Iran's supreme leader read the American election results the same morning as everyone else, and he drew his own conclusion. In a message marking Iran's "National Day of Fighting Global Arrogance" on Wednesday, Mojtaba Khamenei said: "The US sees the end of its hegemony as distant; we see it as near," according to Reuters, carried by the Jerusalem Post. Reuters reports he added that Washington's hostility toward Tehran will not change through partisan shifts or concessions, that anyone who believes otherwise is "greatly mistaken," and that any renewed U.S. aggression would draw a response on a much greater scale.
That is the regime's reading of a Democratic Congress: the Americans are divided, tired and about to tie their own hands.
Democrats say the quiet part out loud
NBC News reports that House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries named "stopping Trump's war with Iran" as one of four priorities for the new majority, alongside Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act credits and tariffs. The new Congress is sworn in Jan. 3. Bloomberg Government reports the Armed Services Committees will be led by Rep. Adam Smith and Sen. Jack Reed, and that Democrats plan to go after the cost and strategy of the Iran war and the Pentagon's $1.5 trillion budget request.
Democrats have already shown their hand. The Senate rejected an Iran war-powers resolution on Sept. 24 by 49-50, according to IBTimes, with four Republicans (Collins, Paul, Murkowski and Tillis) voting with most Democrats. The same resolution had passed the House 214-208 in July. Sen. Chris Murphy said of the military options CENTCOM briefed to lawmakers last week: "Their plan is insane." He told the Middle East Institute it "will lead to devastating escalation."
Voters did give Democrats the gavel. NBC calls the result a referendum on Trump's policies, including the eight-month Iran war. President Trump conceded as much on Fox: "I think a part of it was Iran." He also said: "you can't let the number one state sponsor of terror have a nuclear weapon." Both statements can be true. A Democratic majority can hold hearings and can try to restrict funding. It cannot end the war by itself, because, as CNBC notes, a bill forcing withdrawal would need two-thirds of both chambers to override a veto.
Oil is still moving, and more of it than before the war
Here is the fact that punctures all of it. Iran has spent eight months attacking shipping, and the Gulf is still exporting more oil than it did before the war. The Wall Street Journal reported in late October that Middle East oil flows, counting the strait and the pipelines that bypass it, averaged more than 24 million barrels a day in the week through Oct. 18, above the prewar 23.3 million, according to the ship tracker Kpler. About 40 percent of non-Iranian Gulf crude moved on alternative routes last month, against 17 percent before the war. That did not happen by accident. It happened because the U.S. Navy convoyed, escorted and protected tankers through one of the heaviest waves of Iranian attacks of the war, and because producers built ways around the choke point instead of paying Tehran's toll.
