War Awaits the Ballots: Why Iran Will Be Finished Off Immediately After the Election

On November 3, Americans will elect Congress. But what will be decided on that day is not the composition of Congress. This war has been raging for eight months, and not even the Congress in which the president held a majority was able to stop it. Allies in the region have already been told to prepare for a new military campaign after the election. Not “if”—“after.” We’ll break down why the strike is tied to the election date, what these elections are actually deciding—the math there is nothing like what the headlines suggest—and the mechanisms by which countries that haven’t entered the war and had no intention of fighting are being drawn into it. Separately, we’ll explain why our assessment of Turkey differs from general expectations—and how we propose to verify this forecast when the time comes.