The Shift: The war on Iran looms over the midterms

Last week, The Hill reported that the estimated cost of the U.S. war on Iran has reached $47 billion, an increase of $3 billion from last month.

“The biggest chunk of the cost is munition replacement at $29 billion,” reads the report. “Nearly $12 billion is obligated for incremental costs of military action and another $6.1 billion to replace equipment losses, according to the estimate. Air Force’s support for deployed personnel, airlift, base, communication support, and transportation in theater costs $7.6 billion. The estimate does not include the cost to damaged US military bases in the Middle East.”

The New York Times points out that the overall number also does not include the $1.5 billion for fuel and other costs that the White House requested in its supplemental request to pay for the war. They’re requesting an additional $70 billion in emergency military spending.

Earlier this month, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi said the war was costing U.S. families an average of $2,000. So far.

On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump ran on the idea that Biden’s policies were responsible for high gas prices. Now, eight months into a deeply unpopular war that’s destabilized the global energy market, Trump is bragging about the profits of oil companies, and JD Vance is blaming the price spike on the Iranian government, even though the U.S. is the country that started the war.

Despite the White House’s original claims, there’s no indication that the war is close to ending, and Trump isn’t even pretending that’s a possibility. “Somebody asked me before, ‘When will the war in Iran end?’ I said, ‘Whenever I want it to end,'” he told a crowd in Lubbock, Texas, recently.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quietly extended deployments into 2027 last month.

Many Democrats have highlighted the war as a major election issue.

“Trump’s war will take years to recover from,” declared Sen. Jack Reed, (D-RI) the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, in a recent statement. “The Trump administration has failed to present any credible strategy and has hidden basic information from Congress and the public to cover up for it. This war must end, and real diplomats must be empowered to secure an enduring peace.”

However, it’s unlikely that Democrats can reel the President in, even if they have a huge night next week. War Powers legislation wouldn’t have a direct impact, and another impeachment push seems highly unlikely.

At any rate, Trump is reportedly mulling a renewed round of strikes after the election. The Pentagon has apparently instructed CENTCOM to prepare for major combat operations.

Hochul says the quiet part out loud

Benjamin Netanyahu is currently facing a tough political battle, and while the results of the Israeli election are unlikely to impact Palestinians one way or another, they might change the way that many U.S. lawmakers talk about the country.

For years, many Democrats have been pinning the actions of Israel on Netanyahu’s government, as if there’s simply a right-wing aberration that needs to be corrected. The distinction purposely shuts down any deeper discussions about apartheid, occupation, and genocide. It also paves the way for Dems to eventually support Israel more vocally, once the current regime is ousted.

In a recent interview with POLITICO, New York Governor Kathy Hochul says the quiet part out loud and admits that a Netanyahu loss would make it easier to defend Israel back in the states.

“I went to Israel right after Oct. 7. I saw a lot of pain there,” she told the website. “But I actually cautioned the government there, in private conversations, not to overreach. The world is with you when it comes to the brutal assault by a terrorist organization known as Hamas on innocent Israeli people.”

“An overreach could change that dynamic, and that’s what’s happened,” Hochul continued. “We have to have leadership there that understands the security of Israel is paramount — critically important to me, but also the world — but to have a safe Palestinian state as well, which has been talked about my entire life. I still believe that this can happen. I believe we have to get people of goodwill who can make this happen, and as long as Netanyahu is sitting there, that is not in his interest to do that. It’s just not, and it won’t happen.”

Hochul also said a Netanyahu government could impair the possibility of a Jewish presidential nominee in 2028.

“I think that’s gonna be still a lightning rod, right?,” she told POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin when asked if a Netanyahu win complicated such a result. “Who knows what he’s going to do next for self-preservation. We see the president in our own country doing rather extreme things for self-preservation of his party and his legacy right now. And there’s parallels.”

This week, the New York Times ran a piece on Israel support “waning” among Democrats.

“Lawmakers have begun rebuking Israel in ways that were once unimaginable,” it reads. “They have pointed to tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza and focused much of their ire on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, whose actions and policies have left his country diplomatically isolated and who has become a political lightning rod in the United States. That has put at risk the bipartisan support for military aid that Israel has always counted on from American lawmakers.”