With less than a week before the midterm elections in the United States, the spotlight is on the economy and cultural divides. US foreign policy remains mostly on the sidelines, but this year’s inconclusive Iran war and its effect on America’s economy have shaped the broader political environment in this electoral cycle.
The top concern discussed during the campaign has been inflation. With higher gas and food prices hitting ordinary Americans and taking a continued toll on President Donald Trump’s political standing, only about 3 in 10 Americans approved of his job performance in early October. Though he is not on the ballot, a sitting president’s approval numbers have historically had a strong influence on how candidates from his party fare in their Congressional and state races in midterm elections.
In the closing stages of this campaign, Trump’s support among voters remains at or near its lowest point since he first entered office in January 2017 — and it is the lowest of any sitting president before a midterm election since Harry Truman in 1946. The conditions for a change election remain in place, and the latest polling indicates an opportunity for Democrats to pick up a large number of seats in both houses of Congress — with control of the House and Senate within reach.
The Trump administration’s decision to build up US forces in the Middle East once again, combined with reports of possible plans to conduct more military strikes against Iran, has reminded voters that the war that Trump told the American public would end in four to six weeks remains unresolved with no clear end in sight. Israel’s national elections this week also focused attention on the future of US-Israel ties, an issue that divides Democratic Party elites but has factored into the general election campaign in only a handful of races.
Even if Democrats have a strong night in next week’s elections, the margins in both the US House and Senate are unlikely to fundamentally change the sharp red-versus-blue divisions within America’s political landscape — and a Democratic majority is unlikely to be large enough to override presidential vetoes or compel a change in the Trump administration’s handling of the Middle East in 2027.
The Limits and Openings on What the Next Congress Can Do on the Middle East
Speaking at a Middle East Institute event earlier this week, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) outlined a case for a more robust role for Congress in shaping US policy in the Middle East in the aftermath of the midterm elections. Murphy argued the next Congress should take a tougher stance on the unpopular war in Iran by exercising its authority to pass legislation to “end the war” and use its existing power of the purse to limit what Trump can do vis-à-vis the region. The prospect of a new Congress more engaged in foreign policy questions like the Iran war would be good for America’s democratic system — the heightened scrutiny that comes with congressional oversight could lead the country toward a better pathway to more effective and responsive governance.
But recent experience points to three challenges for the next Congress in trying to exercise its constitutionally defined power to shape the outcome of complicated events in the Middle East and influence US foreign policy more generally.
1. The expansion of executive branch authority over national security issues. The advance of executive authority into the national security domain is not new, but Trump 2.0 has put that power grab on steroids, taking actions previously considered impermissible and without much oversight from the current Republican Party-controlled Congress. The second Trump administration’s complete elimination of multiple federal institutions, including ones with an impact on US national security like the US Agency for International Development, as well as its use of force against alleged drug traffickers in the waters of the Western Hemisphere without much pushback from the current Congress are just two of many examples from the last 21 months. Successive presidents, Republican and Democratic alike, have expanded executive authority over national security while congressional oversight and the effectiveness of traditional checks and balances have receded. Case in point — the Obama administration’s military actions in Libya in 2011. This trend accelerated in the quarter century after 9/11, and it has become difficult for Congress to curtail or redirect the trajectory of any administration’s foreign policy.
Illustratively, even though the 2006 midterms were a political disaster for President George W. Bush due to the unpopular Iraq war, the 110th Congress, seated in 2007, nonetheless found it difficult to prevent much of anything the Bush administration did in Iraq, including the surge of US forces that year. Congressional Democrats proved unable to marshal enough power to change the president’s foreign policy direction despite the fact that the war had been the dominant issue in the run-up to the elections.
The 119th Congress, currently led by Republicans in both chambers, has mostly rubber-stamped Trump’s national security decisions. Many Republican candidates in the upcoming midterm elections have tried to distance themselves from the president and the Iran war, but nothing in the national debate has yet produced a clear alternative to Trump’s actions — the primary result instead has been a series of critiques rather than alternatives. The next Congress will likely try to do more on Iran and other Middle East issues than the current one, but it will be constrained by the extent to which the legislative branch has ceded power to the executive.
2. The overshadowing of foreign policy issues by domestic policy imperatives. A second challenge will be how to prioritize Iran relative to the other matters dominating the political debate in the US, like inflation (driven in large part by the war-related spike in energy prices) and health care but also immigration, election security, and anti-corruption oversight. Congress will have its hands full on multiple fronts — and a lot of the energy will likely be focused on issues closer to home.
3. The absence of a coherent policy consensus with political support. Democrats have not been laser focused on offering an alternative to the Iran war in the way that they were about the Iraq war in 2006. Moreover, as unpopular as the Iran war is with the American public, the regime in Iran is not popular in the eyes of Americans either. Proposals for simply “ending the war” with a piece of legislation ignore the harsh realities of today’s Middle East and amount to little more than an attempt to highlight what Trump has done wrong without offering a clear pathway forward that people can support. Democrats have been vocal about what they are against but have not clearly defined what they support on Iran policy.
Despite those challenges, there are two main opportunities that the next Congress, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, could seize to shape the agenda on the Iran war and other important Middle East questions. The first is that key internationalist factions in both parties could find a way to build coalitions in the center of the spectrum — bringing Democrats together with Republicans who have soured on the war to restrain the administration’s actions and hold it accountable using the legislature’s constitutionally enumerated powers, specifically those to tax and spend, regulate commerce, and declare war.
The second opportunity will be the ability to conduct oversight hearings that seek to hold the Trump administration accountable for a long list of blunders and to investigate the emerging accusations that the president and his associates have used their official government offices to enrich themselves. This second opportunity is likely only probable if Democrats take control of one or both of the houses of Congress — but growing discontent within the Republican Party, along with the end of President Trump’s second term on the horizon, could lead to more defections from Trump’s approach within the GOP than we have already witnessed.
In sum, these midterm elections have presented important criticisms about the current path of US policy, but the recent historical record indicates that those who have high hopes that their votes will result in a different course on Iran should temper their expectations. The new Congress should look for practical ways to shape the direction of US policy in the Middle East through greater oversight, the exercise of its constitutionally enumerated powers, and the development of alternative policies that go beyond criticisms.
Brian Katulis is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute.
Photo by Tim Evans / AFP via Getty Images
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