Bowen: After Midterm Defeat, Trump's Limits at Home May Not Hold Abroad

On the eve of the midterm elections, the United States carried out a limited bombing raid on an Iranian island in the Gulf. A few days later, Donald Trump woke up to a defeat in which American voters had taken both houses of Congress from his party. The BBC's international editor, Jeremy Bowen, argues that the two facts belong in the same frame: a president boxed in at home may look for room to move abroad.

Bowen's starting point is the scale of the loss. Trump deals in superlatives, he writes, so there is a kind of political karma in how big the majority against him was. Losing the House and Senate limits his capacity to dictate, manoeuvre and disrupt inside the country. But Bowen stresses that the president remains commander-in-chief, with broad powers to use American military force, and that his habits suggest he will not quietly fade. Trump despises those he considers losers and is determined never to be seen as one. He continues to insist, against the evidence, that the election was lost only because he was not on the ballot.

Iran is the most immediate risk. In the weeks before the vote, troop deployments and Trump's own often belligerent statements fuelled talk that the US was preparing to return to war. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, attended a classified briefing on military options for renewed conflict before he was hospitalised with a stroke. He gave no details, but called the plans "insane" and warned they would bring a "devastating escalation". There has been speculation that the plans include bombing civilian infrastructure. Bowen notes that this would be likely to amount to a war crime and could draw devastating Iranian strikes on equivalent targets in America's Gulf allies, with the United Arab Emirates potentially first on the list.

Tehran, Bowen writes, follows American politics closely. It has not hidden its satisfaction that its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has become a domestic issue in the US. The war and attacks on shipping have pushed up prices for petrol, diesel and agricultural fertiliser, hurting Trump and the Republicans. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran's parliament, posted that Americans had said no to war over conscience or the cost of living, and that if Washington betrayed that will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, Iran's no would come with a nightmare.

Pressure is also coming from Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu, now acting prime minister after last week's election and working hard to assemble a new government, has repeated that he wants to bring down the Islamic regime in Tehran. Reports in Israel and the US say he is urging Trump to resume the war. Bowen observes that Netanyahu lacks the seats to form a government with his outgoing coalition, but a major, sustained war with Israelis under direct fire could open the way to a unity government he would use his political skill to dominate.

The second theatre is Ukraine, where the war with Russia has now lasted longer than the First World War. Before the elections Trump dropped sanctions on Moscow so the US could buy Russian diesel, and Bowen suggests he might extend and deepen that relief in hope of easing costs for American consumers. Russian ballistic missiles are getting through in greater numbers because Ukraine's requests for more US-made interceptors, paid for by European allies, have not been met as Kyiv needs. Bowen says Trump has shown little visible concern for civilians under that fire.

The Kremlin spokesman said Russia hoped the election results would not affect what he called Trump's peace-making efforts. Trump has consistently pushed Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky toward territorial concessions that would amount to capitulation, and Zelensky has repeatedly refused. Bowen says a bruised Trump might redouble that pressure, in order to add Ukraine to his improbable list of wars solved.

Bowen is careful about the limits of prediction, saying forecasts of Trump's next moves risk being wrong. He expects the president to keep building monuments to himself in Washington, and is certain he will not sit in a rocking chair waiting out his term. The thing to watch is whether a president who has lost the power to shake America turns to shaking the world: renewed hostilities with Iran, changes in Russia sanctions, and fresh pressure on Zelensky are the places it would show first.