The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Trump's pre-midterm warning to Tehran and Israel's high-stakes election

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Rudyard and Janice begin today’s show with news that the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier is being deployed to the Middle East and the signal this is sending to Iran and the region. With Tehran facing a blockade and struggling to earn hard currency, the U.S. calculation points to escalation after the midterms. What could a major Democratic victory in the midterms mean for Trump’s ability to pursue military action? And could another impeachment actually make Trump more aggressive and less constrained?In the second half of the show, Rudyard and Janice turn to Israel’s upcoming elections and the electoral prospects of the pro-Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu blocs. Both face the prospect of minority governments, leaving Arab parties as potential kingmakers. Could Israel end up with another hung parliament, with Bibi at its head and figures such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich continuing to play a role in government?For many centrist and liberal Israelis, this represents a nightmare scenario and proof that this election is existential: if the Netanyahu bloc prevails, Israel’s ability to remain a liberal democracy will cease to exist.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

But I think the reason for the military reinforcement that we're seeing, there is concern that Iran escalates before the terms for exactly the reason. October surprise. October surprise. And this is the October surprise that's coming. And that's why these forces have been deployed to vision. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 2nd of October, 26. I'm Roger Griffiths, Chair of the Monk Debates, joined by my co-host, Janice Rose Stein. Hey, Janice.

Big month coming up, we're out there to October, big election in Israel, and counting down to these midterms. You can feel the fever, can't you, in the United States? Yeah, I had some friends who've been down there the last week or so,

and they actually say that Americans are, at least in the big cities, not maybe talking about the election as much as visitors had thought. I wonder almost, Janice, if there's a bit of cognitive denial, cognitive dissonance, I don't know what you call it, but surely they're barreling towards something consequential November 4th.

Oh yeah, there's no question about it, and there is some very overheated rhetoric going on on both sides about what could follow on November the 5th. Not so much about November the 4th, but what could happen on November the 5th. So let's as a segue maybe to touching base later in the show on the midterms, what's really shaping a lot of Americans' voters' perceptions, which is Donald Trump's war with Iran. We didn't have time to catch up on the last few weeks of events. We're now through the United Nations General Assembly. We had one of these usual flurries of diplomatic activity that seems to have sputtered out.

And now just in the last 24 hours, we have news that the Roosevelt, the aircraft carrier, is being deployed to the Middle East, 2,000 Marines dispatched. What are the signals saying here, Janice, at this point? Look, the feeling in Iran for what that's worth is that there's no point in making any concessions to Donald Trump now. because he intends to go back to war right after the midterms. He's putting it off. He doesn't want around all the markets any more than he needs to, but he intends to go back to war. Who knows what Donald Trump intends to do?

But that is a strong signal. The U.S. Army is so stretched right now. Virtually everything has been stripped out of every other theater. The Indo-Pacific, Europe, to, concentrate this carrier now, the third one, in the Middle East, and then to send, to beef up the troops, is he's clearly sending a message, a man of patience, either we get a deal or we go back to war. Is that believable? I personally don't think so, but that's the message he's trying to send here. So he is indicating, and more than one point, that he might return to the war

after the midterms. I'm trying to make sense of that. Is it that he's trying to reassure voters in the short term that gas prices and food prices and fertilized prices aren't going up, but after the midterms, they will? Yeah, how does that work, but what's the logic? That's what I'm saying.

And I guess is it, I always try to resist applying logic to things that may be irrational, but is it some kind of message to the Iranians, that we won't be blackmailed or pushed into a renewed round of fighting prior to the midterms, so don't even bother, don't try. Look, I think it's, let's just like one step back, and this is not the popular narrative, but I think Iran is in the more difficult position now, actually. Why is that?

