Trump Rejects Iran Ceasefire, Expects Renewed Bombing After Midterms

The Wall Street Journal ^ | Sept. 25, 2026 8:26 pm ET | Alexander Ward in Washington and Summer Said in Dubai

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The president is skeptical that Tehran will meet his demands

President Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, U.S. officials said.

Tehran’s proposal would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz and resumed nuclear talks in return for the U.S. lifting its blockade of Iranian ports, which is causing deep damage to the country’s economy. Trump says openly that Tehran is begging for a deal after the midterms that dismantles its nuclear program.

But privately Trump is skeptical Iran would meet his demands and has told his staff that he sees a renewed bombing campaign as likely, the officials said. 

Trump’s current position indicates the conflict’s stage—a liminal space between war and peace—is likely to tilt back toward hostilities. But the president, who has declared victory since the earliest days of the seven-month fight, alternates between pursuing diplomacy, ordering airstrikes and tightening sanctions around Iran. His views today could shift as the war drags over the coming weeks, officials said, and could be affected by the results of the midterms.

The level of strikes Trump is contemplating couldn’t be determined. He is reluctant to resume major combat operations, the officials said, partly because the U.S. wants to reserve dwindling munitions for other contingencies. But Trump has also announced massive attacks to push through diplomatic deadlocks in U.S.-Iran negotiations, sometimes following through but always stepping back from his most audacious threats, including wiping out the entirety of Iranian civilization.

Trump told the United Nations this week politics don’t enter his mind when aiming to pry nuclear fuel from Iran.

“The Republican Party is running, and I’ll be helping them, but I am not running. I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence...

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TOPICS: Military/Veterans
KEYWORDS: iran; midterms; trump; wsj

[Eli Kopter]

You have to look at it from above-God’s eye view? How is the air up there? I don’t have God’s eye view because I not God. Sorry Antioch, but your view seems a lot more like your view than God’s might be. I am sure you have faith, but Trust is hard to come by. I trust that everything that is unseen now is perfectly known by God and He will sort things out in his time.

[Jim Noble]

I don't understand why President Trump won't take every island, port and oilfield and destroy every power station, or other critical infrastructure right now

Because he lacks the means to do so.

[libertylover]

failure to continue bombing while negotiating;

Back when the bombing began, I wrote on this forum many times that, "we only lose if we quit early". We haven't lost, but the Republicans have done a poor job in reminding people that this is about the prevention of nuclear war, which has already happened at least once.

[libertylover]

failure to continue bombing while negotiating;

Back when the bombing began, I wrote on this forum many times that, "we only lose if we quit early". We haven't lost, but the Republicans have done a poor job in reminding people that this is about the prevention of nuclear war, which has already happened at least once.

[Jim Noble]

I consider that achieving what you keep referring to as "regime change" in a place like Iran would bear close to the price of regime change in Germany and Japan in 1945.

Not as burdensome, OK. A draft Army of ten million instead of 15 million. 50,000 dead Marines instead of 80,000. A 1500 ship Navy instead of 2500.

That's the Iran discount.

But regime change with the forces available? I think the idea of it is absurd, and the ease with which people speak of it as if they were talking about Granada, or Panama, or even Venezuela is just ridiculous.

Regime change means conquest and occupation of a mountainous country of 90 million people, and it therefore means raising a force of sufficient size and combat power to accomplish the task.

And doing THAT means THIS:

"the President is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the [insert preferred enemy]; and, to bring the conflict to a successful termination, all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States."

Do you think the new Congress is going to do anything remotely like THAT? Neither do I.

[Yardstick]

Mosaddegh was appointed by the Shah. He wasn’t elected by the people. He then started a bunch of shenanigans against the Shah but didn’t have the support of the mainstream so he was forced into alliances with the radicals — the Islamics and the communists. The US didn’t like that because it posed a risk of Iran and its energy resources falling into the Soviet orbit. Remember, this was the height of the Cold War. The whole Iran thing was really a proxy struggle between the US and the Soviet Union. The Soviets had their agents in Iran assisting the anti-Shah forces all the way up to the revolution in 1979 and beyond. The current alignment between Iran and Russia goes back to the Cold War era.

[bobbo666]

What a blinkered comment.

Iran was weeks away from a nuke on an ICBM that would have totally conquered the EU for total Moslem conquest.

Shia is death cult, NKorea is not even close to that.

[Antioch]

Mosaddegh was Iran’s constitutionally appointed prime minister with parliamentary backing. The Shah formally ratified the position but he was duly elected, largely on the platform to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. He ran a basic MIGA platform- Make Iran Great Again. Britain was having none of that and pressed MI6 into service to repackage the threat to the BP corporation ,
by calling Mosaddegh a communist, knowing that the CIA would take the bait which they did. Flash forward decades and watch us fall for the same scam.l only this time it’s Israel repackaging Iran as “WeEks awAY FrOm sETting OfF a NUKe oVer Washington and New York!!” History repeats-first as tragedy, then as farce.

[Yardstick]

Right, Mosaddegh was appointed by the Shah per the Iranian constitution and rubber-stamped by the parliament. The leftist narrative that he was “democratically elected” is really stretching it. He wasn’t a communist — he was a member of Iran’s other ruling family and probably had the same royalist sentiments as the Shah — but the commies supported him and he took up their positions. Nationalizing the oil industry is what commies always do. Look at Venezuela for example. Carter enabled regime change by undermining the Shah which allowed the Soviet backed Ayatollah and the IRGC to take over, with the predictable disastrous results. Iran was an early instance of the Islamic-commie axis which Trump is now fighting against.

