A Tale of Two Ballots: Why the Iran War Will Outlast Both

Spotlight

• The US midterms and Israel’s elections have left Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, respectively, weakened but not displaced, with Trump facing a Democratic Congress, Netanyahu having lost his parliamentary majority, and Gadi Eisenkot holding the mandate to form a government in Israel.
• War has become inextricable from both leaders’ standing: a means of survival for Netanyahu and a question of legacy for Trump, who can still turn to foreign policy with few congressional shackles.
• A change of leadership in Israel would shift tone and tactics but not the core aims. Israel’s war psyche will outlast Netanyahu and a renewed Iran war remains firmly on the cards.

The Israeli legislative elections of 27 October 2026 and the United States (US) midterms a week later, on 3 November, were each, in effect, a referendum on the leader at its centre, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump. Both were shaped to a considerable degree by the war with Iran. In Israel, support was high when the war against Iran began in March 2026 but eroded, so that by the time the US–Iran Memorandum of Understanding paused hostilities on 17 June, 56.4 percent of respondents in a Hebrew University of Jerusalem poll rated Netanyahu’s war performance as a “failure” or “poor” and 92.1 percent believed that Iran “has won” the war. American opinion of the conflict was sceptical from the outset, with 61 percent disapproving of Trump’s handling in March and 65 percent by October, according to the Pew Research Center.

The results leave both leaders weakened but not displaced. In the US, the Democrats won both chambers of Congress, flipping seven Republican Senate seats, including traditional strongholds such as Texas, South Carolina, and Kansas. Trump has acknowledged that the Iran war played a role, admitting that voters “didn’t like the war” or the high gas prices it triggered. Nevertheless, he called the economic performance “phenomenal” and blamed “bad messaging” by his administration for the losses. Three-quarters of midterm voters, however, rated the economy as “poor” or “not so good.”

For both leaders, war remains inextricable from their standing—as a means of survival for Netanyahu and a question of legacy for Trump.

In Israel, the 27 October vote ended in a stalemate, with neither Netanyahu’s (53 seats) nor Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition blocs (48) reaching the 61 needed, and the Arab-led parties taking a record 19 seats. The new Knesset was sworn in on 10 November, with President Isaac Herzog giving Eisenkot, whom 67 lawmakers recommended against 46 for Netanyahu, the first mandate to form a government, leaving Netanyahu in office only until a successor is sworn in.

For both leaders, war remains inextricable from their standing—as a means of survival for Netanyahu and a question of legacy for Trump. With each still able to act in the interim, the two ballots are less significant as verdicts on the past and more as signals of how Washington and Tel Aviv will conduct their foreign policies over the next two years.

The Psychology of War

By the end of 2025, Trump appeared to have his ambitious agenda firmly on track, presiding over a growing economy and a US still at relative peace. He had dismantled much of the federal bureaucracy that stymied his trade and immigration strategies in the first term by forcing out some 300,000 employees and shuttering entire agencies, while using the Justice Department to roll back long-standing civil rights policies. The first 100 days of his second term also raised hopes among those backing his tariffs for domestic manufacturing jobs, though public support fell sharply post Liberation Day in April 2025. How, then, did Trump squander his 2024 presidential victory that produced the second-highest popular vote in US history and a sweep of all seven swing states?

The answer lies in a combination of swagger, vanity and, above all, the pull of military campaigns that were never part of his promise to end “forever wars.” He ignored the warnings in public polls after the June 2025 strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, when CBS, CNN, and the Washington Post surveys found disapproval among the public driven by fear of a wider conflict, and was then emboldened by the extraordinary capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January 2026. By underestimating an opponent of a different order in Iran, he has met his comeuppance in a war from which America cannot easily extricate itself. Yet, this militarism is less a break from tradition than a predatory expression of it: under former US President Joe Biden, restraint on Israel’s disproportionate use of force in Gaza amounted to one paused bomb shipment and narrow settler sanctions amid record settler violence and no durable ceasefire in 15 months.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, has served as prime minister of Israel in three non-consecutive stints (1996–99, 2009–21, and 2022–present). In that time, he has changed the baseline of how Israelis think about their country’s security with two uncompromising positions: the rejection of any political settlement or compromise with the Palestinians, and the conviction that Iran is a threat that must be uprooted, as he told the Knesset in 1992 and the US Congress in 1996. Trump’s willingness to turn that rhetoric into kinetic action serves Netanyahu’s aims, but war has also become Israel’s “normal state of affairs,” as American political scientist Dalia Dassa Kaye notes. With a domestic climate that shifted rightwards since 7 October 2023, Israel has been embroiled in what Netanyahu describes as a war on seven fronts.

