Trump’s Endgame: He needs to exit the Iran war before the FIFA World Cup

 US PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s election clock is ticking. Congressional midterm elections loom in November. The full 435-seat House of Representatives is up for re-election. Republicans currently have a razor-thin three-seat majority in the House. The latest opinion poll by CNN/SSRS projects Democrats winning control of the House by six seats.

The war in the Middle East is unpopular not only because it has led to a rise in US petrol prices but because it deviates from Trump’s America First pledge to end foreign military interventions. That was the platform Trump was elected on by his MAGA base.

Losing control of the House will be a setback for Trump. The House will likely impeach Trump for the third time. But Trump won’t lose any sleep over that. A US president can only be removed from office if he is also subsequently impeached by the Senate. Therein lies the rub. To impeach a president in the House needs only a simple majority. But impeachment—and removal— of a president in the 100-seat Senate needs a two-thirds ‘super majority’ of 67 Senators. That is Trump’s impenetrable, steel-reinforced protection against removal from office.

Democrats have toyed with using the 25th Amendment of the US constitution that allows removal of a president under specific conditions, including incapacitation. But unlike impeachment by the House, the 25th Amendment requires a two-thirds majority in the House as well, not just a simple majority. Thus, Trump is certain to serve out his full second term. There will of course be no third term. Trump has reconciled himself to that on the advice of the country’s top legal and constitutional experts.

So, what can we expect from the two-and-a-half years left of the Trump presidency? His first priority is exiting a war in the Middle East he never wanted to start. Trump was railroaded into it by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump’s own son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Netanyahu and Kushner worked closely together on the Gaza war and the subsequent fragile peace with Hamas. At a litfest last month, my session with TCA Raghavan, former high commissioner to Pakistan and Singapore, was on when the US-Iran war could end. I said it would end when Netanyahu and Kushner want it to end.

For Trump, however, an off-ramp is vital. Not only is the war unpopular with his MAGA base, it is a distraction from two major events Trump wants to extract maximum mileage from: the FIFA 2026 football World Cup that begins in the US, Canada and Mexico on June 11 and the 250th anniversary of America’s Independence on July 4, 2026.

The world’s elite footballers and their support staff will start arriving in North America in the first week of May. With travel routes through the Middle East still impaired and the Strait of Hormuz under threat, Trump needs to end the war quickly. But for Trump the Iran war must end with a clear US win. That includes Iran abandoning uranium enrichment to weapons-grade for a certain number of years and giving up control of Hormuz. These would allow Trump to exit the war with the win he craves depending on the fine print in a peace agreement between Washington and Tehran following the 10-day ceasefire in Lebanon.

In June last year during a 12-day attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, US B-2 bunker-busting bombers tried to destroy 440kg of uranium enriched to 60 per cent that Iran had hidden in silos under steep mountains. The uranium still lies there buried under debris following the US bombing but can be recovered after the war. Enrichment from 60 per cent to 90 per cent—enough to make 10 nuclear bombs—is possible in weeks.

For Trump, peace deals with Lebanon, Israel, and Iran can help repair his frayed presidency. For Netanyahu, the task is more urgent. But both men are short on time. After the November congressional elections, Trump will head into the second-half of his final term as a lame duck president. Netanyahu faces parliamentary elections later this year as well. Opinion polls project he may lose to his centre-right rival, Naftali Bennett.

Iran’s leaders know this timetable well. They have survived an unprecedented assault from a global superpower and a regional power. That allows them to claim victory with the same insouciance as Trump.