"Peace Is Breaking Out Everywhere
Except the White House"
by Larry C. Johnson
"It took less than 24 hours after the polls closed for the Vice President of the United States to say what the President would not. “The reason we lost is the war,” JD Vance posted on X on Wednesday. Donald Trump, meanwhile, told Fox News he did not view Tuesday’s rout as “a hit on me” and congratulated the Democrats on doing “a good job.” Gracious in defeat, and serene in denial.
While Washington argues over who lost the midterms, Moscow and Tehran are doing something more interesting. They are talking, at length and at the top. And Israel may be about to change governments. Put the three stories side by side and you can see the outline of what comes next.
Vance reads the room: Vance did not just blame the war. He relayed a prescription from pollster Rich Baris, whom he called “one of the smartest people I know in politics.” To win back the Trump voters who went Democratic on Tuesday, the party must do four things:
End the war in Iran.
Focus on the cost of living and inflation.
Put “America First” again, meaning the original version, not the one that comes with aircraft carriers.
“Change our relationship with Israel.”
The first three are the 2024 campaign platform, returned to sender. The fourth is the one that will set Washington’s hair on fire. A sitting Republican Vice President just said in public that the party’s relationship with Israel is a political liability. That is not a sentence Republican vice presidents usually say out loud.
Vance also made a point that should end the usual post-election excuse making. The problem, he argued, was not that Republicans stayed home. It was that a large number of 2024 Trump voters showed up and voted for Democrats. Those people did not forget to vote. They changed their minds, and they told the party why. Fox News reports that Vance is now quietly courting exactly those voters ahead of 2028, under the banner of a “new right” that wants out of foreign wars, cheaper groceries and a closed border. Call it the Republican Party in exile, waiting for its own party to come home.
Meanwhile, in Moscow: Now look east. Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin spent 85 minutes on the phone with Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. Heads of state do not usually give that much telephone time to another country’s national security adviser. The official readouts were the usual diplomatic oatmeal: “regional and international developments,” with a focus on West Asia, and continued strategic cooperation under the “roadmap” agreed by the two countries’ leaders.
Then, on Thursday, Rezaei turned up in Moscow to see Putin in person. He brought a message from Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, which Rezaei said the Leader wanted delivered “as soon as possible.” You do not fly your top security official to the Kremlin days after an 85-minute call to swap pleasantries.
Iranian accounts of the meeting say they discussed post-war regional security arrangements and Russia’s support for ending the conflict. According to Rezaei, Putin said he “would provide any assistance to end the war” and condemned the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. The two sides also reached an agreement in principle to build gas pipelines from Russia to Iran. That would ease Iran’s domestic gas shortage and let it resell Russian gas to its neighbors. Pipelines take years. Nobody plans one for a country they expect to be at war indefinitely.
Something big is moving: Put the pieces together. In September, Rezaei went on Al Jazeera and set out Iran’s terms for ending the war, sent to Washington through Qatari mediators. Iran wants the war stopped on every front, including Lebanon. It wants its frozen funds released, the naval blockade lifted, and an end to US attacks on Iranian territory and US meddling in Iranian politics. Six weeks later, the man who wrote those terms has a long call with Putin, then flies to Moscow carrying a personal message from the Supreme Leader that cannot wait.
In my experience, that sequence means one thing. Iran is preparing for a negotiation and wants Russia in the room, or at least standing behind the chair. Moscow has every reason to oblige. Putin gets to play peacemaker in a war Washington started. He also gets to lock in a pipeline and transit corridor that will tie Iran to Russia for a generation. The timing is no accident either. Tehran has just watched American voters repudiate the war at the ballot box. It now has a counterpart in the White House who is newly aware that the war is costing him Congress.
Iran is not suing for peace on its knees. Rezaei said this week that Western responses to Tehran’s demands “had not been satisfactory.” But the diplomatic traffic tells you more than the rhetoric. When the security chief of a country at war spends this much time with the Russian president, he is not discussing the weather. He is discussing the terms of the next phase.
And now, Jerusalem: The third piece of news may matter most. Out of Israel comes word that Gadi Eisenkot may have the numbers to replace Benjamin Netanyahu. In the October 27 election, Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats, short of the 61 needed to govern. The opposition bloc won 48, and the Arab-led parties won 19. Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman and Yair Golan have agreed to recommend Eisenkot to President Herzog. Haaretz reported Thursday that Eisenkot has now secured a parliamentary majority, giving him the clearest path to form a government.
Nothing in Israeli coalition politics is done until it is done. Eisenkot’s majority depends at least on the outside support of the Arab parties, and Liberman wants nothing to do with them. Netanyahu, who has never met a defeat he would accept, is already crying fraud and phoning Eisenkot’s members. Whoever Herzog taps gets 28 days to form a government, plus a possible 14-day extension.
But consider what an Eisenkot government would mean for the war. Netanyahu has spent this year pushing for regime change in Tehran and lobbying Washington for more strikes. Eisenkot, a former army chief of staff, campaigned on economic pressure, limited military action and “more diplomacy alongside any military steps.” He told the Wall Street Journal he would back military action only against “direct and immediate threats to Israel.” He also wants Israel to lean less on the United States for its security planning.
That is the piece that ties this column together. The loudest voice urging Trump to renew the attacks on Iran has been Netanyahu’s. Take him out of the prime minister’s office, and the pressure on the White House to “finish the job” drops sharply. It happens just as Vance is telling Republicans to change their relationship with Israel. Washington may find Israel changing the relationship first.
Two roads out: Here is the irony. Vance’s first demand, end the war in Iran, may be fulfilled by Vladimir Putin and Mohsen Rezaei before the Republican Party gets around to it. If a settlement emerges with Moscow as its midwife, Trump can claim the peace, and Vance can claim he called it. Everybody wins, except perhaps the people in Washington who are still drafting target lists.
The alternative is the one the war party keeps whispering about: another round of strikes to “finish the job.” That would tell the voters who just fired the Republican Congress that nobody was listening. It would also tell Tehran and Moscow that the only negotiations Washington takes seriously are conducted with bombs.
Trump now has a choice he did not have on Monday. He can read the election returns and the diplomatic tea leaves and take the off-ramp. Or he can keep insisting the midterms were not a hit on him. The voters have already given their answer. Vance has written it down in four points. Putin and Rezaei appear to be drafting the treaty. And Israel may soon have a prime minister who is not lobbying to tear it up."
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