Five loud explosions rang out across Iran’s Qeshm Island on Monday, and now we can confirm the Trump regime launched strikes on Iran, just hours before Americans head to the polls for the 2026 midterm elections.
The Wall Street Journal has independently confirmed the strikes, with U.S. officials telling the paper they hit a handful of defensive platforms on Qeshm that the regime claims Iran used to attack tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Sources on the island say it may have been as many as six or seven blasts.
And here’s the part that should stop everyone cold: according to U.S. officials speaking to the Journal, Monday’s attack is part of a series of limited strikes the United States has been quietly carrying out for weeks without announcing them, deliberately kept under wraps so as not to signal any intention of resuming major combat operations. In other words, they’ve been hiding the war from the American people.
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All of this happened while Donald Trump spent the entire day talking down the war. When Trump walked away from his rambling speech at the Reflecting Pool on Monday, he took no questions. But reporter Garrett Haake shouted after him, asking whether he was considering striking Iran again after the midterms. Trump turned, looked at him, and said “No.” At the same moment, the Trump regime was striking Iran.
During that same speech, Trump falsely claimed the war had ended and that the United States had “won.”
Earlier in that same speech, Trump insisted Iran is desperate for a deal: “They want to be the tough guys, but they do want to make a deal,” he said, before laying out his options as either continuing to “take them apart piece by piece,” doing it “at a more rapid fashion, which we might do,” or negotiating, “which we’re also doing right now. I mean, as we speak, we’re talking to them.”
Don’t even bother trying to make sense of the contradictions of Trump both saying the war is over and also that Iran is begging to make a deal to end the war.
He also claimed Iran has been begging him to stop killing their leaders, telling the crowd that after he took out their “first level of leaders, their second level of leaders,” Iran asked, “please stop doing that and we will.”
The reality looks nothing like that.
The U.S. killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and Iran replaced him almost immediately with his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, while elevating even more IRGC hardliners into top positions. Iran’s leadership hardened. And the talks Trump was bragging about? Qatari mediators had just returned to Tehran on Monday to try to restart negotiations between Washington and Tehran. They left after only a few hours, and our sources say the strikes on Qeshm, carried out while those talks were underway, effectively ended any near-term chance of a deal.
Iran’s position has been the same all along: every time they sit down to negotiate, the Trump regime bombs them. Monday just proved their point for them.
What makes this even more cynical is the Journal’s reporting that Trump and his inner circle have been deliberately toning down their rhetoric in the hours before the election to create the appearance that no escalation is coming. Essentially, they’re trying to downplay the war before Americans go to the polls. Even tonight on Fox, Trump said: “This isn't a war. it's a very soft war. But this isn't like a war that's going on. There’s no war raging. It could happen if they don’t make a deal.”
Meanwhile, U.S. officials have already been warning Gulf allies to prepare for renewed strikes on Iran after the midterms, with the message essentially being that it will be big, it will be short, and Iran won’t respond.
Axios’s Barak Ravid, who has reliably functioned as a megaphone for this White House, reported that Trump is weighing three options with his advisers split down the middle. JD Vance and Steve Witkoff favor a diplomatic deal. Benjamin Netanyahu and Pete Hegseth push for renewed military strikes. And Scott Bessent, John Ratcliffe, and Marco Rubio favor maintaining economic pressure without either war or a deal, hoping to squeeze concessions out of Tehran or trigger internal unrest. Take a second to notice that Netanyahu is now being listed, without comment, as one of Trump’s advisers.
The “maximum pressure” faction fundamentally misunderstands who they’re dealing with. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has the word revolution in its name and has lived under U.S. sanctions since 1979. A blockade is not going to make them throw up their hands. It produces the opposite reaction, and it has every time. Iran has been explicit about where it stands. It says it isn’t discussing the nuclear file at all, pointing out that Trump himself claimed he obliterated Iran’s nuclear capabilities last year, so there’s nothing left to negotiate.
The only real conversation is the Strait of Hormuz. And if the Trump regime truly believes the strait is open and that it won, why does it need an economic blockade? It isn’t open. Iran’s preconditions for reopening it are straightforward: recognition that Iran and Oman control the strait, Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, a regional ceasefire, the unfreezing of $13 billion in Iranian funds, reconstruction money for Iran, and Iran keeping its ballistic missiles. Otherwise, Tehran says, there is nothing to discuss.
The military picture is uglier than the White House lets on. Earlier Monday, the IRGC Navy announced it shot down an MQ-9 Reaper drone, which it claims is the 55th Reaper Iran has downed, along with two MQM-170 reconnaissance drones operating in and around Qeshm. It appears the U.S. sent those drones in first, they were taken down, and then the strikes on the defensive platforms followed.
Vance told reporters he’d spoken with Trump about an hour earlier and that “the president and I both feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement.” Asked whether Iran had been given a deadline before strikes resume, Vance said no, adding that Trump “retains kinetic options” and “non-kinetic options.” Trump followed up on Truth Social in classic market-moving fashion, posting that oil prices were “dropping like a rock, down almost $10 a barrel, a record because people fear there will not be war with Iran.” He posted that while his military was hitting Iran. Market manipulation, anyone?
And just in case anyone forgot what this regime’s priorities look like, Trump also used the Reflecting Pool speech to lie about Greenland, telling the crowd “we also have Greenland now,” thanking Denmark and Europe for “making that possible,” while the war in Iran keeps draining money and lives.
The rest of the world is moving on without us. On Monday, Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s deputy security chief and a top adviser to Mojtaba Khamenei, met in Beijing with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The Sultan of Oman also met with Wang Yi, as did Saudi Arabia’s national security adviser, Dr. Musaed bin Mohammed Al-Aiban. At the same time, another top adviser to Mojtaba Khamenei was meeting with Vladimir Putin.
The common sense read is that with America’s security umbrella in the Middle East collapsing, China and Russia are positioning themselves as the region’s new guarantors, and they are openly backing Iran. After his meeting with Iran’s delegation, Wang Yi made a point to say that China supports Iran in protecting its sovereignty and security.
Even Republicans can feel it. In Michigan, where voters across Detroit and Macomb County keep raising the cost of gas and groceries, GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers was asked what he’d tell Republicans who gave Trump a chance but are fed up with prices. His answer: “I’ve called them to wrap up the Iran conflict,” adding that Trump personally told him “he’s going to wrap this thing up. It’s not going to go on for much longer.”
So Trump’s own party is telling voters the war is driving up their costs, while Trump bombs Iran and tells reporters he isn’t.
Tomorrow is Election Day. Vote like it matters, because it does.
