Report: Iran Scheming to ‘Inflict Maximum Pain’ on Trump Ahead of Midterms

Iran is trying to hike fuel prices to hurt President Donald Trump in the midterm elections, according to a new report.

“They’re obsessed,” an Arab diplomat told The Washington Post. “They think they can bring down a presidency.”

Iran believes that the window before the elections is the best time to “inflict maximum pain now by escalating attacks in the Strait of Hormuz,” The Washington Post reported, citing Iranian officials it did not name.

The report said Iran wants to “punish” Trump by inflicting the kind of political damage it inflicted on former President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 elections, when the Islamic nation refused to release U.S. hostages seized in 1979.

🚨 REPORT: Iranian officials admit the regime is scrambling to inflict pain on Americans before the midterms to propel Democrats to victory.

Tehran wants to weaken Trump and make the political costs of confronting Iran so high that future presidents are afraid to face it.

They know Democrats in Congress will try to shield them from pressure and return to Obama-Biden appeasement.

— POLARIS National Security (@PolarisNatSec) October 20, 2026

The report said that Iran has escalated its attacks on shipping passing through the Strait of Hormuz, but with mixed results.

The Washington Post reported that despite Iran’s increased attacks “the United States has been successful in dramatically increasing oil flows out of the Persian Gulf.”

The report said American military assets “are conducting massive, daily operations, with layers of fighter jets, drones and Special Operations forces, guiding and protecting vessel traffic.”

If we did not have a midterm elections coming up, iran would have folded, but they know they could get help from the liberal democrats, socialists and communist to take their side. Because they hate america

— tigersharktom (@tigersharktom) October 18, 2026

The report noted that Iranian media covers the U.S. elections nonstop, arguing that if Democrats gain control of either chamber of Congress, Trump can be hamstrung by political attacks instead of plowing ahead with the war.

“He, who had promised to end wars, has brought his party a few steps closer to defeat in the midterm elections by launching a war against Iran,” said an editorial published in Fars, a media outlet linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Trump will “have to live out the remaining two years of his presidency as a nightmare” if the Republicans lose seats in November, former foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in August.

Iran is also using the attacks to find leverage to use when post-election talks kick off, a Western diplomat told The Washington Post.

“Faced with a deepening economic crisis and growing international isolation, there is increasing concern within the ranks of Iranian leadership that the country could be left unable to perform core functions like paying its security forces within a matter of months,” the outlet quoted the diplomat as saying.

Iran is also trying to throw its weight around to deter future administrations from attacking the country, Negar Mortazavi, an Iranian researcher with the Center for International Policy, a progressive organization, said.

Iran is stretching this war because they believe a midterm shift will rescue them. They cannot outlast American pressure under the current administration, so they are playing for time and hoping voters deliver them a friendlier Congress.

That calculation should bother every American who still thinks foreign policy is about national interest rather than party. When a hostile regime openly waits for one side to regain power, it is because they expect less resistance, fewer sanctions, and a return to the same weakness that invited this fight in the first place.

Enemies do not respect speeches. They respect strength that lasts beyond a single election cycle. If Iran is counting on Democrats to ease the pressure, that tells you everything you need to know about who they fear and who they do not.

— GRANDPA’s FREE ADVICE (@GOP_is_Gutless) September 19, 2026

Iranian officials hope to scare politicians into thinking “attacking Iran comes with a high political price, including the possibility of losing elections,” Mortazavi said.

As noted by The New York Times, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is openly campaigning against Trump by claiming fuel prices will not fall if Republicans keep power.

Trump knows Iran is doing all it can to weaken him.

“They’re desperate to try and affect the election, so that we can get a nice weak group of people in there, and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon,” Trump said last month.

The flip side of Iranian success in convincing voters to side with Democrats is that Trump may no longer feel he has to soft-pedal the conflict.

“Once the elections are done, he may be free to do whatever he wants,” Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, said.

“While Trump is unpredictable, there are certainly signs that he might hit Iran hard” after the midterm vote, Michael Makovsky, the president and chief executive of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said.

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