They are unable to export any oil legally. Nothing, nothing is going through. No Iranian oil is going through the Strait of Formos. Well, a lot of Saudi and Emirati oil is going through the strait. So that coup, you know, that Iran she, when it sees the straits, is now really diminished in value. Plus, there's a blockade around the strait, which applies only to Iran. So every day this goes on, the economy in Iran,

degrades further and yeah they get some stuff out over land through the north but i don't think this is sustainable for the iranians so then doesn't that suggest that the iranians uh would see the midterm deadlines as a point at which they would have had to have escalated before in order to either at best establish maximum deterrence for whatever happens after the midterms or Or, I guess, somehow bring the president to some crisis. I don't know. Diesel gasoline is, I think, already roiling the U.S. economy and voters. Maybe there's some catastrophic spike in energy prices, and that forces the president to return

to, you know, an Iranian definition of the MOU, which seems very kind of maximal. You give us our sanctions relief up front. to UN release $25 billion in frozen funds. The straight is reopened, and we proceed at some point in the future or not to discuss our atomic program. That's what they put on the table. That was the Iranian proposal, which Trump summarily rejected out loud, but then there are still these negotiations going back and forth about the sequencing and the timing in that MOU. I don't have...

So any chance of those negotiations, suddenly we wake up. one morning and the Americans say, oh, you know, it's only $25 billion. I mean, look, it is only $25 billion. In the context of the damage being done to the U.S. and global economy, it's pittance. Well, that's why I would never say never, right? So that is a possibility. And otherwise, they would not keep this process going back and forth. But I think the reason for the military reinforcement that we're seeing,

there is concern that Iran escalates before in terms for exactly the reason. surprise. October surprise. This is the October surprise that's coming, and that's why these forces have been deployed to the region. So it's not so much that he's going back to war, but that the administration is seriously concerned about an October surprise. Right. Couldn't you say that the Iranians, in a sense, had tried to force the issue a couple weeks ago when they clearly activated the Houthis in Yemen. There was, in a sense, I think, probably to the Iranian surprise and everyone else's, more military success quicker than people expected on the part of the Houthis who captured much of the Red Sea coast and displaced a lot of the Yemeni-backed official recognized government. they also though attacked the Saudi pipeline from Iran using probably irregular Iranian forces or Kud's forces we don't know but those two things I don't think were coincidence that they happened at the same time so was that Rand's attempt to escalate to deescalate but now that seems to have not failed but it certainly hasn't brought about a willingness of part of the Americans to accept this return to. to the MOU with a kind of Iranian coloring book, you know, connecting the dots and

painting the picture for how the MOU should look like going forward. Well, what it has failed, frankly. There was huge apprehension when Bav al-Mandah was blocked because that was the way the Saudis were gathering their oil out. They had a pipeline that ran across, you know, across the top, and you could exit through Babelamanda, they bombed that pipeline. The Saudis had repaired it within weeks. Oil is flowing through. And so what's left after all of this, and this is not what people are talking about or what people were writing about. What's left is the blockade of Iran, where Iranian oil is blockaded. And that is

their only legitimate way to earn hard currency. Sure, some of the stuff's being smuggled, and sure, they're great tankers, and sure there's the overline carriers. But it's not enough to sustain even the current level, a restricted level of expenditure by the Iranian government. So it showed time. Yeah. And, you know, the sense among Iranian experts is they will escalate rather than concede. Right.

Because they see this as a war for survival. They have no trust in Trump. And they're probably clearly worried after. About regime change. Yeah. See, I don't understand, both for Canada, I'm bringing Canada in this for a moment and Iran, this somehow calculation that Trump will be chastened

and, you know, more constrained after the midterms. Maybe eventually if there's impeachments and an impeachment trial and investigations, but those will take months to get up to speed. I just think that is a faulty analysis. Yeah. Where does that come from? Because the Iranians seem to be in a way, well, maybe not. Maybe if you're saying they're going to escalate before,

they're thinking we have to do this now to either establish deterrence or get a concession because after the midterms, it's the deluge. Well, after the, see, I think, where does this idea come from that he's going to be more constrained, first of all? That argument comes from a belief that institutions are going to constrain him. And there are people who believe he's going to take both the House and the Senate. I don't know, frankly. I know the polls are not reliable, and they've always underestimated the sides of the Trump vote. So we'll know on the fifth, frankly.

But it's a belief that Congress can really constrain the press. No, it really can't in two key areas which matters to the world. First is tariffs. We've seen it. You know, the courts are able to constrain. But it takes time and months. Months, months. And this is a Supreme Court that has this maximal doctrine around the powers of the presidency anyway.

