Seven months after launching what he called a brief, surgical campaign against Iran, President Trump has reanchored the war's end not to battlefield conditions but to the American electoral calendar, promising resolution immediately after November's midterm elections. The distance between a four-to-five-week projection and a seven-month reality speaks to one of war's oldest lessons: that conflicts rarely honor the timelines of those who begin them. In tying military conclusion to political occasion, the administration has made visible what is often left unspoken — that the rhythms of democracy