. Several Republican candidates in close races have sought distance from the president over the war and fuel costs.

The administration’s argument is that steady economic pressure, backed by the threat of force, is the surest way to keep Iran from a bomb and to force a settlement on shipping. Critics counter that announcing a pause keyed to an election invites Tehran to wait out the vote, and that the public deserves to know what follows November 3.