Mark Meltzer

The huge result for Democrats might set the stage for a deal to end the Iran war, both in Washington and Tehran. The risk of major military escalation has diminished. Hegseth is totally discredited and will be forced to resign before the Democrats come in and impeach him. CENTCOM isn’t going to let him go scorched earth if he isn’t even going to be around in two months. Bessent sees the writing on the wall and will try to resuscitate his reputation by distancing himself from the war. The organizations feeding bad policy advice into Treasury, like FDD, have been exposed as being arsonists who don’t care about American voters or American interests. Rubio realizes he won’t be president any time soon and will devote all of his energy to Cuba, the issue he cares about most of all. Kushner and Witkoff are going to be subject to huge congressional scrutiny next year and will want to tie things up and step back from mediation. Vance is somewhat vindicated in his opposition to the war and will be able to take more control over the file. His only pathway to a viable run in 2028 is to fix the disaster Trump waltzed into. Trump will want to pretend the Iran war never happened and go back to building his ballroom. Even if he is angry and vengeful, as some had suggested he would be, there will be more resistance within the administration for further escalation. He is weak and erratic and easily manipulated—he was goaded into the war and now he’ll be chided out of it. For Iranian leaders, the election results give them their big and decisive victory. They can create a narrative that they won the war and destroyed Trump’s political project—the postmortems published in the next few days in U.S. papers and broadcast on TV will give them plenty of fodder. This narrative of a Trump defeat will actually make it easier to build consensus over a deal with the US, especially one that requires the types of concessions being pushed by mediators. Maybe, just maybe, the strong antiwar vote across the US gives us a generational opportunity to end the cycle of sanctions and violence that has driven the US and Iran to a senseless conflict. The American and Iranian people can be united in that hope.