U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looks at U.S. President Donald Trump as he holds a press conference in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 6, 2026.
Top advisors and officials in President Donald Trump's administration aren't impressed with the new plan for Iran after the midterms. Following Nov. 3, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is repackaging the old strategy of endless bombing to see if they can get a "win" out of the Iran war.
“It’s moron time, again," was the comment from one Trump advisor, according to Zeteo's Asawin Suebsaeng.
Hegseth made a secret trip to Iran to plot with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces his election next month. According to the New York Times, “U.S. and Israeli militaries have developed specific plans for renewed strikes against Iran after the American midterm elections,” and the “targets would likely include Iran’s energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities and missile and drone arsenal.”
Suebsaeng said officials are telling him preparations have ramped up significantly, and they're now working on a target list that will include civilian infrastructure.
"Several senior officials I spoke to are (to put it mildly) massively skeptical that revving Trump’s war machine back up will bring about the (supposedly) intended result of forcing the Iranian government to make significant concessions and end the war in Trump’s favor," he reported.
They also worry the move will worsen the U.S. economy and drag down the global economy.
TheGuardianpredicted in a Thursday report, “Iran will strike oil facilities, undersea cables, data centers and AI facilities across as many as seven countries in the Gulf in the event of a fresh U.S.-Israeli attack, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, has said.”
Meanwhile, Trump is saying both publicly and privately that he won't stop the Iran war before the election despite how unpopular it is. Doing so would mean admitting he was wrong and that he has lost the war.
In fact, the U.S. may even still be in the war this time next year. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told the Financial Times that the war with Iran could even last another year, a Friday report revealed.
"It’s as close to as an admission that you can get that his management of the war is now motivated by partisan politics – the obvious hope that his timing may spare him and Republican candidates the headache of p—— off the electorate right before Election Day," wrote Suebsaeng.
In the background, Trump's administration constantly claims that the war was necessary because "Iran can't have a nuclear weapon." But he won't start bombing until after the election. It prompted Suebsaeng wonder, "either his bumbling war of aggression ... is an urgent national-security imperative, as the Trump White House routinely lies that it is, or it isn’t." So why would he wait a few weeks until after the election if he was so concerned about nuclear proliferation?
To Suebsaeng, this is an open confession that the nuclear problem has nothing to do with the war to begin with.
"He’s rubbing it in your face that this is all a game to him, for him to play at his convenience and pleasure, all while his government continues to cover up the extent of U.S. casualties in a fight Trump picked for no good, sane reason," Suebsaeng closed.