When Donald Trump addressed the UN General Assembly this week, he was adamant that the mid-terms won’t impact his decision-making with regard to ending the war.

“They’re waiting to see how I do in the mid-term election,” he said, of the IRGC. “What they don’t realize is that I’m not running. I’ll be here for two and a half years.”

It’s true that Trump’s not running, but the war’s on the ballot all the same. American voters couldn’t care less about the daily goings-on halfway around the world, but they don’t love high fuel prices. As discussed at some length here, Trump’s worst issue is cost of living.

Well, according to new reporting from The Wall Street Journal, Trump’s seriously entertaining a resumption of the American bombing campaign against Iran — but only after the mid-terms. In the meantime, he’s rejecting ceasefire offers.

Just this week, Iran offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart negotiations around its nuclear program if Trump lifted the US naval blockade of the country’s ports. Trump said no, apparently.

Although the Journal‘s reporting indicated that The White House is for now reluctant to resume a full-on bombardment in light of America’s depleted interceptor stockpile (which would be taxed further when the Guards invariably responded with attacks on US allies in the region), Trump was described by sources as “skeptical” the Guards are amenable to his demands for ending the war.

That’s probably accurate, and Trump has himself to blame for not leaving when he had the chance. Once the conflict became a war of attrition it became a winnable fight for the IRGC, assuming of course the US doesn’t invade or go the scorched-earth route, neither of which are seen as viable options, Trump’s intermittent threats to visit an apocalypse on the country notwithstanding.

Even if a return to major combat operations isn’t Trump’s go-to, the Journal said his “current position” suggests the frozen conflict’s “likely to tilt back toward hostilities.” His decision, sources indicated, “could be affected by the results of the mid-terms.”

This is when it’d help to be a real dictator as opposed to an authoritarian operating in the twilight between democracy and autocracy. Earlier this month, Vladimir Putin used the results of sham parliamentary elections to justify doubling down on the original “special military operation.”

Unlike the GOP, United Russia didn’t have to concern itself with public opinion about the president’s war of choice. An absurdist ballot-casting process delivered to Putin’s party its biggest-ever majority in the Duma, where it now controls nearly 80% of the seats. Suffice to say Republicans, despite a decades-long effort to suppress the vote in America, aren’t likely to be that successful in November.

On Saturday, the Houthis fired a barrage of projectiles at Saudi Arabia, including drones bound for the capital. The salvo came just hours after MBS’s top military brass met with their Pakistani and Turkish counterparts in Riyadh, where members of the newly-constituted trilateral Mecca Joint Defense Agreement “reviewed threats facing Saudi Arabia.”