Reported by Al Jazeera
Trump sought to bring Iran to its knees. Instead, Tehran brought the costs of war into American homes, fuelling the backlash against his party.
American University of Beirut, Distinguished Public Policy Fellow and non-resident Senior Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC.
This week, Iran’s response to the US-Israeli attacks led to one of the most dramatic political turnarounds in modern American history. Trump’s failed war on its own, however, is not why the Democrats pounded the Republicans and now control the Senate and House of Representatives for the next two years. Rather, it reflected and amplified many dynamics in American society that caused discontented, angry and fearful citizens to repudiate Trump’s Republicans and support Democrats.
More from the original report
The US president wrongly believed that his war on Iran would pummel the country into submission and turn it into a vassal state of the US and Israel. Iran survived, attacked the US, Israel and Arab lands, and brought the painful economic costs of war into every American home. It also humiliated Washington by revealing that America’s military prowess, like Trump’s behaviour and electoral promises, is erratic at best, and ineffective at worst.
The Iran war also sparked a cascade of consequences that hurt every American and, in some areas, exposed how national values such as democracy, equality and the rule of law, along with claims of global dominance, could prove illusory. Iran’s move with the greatest impact on ordinary Americans was restricting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, driving up the prices Americans paid for groceries, gasoline, diesel, travel, most imports and other everyday necessities. Some 90 percent of voters said the cost of living was a major or crucial factor in how they would vote.
This was compounded by the inability of the US and Israel to force Iran to surrender, even after months of brutal attacks on political leaders, infrastructure, civilian and economic sites, and military installations. Instead, Iran’s counterattacks left US bases in the Arabian Peninsula and Jordan incapacitated or evacuated, and caused huge damage to Arab energy and transport systems, disrupting global energy flows and driving up prices. The…