[nathanbedford]

Although I regard regime change to be absolutely indispensable that is not to say that it is readily accomplished, hence, my comment, "regime change - however difficult that might be to accomplish without boots on the ground."

But the assumptions that have been tacitly made here are to the effect that the regime change can be accomplished only by American boots on the ground in a protracted and bloody war. It occurs to me that there are other options short of inserting the 101 airborne, a measure that Jim Noble rightly points out would never be authorized by Congress.

Again we can arm dissidents, and Kurds, sufficiently so that they can present a mass to the existing regime that must be confronted or the dissidents will simply occupy the principal positions of power and effect change. When the dissidents are confronted militarily on the ground and forced into the open, American airpower comes into play. For this strategy we do not need scarce defense missiles.

We can insert special forces, as we did in initial phases of the Afghanistan invasion, to coordinate with the dissidents and provide them with airpower. We are in the age of drone warfare (regrettably receiving as well as sending) and this should prove an effective air weapon in support of dissidents. One would expect the Revolutionary Guard to be readily destroyed once they are drawn in mass into the open.

These actions, combined with the ongoing economic, electricity, water and fuel crises caused by our blockade and bombing, might be enough to enable a new grassroots, if you will, regime to take hold. So the thesis is that regime change need not come top-down but as a well-nurtured grassroots effort.

Concededly, there is no guarantee that such a new regime will preach only the gospel but we can hope for a Venezuela style volte-face and a new modus vivendi for whatever new regime takes over. These hopes must be balanced against the recognition of the deep and intractable psychological hold Islam has over much of this population. The epiphany will not come cheaply.

The cost of this effort would be minimal bloodshed, reasonable expenditure of conventional weapons by air and by supplying them to Kurds. The major risk is to the Gulf nations that are within range of Iranian missiles fired from behind some God-knows-where mountain that cause serious damage to water and refinery facilities and will no doubt generate backlash among these nations.

At some point, tough decisions have to be made.

[Captain Walker]

President Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, U.S. officials said.

Anyone trying to engage in theological gymnastics in order to argue that this war is a "just" war need look no further than this. (If it's timed with an election cycle, it's not.)

[Captain Walker]

President Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, U.S. officials said.

Anyone trying to engage in theological gymnastics in order to argue that this war is a "just" war need look no further than this. (If it's timed with an election cycle, it's not.)

[PJ-Comix]

President Trump has rejected Iran’s proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms, U.S. officials said.

Can the IRGC regime even last that long? They are in a desperate situation NOW. Can they make it to early November? Food and fuel is scarce to non-existent. Inflation is approaching 1923 Weimar Republic levels rendering their currency virtually worthless. No wonder they are now desperate for a deal NOW. They must be punching themselves for breaking the ceasefire this past summer.

[PJ-Comix]

Anyone trying to engage in theological gymnastics in order to argue that this war is a "just" war need look no further than this. (If it's timed with an election cycle, it's not.)

Pssst! See my post above just under yours. Trump is signaling they must make a deal acceptable to the USA now because weeks of the current hell they are in will continue if they don't.

[Theophilus]

Amen!

[Theophilus]

I’m not a “boomer”, but I damn sure remember 1979 and every murderous thing the Shiites have done to us ever since, including killing and severely injuring many of my friends with EFPs in fights and territories that were not Irans. We don’t have to comb the mountains of Iran to castrate it. God willing, President Trump will castrate Iran and you can put that jingo in your bong, and smoke it!

[catnipman]

this entire article is based 100% on “anonymous officials said”, IOW rumors, which has been the almost exclusive modus operandi of the corporate propaganda media for at least a decade now, because anonymous sources can be made to say anything you want them to say ...

it’s foolish for FReepers to think that these kinds of articles are meaningful ...

[Vermont Lt]

So we get to wait another six weeks and just have the oil prices grind up; and the flow of diesel grind to a halt.

That’s a winning strategy. I am glad we have them right where we want them.

[Theophilus]

Because he lacks the means to do so.

We'll see!

[Antioch]

When was the last successful regime change of a real nation that ended beneficially for the US? Japan? And that required a nuclear incineration of two cities. Since then? What, Grenada?

Well next on the agenda will be Cuba. Let’s see if that’s a 48 hr cakewalk. My guess is a multi year quagmire like every other bright idea post ww2.

Military campaigns very rarely result in peace and prosperity for the attacker. That’s history. If an attack is short, that’s even a greater danger because it spurs on bigger ambitions, which inevitably result in quagmires. (Afghanistan to Iraq, Venezuela to Iran). The relative ease of swooping in and kidnapping Maduro probably set the cabinet level groupthink off the charts to try for an encore for nation of 92 million. And here we are with no way out and about to lose everything in the midterms. At the back of it all is overweening pride and the national anomaly of one man being given the authority to declare war without any approval from the people, on any nation he chooses. Just crazy.

St. Augustine, in The City of God, asks what gave rise to the first evil act and answers: pride. He cites Sirach’s phrase, “pride is the beginning of sin. Pride is a thousand times the “national security threat” as Iran is.