The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Trump’s Real Threat in the Iran War are the Fast-Approaching Midterms

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Even as the ink dries on the 60-day memorandum of understanding with Iran, attacks on American cargo ships persist. Whatever President Trump chooses as his next course of action, he must be mindful of the fast-approaching November midterms. One wrong move leads to lost Senate or House seats and two years of lawfare by the Democrats. President Trump may need to reply to Iran's attacks disproportionately or risk being a lame-duck president with only a phone and pen as power. 👉Alliance Defending Freedom - Visit JoinADF.com/HANSON or text HANSON to 83848 to give today. Every dollar you give will be DOUBLED thanks to a special matching grant, while funds last.HTTPS://WWW.JOINADF.COM/HANSON.COM   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take. For 250 years, America has been a bastion of freedom. As we look ahead to the next 250, we're reminded that freedom is ours to defend. Today, Alliance defending freedom stands in courtrooms across the country to protect those freedoms we cherish. life, free speech, religious freedom, parental rights. These freedoms are at the core of who we are as a nation and they must be preserved. ADF is approaching a critical fiscal year-end fundraising deadline.

Your support today helps ADF defend these freedoms so they may endure for many years to come. Every dollar you give will be doubled thanks to a special matching grant while funds last. visit join adf.com slash hanson or text hanson to 833-848 to give today that's join adf.com slash hanson or text hanson to 8348. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. There's been a lot of confusion about this memorandum of understanding. That's the 60-day hiatus in the quote-unquote war with Iran. leads us on into further negotiations.

A lot of people have rightly pointed out that they seemed a little bit too lenient given the military defeat of Iran. I mentioned in earlier segments that they weren't strategically defeated because we didn't really know how to stop absolutely their missile attacks or their ability to break, stop, ruin the state of Hormuz traffic. It's getting a lot of criticism. From the left, of course, we don't really want to calibrate it because anything Trump did, they would criticize. If he won the war in one day, they would say it was too long.

But from the Carlson Wright, as we said earlier, they said it was a forever war, even though there were only 40 days of actual bombing. And it would go on and on and on, and they were not in favor of it. And the subtext of that Carlson Wright criticism was that Benjamin Neton, Yahoo and the Israelis, due to undue Jewish influence the United States, brought us into a war that was neither in our interest nor could be one. I think it is in our interest, well aside from Israel, that Iran not have a bomb or not terrorize an area that the world depends on for oil. And more importantly, I don't think it's cooked up by a small number of Jews. But there's a new criticism from the supporters of the war who feel that the memorandum of understanding was too generous to Iran

and that they're going to take advantage of it. And even as I speak, they hit with a drone, a cargo ship in violation of the memorandum of understanding. So what is going on? In a nutshell, Donald Trump feels, and this is my reading of what he's said and what people in his administration have said or written about, that the Republicans must win the midterms or at least keep the Senate. If they do not, everybody and his brother are going to be called in in a circus of lawsuits, lawfare, investigations, you name it, both before Congress and all over the federal judiciary, and they will paralyze Donald Trump's final two. two years in office with nonstop impeachment hearings as well. I don't think they can convict him

in 60 votes and sent, but they will try to do anything. In addition, the world pressure will rise if the strait is closed, and we had continued kinetic action because the price of oil would ruin the economies of Europe and Asia, so we were told. And then in addition, the price of gas in the United States, it had gone down to almost $2 nationwide on average. It went up to four. It's down to about $3.20. And that was really the only known driver of inflation. So you put all that together. Donald Trump wanted a timeout of 60 days and then negotiations. But really, let's be honest, he wanted a four-month timeout until the midterms in which he could manage the war. Now, that would be possible if there's two things that he can communicate. Number one, every

time Iran violates the memorandum of understanding by trying to block the Strait of Ormuz or fire missiles into the Gulf States or Israel, we have to reply disproportionately. One missile, we have 10 missiles or 10 days of attack. If you don't do that, the natural propensity of Iran to get more and more aggressive will increase, and he'll lose all support. because people who supported the war will then say, we defeated them militarily, but we didn't enforce the peace, and therefore they're taking advantage of us. So it's very critical that in this lead-up to the midterms, he reacts to these provocations. And, of course, they're going to be provoking us because they want the price of gas to go up and Donald Trump to lose the midterms and the straight to be affected. So they have to be very, very careful.

They have to reply disproportionately, but not to the extent that it panics, markets, or it shuts down the straight. And then we get to the midterms. If the economy is recovering as it has been the last two years, and as the price of oil during this four-month hiatus goes down, there's a good chance the economy will not be the issue quite like it is, and some of the things that he has done will kick in, what do I mean, deregulation for an investment, more energy production, lower taxes, and he might have a good shot at the midterms. There's another final thing to remember.

Once the midterms are over, if he maintains the House and the Senate, and he feels that he has been responding disproportionately, and still the Iranians are at, At times every week, every two weeks firing missiles are trying to hit cargo ships, there's no restraints on him. He can start hitting all the dual-use targeting he wants. And here's the final thought, even if he loses the midterms. And he's relegated to two years of executive order presidency, like Obama warned us when he said,

well, I lost the Senate in the House, but I do have a phone and I do have a pin. and I can rule that way. Then Donald Trump is still onbound. He can still enforce the military victory and ensure it by hitting them very disproportionately and take out dual-use targets. Dual-use targets is a fancy Clinton-Serbian term or Obama-Libbean term

when you hit things that are vital to the military but also vital for civilians. And through all this process, of course, another subtext is he can always arm the opposition. Turkey doesn't want us to, but so what? We can arm the Kurds. We can arm them with enough weapons to spread into the cities of Iran. We have a lot of choices, whether he wins or loses the midterm. It would be preferable that he can contain this for the next four months, stop the Iranian transgressions by disproportionate one-off deterrent attacks, responses,

I should say, and then after the midterms for good or evil. He's a lot of. He's, He's got a whole array of alternatives that can ensure the peace, and more importantly, that Iran is not a nuclear power. Thank you. This is Victor Davis Hansen for The Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to The Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at Victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features

in addition.