Trump Says Midterms Won’t Impact His Iran War Plan

President Donald Trump dismissed the idea that the upcoming midterm election could influence how he goes about fighting Iran, following over a week of escalating strikes and three U.S. soldiers being killed over the weekend.

The president, taking questions in the Oval Office on Tuesday alongside Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, posited that Iran is “probably” trying to impact the results of the elections, before saying that “they won’t have any impact on me.”

“No, the election — I can’t think about that having to do with this,” Trump continued. “I think people are very impressed.”

Republicans have repeatedly expressed consternation over the electoral implications a return to all-out war could bring, with oil prices on the rise once more. Shipping traffic has again ground to a virtual halt in the Strait of Hormuz — a vital channel for the world’s oil — which has been one of the core points of contention between Washington and Tehran.

Two American soldiers were killed over the weekend during Iranian strikes on U.S. bases in Jordan, and another was killed in Iraq during a “controlled detonation” of an Iranian drone, adding to the pressure to end the conflict before the November elections.

Trump on Tuesday appeared to cast blame for the soldiers’ deaths on what happens “when you let other people do your job.”

“We have the best equipment in the world, we’ve stopped almost everything,” the president said. “But when you let other people do your job — with the United States we let other people do the job — and sometimes it doesn’t work out so well, but, we will be going and paying our respects at Dover.”

The president sought to project strength in his remarks, referring multiple times to the damage American strikes have inflicted on Iran and sparring with a reporter who asserted that there are no signs that Iran is ready to cease fighting.

“You don't know what the dialogue is behind the scenes,” Trump retorted. “They want to meet desperately to try to end it because they are getting decimated.”

Trump also announced that the U.S. would be striking Iran’s Pickaxe Mountains “pretty soon and very heavily” after reports that Israeli intelligence had spotted Iran moving nuclear centrifuges into the mountains.

The president’s remarks preceded a meeting with Aoun, the Lebanese president, in which he is expected to ask for the U.S. to support its armed forces as it tries to rip power back from Hezbollah in parts of the county and for help getting Israel to withdraw from Lebanon.

Trump celebrated the temporary framework the two countries signed in June, though he said that “we’ll be looking at that” in response to a question about whether he was prepared to ramp up pressure on Israel to withdraw, following reports of IDF soldiers firing warning shots in the so-called pilot zones created by the agreement.

The president also said he wasn’t concerned that Iran-backed Houthis announcing Monday that they would blockade Saudi shipping in the Red Sea would open up a new front in the war.

“If something like that happens we take care of it,” Trump said. “We've done that with the Houthis before.”