Nov 5

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have conceded that the Iran war contributed to the Republican Party’s loss of control of both houses of the US Congress.

Even so, there is little indication that the American electorates’ rebuke of Mr. Trump’s policies will persuade the president not to renew air strikes against Iran, with or without Israel.

There is also no indication that Mr. Trump, or, for that matter Iran, will stop approaching indirect negotiations as a zero-sum game and engage in a give-and-take that could lead to mutually acceptable terms that would lead to an off-ramp on which both sides save face.

James discusses on Anewz what the midterm elections mean for the Iran war as well as relations with Israel after Mr. Trump announced that the United States would halt military aid to Israel at the end of this year.

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[Anchor] Welcome back to Daybreak on Anewz. Now, let’s continue those discussions around the US midterm elections and bring in James M. Dorsey who’s a political analyst. He joins us live right now from Singapore.

James, hello and welcome back to the Daybreak programme. Pleasure to have you.

[James M. Dorsey] Good morning. Always a pleasure to be with you.

[Anchor] Fantastic. So, I’d like us to focus then on the reaction particularly of JD Vance. Do you think that his reaction is a genuine break away from Trump or is this a calculated attempt for him to distance himself then from an unpopular outcome while preserving the mega base?

[James M. Dorsey] JD Vance has from the outset signalled that he was not in favour of this war. What he said yesterday in terms of identifying the war as a main reason for the Republican defeat in the midterm elections really echoed what US President Donald Trump had said earlier. Trump said that acknowledged that the war was a factor even though he tried to distance himself from the responsibility for that war.

Moreover, JD Vance is in a difficult position because he is the lead negotiator for the United States in the negotiations with Iran which effectively at this point amount largely to a dialogue of the death. What it also signals is that there are lessons that the Republicans and Donald Trump will have to learn from these midterm elections and that will include a restructuring of his Make America Great Again, movement but it also remains to be seen how he ultimately responds to this election result. It’s early days and while he has signalled on the one hand that he would be willing to work with the Democrats but also use his veto if and when Democrats put forward what he would describe as insane proposals, I think the next few days and next few weeks are really going to tell us whether we get a more cooperative president or an angry president who lashes out.

[Anchor] A lot of the conversation James on social media and even with those reactions coming from various governments across the world point to the reason why the Republicans lost blaming it on the war not entirely on the cost of living but what evidence do we actually have that people in America actually voted along the lines of the war and possibly not just like the cost of living of those living in the country?

[James M. Dorsey] I think there’s no doubt that in this election we had a rare instance where there was a clear linkage between foreign policy, in this case the war against Iran, and domestic policy. The fact of the matter is, and I don’t think that anybody can deny that, is that prices in the United States went up not exclusively because of the war and Iran’s strategy of inflicting pain on the United States by strangling or throttling global energy markets and therefore that leading to a price hike that Americans felt in the supermarkets, at the gas pumps, and so on. It’s not the only reason.

Tariffs are another reason, other of Trump’s policies, but the war was a major factor and what that has done is in a sense given Iran the opportunity to claim a victory here because at the end of the day the rise in oil prices and therefore the rise in consumer prices across the globe is the outcome of Iran’s response to the US and Israeli attack on Iran.

[Anchor] But what concrete change in US policy would require then an end to the war?

[James M. Dorsey]

Well, the problem is it’s not just a change in US policy, it’s a change in US and Iranian policy. Fact of the matter is that both the United States and Iran approach negotiations as a zero-sum game rather than as a give-and-take process in which there is flexibility on both sides. Both the Americans and the Iranians see negotiations as a way of defeating the other at the negotiating table and of basically coming to an agreement on their terms and nothing less than that.

So if you look at the last few days, the last couple of weeks, you’ve seen the Iranians put forward a proposal which they really only modified in superficial terms. With other words, instead of coming to an agreement within seven days, they were willing to come to an agreement within five days or two days. But that agreement would have to be acceptance of Iran’s conditions.

Some of those conditions are presumably unacceptable for the United States. And so only if and when you get an approach to negotiations that is aimed at finding a formula that is mutually acceptable and allows both sides to some degree to save face, are you going to get an off-ramp.

[Anchor] I think you coined a term, dialogue of the deaf. So, it remains to be seen then if any of the parties would be able to be flexible in relation to their policies. Let’s move on to Israel then, James, because Vance is also calling for a changed relationship with Israel.

Does that mean putting conditions on U.S. support, reducing aid, as we know that Trump has already announced, or simply changing the tone towards their relations then with Israel?

[James M. Dorsey] I think one’s got to understand that what Trump said and what J.D. Vance said about the future of U.S.-Israeli relations did not happen in a vacuum or out of the blue. You’ve had a process that started with a plan by the Heritage Foundation, essentially the brain trust for the longest period of time of the Trump administration, and that plan called for a restructuring of U.S.-Israeli military relations over a period of 19 years. Essentially, you have at the moment a memorandum of understanding between the United States and Israel that was concluded under the Obama administration and promised Israel 3.8 billion dollars a year. That 10-year plan expires in 2028, and so the Heritage plan was a plan to, over a period of time, transition the relationship between the United States and Israel from one of Israel as a foreign aid recipient to Israel as a full-fledged partner. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the principle and basically said, instead of 10-19 years, let’s do this within 10 years, because he realised that support for Israel in the Congress, as well as among the American public, was diminishing and Israel had to become more self-sufficient. Netanyahu’s 10-year plan was endorsed by the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, so that’s the context in which this is taking place.

Now, when you get in January a democratically controlled Congress, you may very well see that there’ll be greater conditionality on U.S. military supplies to Israel, but at the same time, we’ll have to wait and see how the balance in Congress works out. What we’ve seen in the last two to three years has been a Congress, both in terms of the Republican leadership, as well as in terms of the Democratic leadership, that in some ways was divorced from what their popular base was saying. So, with other words, Congress remained very pro-Israel, despite attempts by some to introduce new legislation, and at the same time, their popular base, the American public, was moving away from Israel.

[Anchor] Do you think that Vance’s attempt then to claim a distinct path back to power, could that deepen the divisions among Republicans, or is he identifying a direction that the party is already moving toward?

[James M. Dorsey] He’s identifying a trend within the Republican and the Trump support base that has been expressing itself for quite some time. In other words, it’s not just the Democrats or the Democratic youth that is becoming more critical of Israel, it’s also the Republican, or significant parts of the Republican base, and he clearly is appealing to that base.

[Anchor] All right, that’s all we have time for. James M. Dorsey joining us all the way from Singapore. It’s always a pleasure to have your insightful analysis on Anewz.

[James M. Dorsey] Always my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

@ jamesmdorsey@substack.com