Even as votes were still being counted in the U.S. midterm elections, senior figures in the administration were already inviting speculation over how the results might be connected to the conflict with Iran.

On the morning after the election, Vice President JD Vance wrote on X that the main reason for the Republicans' dramatic loss was the American public's opposition to the war. "Everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there," he wrote in a post on X, referring to the ongoing conflict that began with U.S.-Israeli airstrikes against Iran in late February 2026.

It is rare for a vice president to make such a critical proclamation about their own administration's policy, but President Donald Trump later said he did not disagree with Vance's appraisal of the role that frustration with the Iran war played in voters' minds. Whether this changes Trump's view on next steps in the ongoing conflict remains unclear: reporting over the past few weeks, including by The New York Times, has indicated that the U.S. military has been actively preparing options and increasing capabilities in the Persian Gulf region in the event the president directs a resumption of hostilities.

Javed Ali, an expert on Middle East affairs and a former senior official at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration, argues that months of conflict have failed to bring Iran to its knees, force regime change, or militarily defeat the perceived threat to U.S. assets and allies. Escalating now, he contends, is unlikely to change those realities — and it carries the additional risk of further damaging Republicans in the eyes of American voters as they turn toward the 2028 presidential race.

Even if Trump were to ratchet up the conflict, moreover, it is unclear how much wiggle room he will have come January, facing a Democratic Congress almost uniformly opposed to the war. Congress controls funding for military operations and can bring war powers resolutions to a vote, giving opponents of the war potential legislative leverage over the conflict's conduct and cost.

Sunk costs

Part of the issue facing Iran war hawks in Washington now is that the conflict has caused serious setbacks for the regime in Tehran without satisfying the officially stated strategic reasons for going to war. They argue that pulling back now — as welcome as that might be for Americans struggling with the associated rising cost of fuel — could allow Iran to rebuild before the conflict is "won." Moreover, it would render the military and reputational costs already sunk by Washington as wasted.

Among the achievements of the war touted by the Trump administration are the death of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, along with the killing of scores of senior leaders within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of Iran's military — including individuals such as Ali Larijani, the former head of Iran's National Security Council. Significant elements of Iran's air defense and radar network, ballistic missile and drone production, and storage and launch sites have also been destroyed, and Iran's already outdated navy and air force has been further degraded.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-imposed naval blockade against Iranian-linked shipping in the Persian Gulf has cut off a crucial lifeline for Iran's economy, and additional sanctions and economic penalties imposed by Washington have served to further devalue Iran's currency and deprive the country of additional financial links to the international banking system.

Down but not out

Yet for all the U.S. successes in degrading the Iranian military through expansive aerial bombardment, and the significant financial pressure against the Iranian economy, an obvious endgame remains elusive.

Despite weakening the Iranian government — now led by Ali Khamenei's son, Mojtaba, who succeeded his father following the February airstrike, and a new echelon of senior IRGC commanders — the Islamic Republic remains intact. It still possesses enough ballistic missiles and drones to hold the region at risk, while continuing to impose significant control over its own population.

U.S. military spending, meanwhile, continues to rise. In September, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office assessed that the military costs of the Iran War had already totaled US$38 billion; since then, that number has only increased, with the Pentagon's own estimate now exceeding US$47 billion — more than US$9 billion above the CBO's September assessment. That is to say nothing of the associated global economic costs that have resulted from Iran's de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route for oil and gas through which roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption normally transits, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates.

Should Trump decide to change course on Iran, he — and others — may think that the money, effort and the lives of the 19 American servicemen killed in the conflict — some of them lost in the war's deadliest strike — were spent with no obvious objective achieved. Yet continued military expenditure with no strategic endgame could only magnify those same costs.

Iran's public position has not been changed by the midterm results. Mojtaba Khamenei has issued statements directing the IRGC to widen the conflict in the region, and perhaps beyond, should the U.S. and Israel attack again. At the same time, a statement attributed to him indicates that hostilities between the United States and Iran will persist regardless of the balance of party political power in Washington.

This raises questions about the prospects for diplomacy. During the summer, the U.S. and Iran agreed to an initial 14-point memorandum of understanding that, if finalized, could have brought a permanent end to the hostilities. But since the 60-day clock on that agreement lapsed, no parallel diplomatic agreement has emerged.

No practical solution

Even with the major shift in the U.S. political landscape, it remains unclear whether Trump will resume operations against Iran before the new Congress is sworn in. The messy election result in Israel — which has left the pro-war, and potentially outgoing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with potentially more reason to double down on Iran — only complicates matters.

The U.S. military certainly appears to be ready to engage in a new round of attacks against Iran if so directed, and Iran is ready to retaliate. But given the shortcomings in the U.S. inventory — with munitions and missile and air defense capabilities depleted by eight months of war, and production bottlenecks flagged by the Pentagon's watchdog slowing replenishment — escalation is something Trump and his inner circle will have to consider with caution.

Iran might force the issue by engaging in asymmetric attacks in the region or beyond that it has not attempted already, or it could launch a coordinated offensive with its partners in the region — notably the Houthis in Yemen, who have become more active in their own conflict with Saudi Arabia in recent months.

But short of an event that the Trump administration perceives as giving it cover to act, there are no clear indications emerging from Washington as to which way it will move.

Vance diagnosed a widely perceived political problem for Republicans: voters do not want more war. But what he noticeably did not mention was a practical solution. The Middle East conflict — and the United States' role in it — is, as such, locked in a stalemate.

America and Iran have both borne significant political, military and economic costs. A decision not to pursue an endgame would leave those sunk; doing so may only increase them.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. It was written by Javed Ali, Associate Professor of Practice of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and originally appeared on Fortune.com.