The news that Democrats had won both chambers of the US Congress reached Tehran on November 4, the 13th of Aban in the Iranian calendar. Iran marks the date every year as the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy, the start of the hostage crisis that shadowed Jimmy Carter's failed 1980 re-election bid.
At 8:46 that morning, Tehran time, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf posted in English on X: "Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message. If the US govt betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare."
Ghalibaf is not only the speaker. He is also Iran's chief negotiator in the indirect talks with Washington that Qatar and Pakistan are mediating, a role Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei reaffirmed on November 2, Iran International and The National reported. His post was a reading of the American vote, sent to the other side of a negotiating table.
The result arrived in the middle of intensive diplomacy over the war, which began with US and Israeli strikes on February 28. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state media on November 2 that consultations were "very intensive".
Tehran's offer is a seven-step plan that Baghaei said had been condensed so it could be carried out in two days, Al Jazeera reported. It would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart nuclear talks. In return, Iran wants the US to lift its naval blockade of Iranian ports, repeal sanctions, guarantee an end to strikes and accept a full regional ceasefire, including in Lebanon. The state news agency IRNA reported that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had given the government powers to speed up the talks.
Washington's side is harder to pin down. Sources told the Qatari-owned Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the US had approved a Qatari draft under which Iran would announce a nuclear concession at the same moment Washington announced the release of part of Iran's frozen assets, Pakistan Today reported. A senior Iranian official told Reuters the two sides remained far from a deal. Vice President JD Vance has said any agreement needs a verifiable commitment that Iran will not rebuild its nuclear program.
Iran's official line is that American elections do not matter. Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said on November 3 that Tehran was not waiting for the results, and lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi said there was no difference between the two US parties, Israel's Ynet reported. Baghaei told his weekly briefing that Iran expected no change in US policy.
The record of the past three months points the other way. At the UN General Assembly on September 24, President Masoud Pezeshkian said of a deal: "We don't want it to get to the midterm elections."
In October, two Iranian officials told The Washington Post that Tehran saw the weeks before the vote as a key window for leverage over Trump. An Arab diplomat and a Western diplomat told the paper that some Iranian officials wanted to "punish" Trump at the ballot box, as the hostage crisis had hurt Carter in 1980. Mohsen Rezaei, a senior security official, said on Press TV that Iran had been targeting five or six vessels a night.
The strait is where that pressure reached American voters. The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency logged 30 attacks on commercial vessels in October, a record, CBS News reported. Trump accused Iran on October 22 of making up "fake hits, mines, and everything else" to push up oil prices before the vote.
At the pump, the effect is measurable. The AAA national average for regular gasoline was $2.98 a gallon on February 28, peaked at $4.56 in May, and stood at $4.15 on election day, the highest election-day average on record in dollar terms, Forbes reported. Asked about his party's losses, Trump told Fox News: "I think it's the gasoline price."
Tehran's hardline voices claimed the result as their own. Jam-e-Jam, the paper of state broadcaster IRIB, declared "We have won the cognitive war", according to a Tehran Times press review. Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said: "Trump lost in war and politics," as quoted by Ynet.
The 1980 parallel has limits that favor Washington. Carter was on the ballot in 1980; Trump was not on Tuesday, and his term runs until January 2029. Democrats will control committee subpoenas from January, but they are far short of the two-thirds majorities needed to override a veto. Congress has never voted to authorize the war. A non-binding resolution calling for US forces to be withdrawn passed both chambers in June, and the most recent binding attempt failed 49 to 50 in the Senate in September.
Not everyone in Tehran's establishment wants to cash in the result. Raja News, linked to the hardline Paydari front, attacked Araghchi's diplomacy as a "special gift to Trump on the eve of his electoral defeat", Iran International reported, a sign that part of the hardline camp sees any deal now as a lifeline for Trump.
By the figures Iran's own agencies publish, its economy is absorbing heavier damage than America's. The Statistical Centre of Iran reported that gross domestic product fell 10.1% year on year in the three months to June 20, with oil and gas output down 26.4%, The National reported. A former member of parliament's energy commission, Hedayatollah Khademi, told the ILNA agency the gas shortfall had reached about 400 million cubic meters a day. The National Iranian Gas Company has warned that 11 of 31 provinces could face winter supply problems.
The rial passed 2 million to the dollar on the open market in late August after new US sanctions, Al Jazeera reported. Cooking oil had risen 177% and insulin 642% since the war began. A protest monitor counted 30 demonstrations in 19 locations in the last week of October.
That is the other half of the same contest. The US blockade of Iranian ports and its sanctions bear on Iranian households, as Tehran's grip on the strait bears on American ones.
The pressure shows in Iran's politics. On state television in October, former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi, a reformist, said: "We were never volunteers for war." The ultraconservative Kayhan's editor, Hossein Shariatmadari, replied that such figures were acting as "Washington's ambassadors", The National reported.
The vote was also bracketed by military signals. On November 2, the eve of the election, US forces struck targets on Qeshm Island in the strait. US officials told CBS News the strikes were limited and defensive, a response to the Revolutionary Guard firing on a US aircraft. The Guard said it had shot down US drones. Earlier that day, Trump had said "we haven't been doing any fighting for months," CBS News reported.
Ghalibaf warned on November 3 that any US strategic error would open "a new battlefield in the war", Euronews reported. Former foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said he read that formula as covering US bases in Britain, Italy, Portugal and Germany. On October 31, a written statement on Mojtaba Khamenei's official channels said any threat must be met with "an immediate, impactful, and geographically unrestricted response", according to AFP.
The Associated Press has reported pressure from Israel. Two regional officials and a third person familiar with the matter told the agency that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was urging Trump to launch a "quick but extensive air campaign" after the midterms. The Israeli government did not comment. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump had not decided and that the administration preferred a diplomatic solution.
The stopgap law funding the US government expires on December 11, a deadline that falls to the outgoing Republican-led Congress. The new Congress is due to convene on January 3.
For eight months, each side has aimed at the other's home front: Washington through Iran's ports and currency, Tehran through the strait that sets the price at American pumps. On Wednesday, Iran's chief negotiator told the world which of the two he thinks is working.