As Republican losses in the US midterm elections highlight how unpopular the war in Iran is, all eyes are on Washington’s next moves and whether the election results could set the stage for a quicker end to the conflict.

However, experts remain sceptical, arguing that while the results will cripple the Trump administration and force it to rethink its strategy, they leave the broader US position unchanged, making a protracted war far more likely than diplomatic talks.

Democrats seized full control of the US Congress on Tuesday after a devastating defeat for Republicans, flipping deep-red states, including Texas and Kansas, that backed US President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

Trump acknowledged that the US-Israel war on Iran played a role in his party’s sweeping defeat.

“I think a part of it was Iran, but at the same time, people understood the importance of what I’ve done with Iran,” Trump told Fox News.

“The Iran thing we had to do, and we continue to do it,” he said in separate comments to reporters.

In the days following the election defeat, Trump threatened to “destroy the rest” of Iran. He previously promised to resume attacks on Iran after the election, but has yet to make a decision.

Trump held a phone call with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, on Friday and discussed efforts to de-escalate regional tensions, according to the emir’s office.

Niu Xinchun, director of the China-Arab Research Institute at Ningxia University, said the midterm elections had done nothing to resolve Washington’s central predicament in Iran: the lack of a viable path to end the war, regardless of who governs the US.

“When it comes to ending the war, the US currently has no good options, only bad, worse and worst choices,” he said.

According to Niu, there are three possibilities remaining on the table: reaching a negotiated settlement, reigniting full-scale fighting or letting the conflict drag on.

The first two options appear doomed to hit a dead end, according to Niu. Iran is unlikely to make concessions at the negotiating table – especially after the midterms, which Tehran views as a victory – while Washington is equally reluctant to back down.

“The American public may dislike war, but they hate defeat even more … The ideal scenario is ending the war through talks, but negotiations require admitting defeat – something the US currently refuses to do.”He added that military escalation was equally off the table: the initial 40-day campaign failed to achieve its objectives, leaving no reason to believe a larger strike would force Tehran into submission – especially given the resistance Trump now faces from a Democratic-controlled Congress.

“If diplomacy goes nowhere and launching another major campaign is untenable, the only path left is to drag things out,” Niu said, stressing that this option would contradict the widespread desire to bring the war to an end as quickly as possible.

“This is why Trump keeps insisting that he hasn’t made up his mind yet and will make a decision soon, yet never actually does – there simply is no good decision available for him to make.”Tehran has cast the Republicans’ defeat as proof that American voters reject Trump’s war, with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker, declaring on social media that “Americans said NO TO WAR”.

Meanwhile, Iran has warned that if attacked, it will target all assets of the “American enemy without regard to any geographical restrictions”.

Earlier, Tehran proposed reopening the Strait of Hormuz within two days if the US met its conditions – a sharp shift from its previous seven-day timeline. Those conditions include lifting sanctions on Tehran and releasing billions of dollars in frozen assets – terms Washington finds difficult to accept.

Jodie Wen, a fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy who specialises in the Middle East, said the war was likely to drag on and could result in a “protracted deadlock”.

She said the likelihood of Trump launching an all-out war had diminished given domestic political constraints, although the roughly two-month congressional transition created a “window of opportunity” for the president to act.

“Having lost Congress, Trump is effectively a hobbled, lame-duck president in an extremely vulnerable position. Even those around him find themselves in awkward spots, creating a sense that everyone is shifting into self-preservation mode.”Wen said Israel remained another crucial factor in determining Washington’s next moves on Iran.

“Supporting Israel used to be a bipartisan consensus between Democrats and Republicans, but it is not any more and has become deeply divided,” she said.

Wen added that despite a likely near-term deadlock, the war in Iran would not become another Afghanistan – a conflict that dragged on for 20 years before Washington acknowledged failure and withdrew.

“Unlike the war in Afghanistan, the spillover impact of the [closure of] the Strait of Hormuz on the region is enormous … like cancer, and it is impossible to simply let the cancer cells spread.”