Trump: The Danger of Legacy Building

Following the midterms, Trump has entered the lame-duck phase of his presidency: term-limited, with no election of his own left to win and a Democratic Congress to contend with. Lame-duck presidents have a record of grand foreign policy ventures, whether diplomatic or military. Bill Clinton pressed for an Israeli–Palestinian peace agreement through and beyond the Camp David Summit of 2000, while George W. Bush answered the 2006 midterm rout with a troop surge in Iraq and then vetoed Democratic efforts to set a withdrawal timetable.

Trump is likely to try similar tactics, hoping to convert theatrical diplomacy—which has seen him claim to have solved global conflicts, threaten to capture Greenland, float the annexation of Canada, and establish the Board of Peace—into tangible results.

Trump is likely to try similar tactics, hoping to convert theatrical diplomacy—which has seen him claim to have solved global conflicts, threaten to capture Greenland, float the annexation of Canada, and establish the Board of Peace—into tangible results. Beyond the Russia–Ukraine war, the biggest swing available to him is Iran, where a breakthrough could rescue his legacy.

Having made clear his willingness to use the veto, Trump is aware of the hurdles ahead, even as diplomacy continues on two fronts: Russia–Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi and indirect exchanges with Iran through Qatari mediators. He told 60 Minutes he was “not looking to” escalate against Iran, although the US carried out limited “defensive” strikes on Qeshm Island in the days before the midterms. US Vice President J.D. Vance reportedly led a push for a deal, only to be told by Trump that it is unnecessary.

Trump remains defensive about his war policies, using a Veterans Day appearance to demand “total victory … not a 93 percent victory.” The first possible constraint on Trump is financial: government funding expires on 11 December 2026 before Democrats take control of Congress in January 2027, and Iran war restrictions could be attached to the funding bills and the National Defense Authorization Act. Other legislative routes, such as resolutions to end the war, have so far failed to constrain him and would face a presidential veto going forward.

Israel: Change in Prospect, but Not in Paradigm

In Israel, Eisenkot has up to six weeks to assemble a coalition that would end Netanyahu’s tenure, having already conceded that “no one will be able to fulfil all the [campaign] promises.” His “national emergency government” would rely on outside support from the Arab-led parties, which partner Avigdor Liberman rejects in favour of a majority with the ultra-Orthodox parties. However, to do so, Eisenkot would have to back out of the opposition’s campaign pledge to make military service mandatory and universal. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has launched last-ditch attempts to delegitimise the election result and block Knesset oversight of the Israel Defense Forces. That his bloc fell from 68 seats to 53 signals that his days in office may be numbered—a verdict on his attacks on the judiciary, his corruption trials, and his refusal to take responsibility for the 7 October attack. War sustained Netanyahu’s grip on power, until now.

On foreign policy, however, a leadership change would not mean a paradigm change. Eisenkot’s Yashar campaigned on pivoting away from policies that led to Israel’s isolation; he backs more restrained settlement expansion and vows to curb settler violence, which he calls “Jewish terrorism.” Yet, he has rejected Palestinian statehood as a “grave error,” pledged to destroy Hamas’s military wing within 18 months, and not ruled out striking Iran. His differences with Netanyahu lie in tone and tactics: he quit the war cabinet in June 2024 over “empty promises” of “total victory.” But his doctrine of active deterrence favours proactive over reactive action, and in 2008 he had articulated the Dahiya doctrine, promising the use of “disproportionate force” against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In Israel, a change of premiership may be on the horizon, but the war mentality will outlast Netanyahu, the man who has most embodied it.

A Persisting Logic

The two ballots leave the resumption of war with Iran firmly on the cards. In Israel, a change of premiership may be on the horizon, but the war mentality will outlast Netanyahu, the man who has most embodied it. In Washington, a lame-duck Trump bent on a legacy will find in foreign policy the traditional refuge of presidents hemmed in at home. His lip service regarding a possible deal with Iran may placate a public in which 71 percent support legislation ending the conflict, yet congressional oversight has few shackles to prevent further escalation. Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th US President, held that war should be advocated only “as a means of peace.” Trump may stretch that logic to win peace through war.

Clemens Chay is Senior Fellow, Geopolitics, ORF Middle East.