Right. And the second is war-making. And that also takes months. My view of Trump is if he's humiliated and if impeachment proceedings do get underway, which they will. There's no question if there's a Democratic House. He will get an angrier. He will lash out. He will be more erratic and he will be more constrained.

So that's where I would put my bet, not a constrained Trump at all. So I think for the Iranians, that's the nightmare, right? At a point of maximum weakness for them, yes, they're rebuilding whatever military capability they can, and they're getting support from China. There's no question in Russia. And yes, they have significant missile capability because not all of it was destroyed in the last round, and they hide it in tunnels. But ultimately, you can only sustain a war for as long as you have the economic foundations.

And their economy is literally teetering. You know, when you and I start to talk about this, when you're thinking back just a few months ago, there was about $1.8 million to the dollar, which is already terrible. It's $2.5 million now. They're hard currency. the value of their currency is fundamentally worthless. The inflation rate is out of control.

The industrial sector is shut down. There's massive unemployment. They are themselves worried about an economic disaster, which literally pushes people into the streets because they can't buy food. That's where we are. Yeah, that's kind of Soviet Russia collapsing. Yes, from within.

In the 90s from within. Okay, so just as we wrap up this, the complimentary first half of the show, give us your sense of how this then plays out over the next few weeks. And then is there, I don't know, is there after the midterms a greater kind of realism that sets in on both sides? Because the Americans also have to acknowledge that going back and bombing Iran again doesn't do anything. It doesn't fundamentally change what is.

ongoing disruption to energy supply, acute insecurity on the part of their Gulf state allies, Iran's atomic program unresolved, probably being accelerated under some mountaintop somewhere, Iran threatening possibly to walk away from the non-proliferation treaty. I mean, there's lots of things here that the Americans need to solve that another bombing campaign, annihilating them, obliterating them, whatever he talks about. It doesn't get you there. Those are absurd both, right? To be really blunt about this,

and this is probably a blunter description than it merits, America has no military option against Iran now. It has not, right? You can't do any more from the air than the United States has already done with Israel, and if you're not willing to commit ground troops, which he is not. 2,000 Marines, though, what's that about?

Yeah, well, as I said, Carg Island. It's signaling to the Iranians don't do anything in the run up to the elections. No October surprise from you. That's what that is about. But that doesn't constitute a serious military option against Iran. So put these two together. A desperate Iran, increasingly desperate, no confidence that the United States and or Israel has given up on regime change.

On the one hand, an American president who's out of military options. What else do you do? but make it deal. There's no choice. Final, final, final, wag the dog. I mean, before the midterms, I mean, look, this war is not popular, but if American troops start fighting in it on Carg Island or some other limited engagement, we know that a segment of the American population, maybe to their credit, frankly, will rally around the troops.

They'll be, you know, certainly in Magidland, certainly amongst conservative voters, the voters that they need to reactivate to get out to the polls, there'll be some new energy. What's the chance of, who knows, Trump and the White House saying, you know what, maybe in October's surprise, if it could be contained and constrained

and limited in a way that we want, isn't actually such a bad thing because we're so far down on the polls. You can't take that off the table. You cannot take that off the table with this president. You just can't. It would be foolish. And I think the Iranians know that too.

it would be a show, Rogers. That's really what it would be. It would have no serious military consequence. It would be a show. You can't take it off the table. Look, we are in for a very unpredictable month. Let me just flip the script for one second. There was a major incident in the Middle East was an event of an attack.

What looks like, we don't know yet, but from the preliminary, it looks like there was an attempted heart-checking. and failed. Just imagine if it succeeded. It's just an event because it failed, but if it had succeeded, and either the plane had been a hijacked and forced to go to a hostile country with 150 passengers on it, or it had crashed because it was 30 seconds away from being irrevocably in a descent, and there were 150 civilian casualties in an aircraft like that, we would have our October surprise, right? Yeah.

So this is these, that's what October brings with it, tense on edge period until we get to those elections. Okay, well, let's say goodbye to our complimentary listeners and viewers. We're going to rejoin with our monk members for the bonus segment of today's Friday Focus podcast. To get that, you need to become a monk member. You can do that right now on our website, W.w.munk, MUNK, DebateswithanS.com, lots of different membership levels for you to join at.

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