Washington.- U.S. President Donald Trump assured this Tuesday that the midterm legislative elections being held this coming November do not influence his decisions regarding the war with Iran and the tension surrounding the Strait of Hormuz.
“(Iran’s actions around the strait) will probably have no impact on me. I’m just going to do the right thing,” Trump stated during a meeting with his Lebanese counterpart, Joseph Aoun, when asked if Tehran is trying to influence the elections through threats regarding the strategic maritime passage.
“I do not contemplate it as if elections were going to be held in a specific period of time,” he added.
The president rejected that the proximity of the legislative elections on November 3, in which the Republican majority in Congress will be at stake, conditions his strategy regarding Iran: “Everyone says: ‘You are doing this before the elections.’ I cannot think that this has anything to do with that. I think people are very happy,” he noted.
The Trump administration faces the crisis with Iran at a time of internal political pressure, with the president’s approval affected by the economic impact of the conflict and rising energy prices.
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According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, conducted at the end of April, only 34% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the presidency, the lowest level of his second term.
On the other hand, the rise in gasoline and diesel prices since the start of the war with Iran has so far meant an additional cost of about $71 billion for U.S. consumers, according to a study by Brown University.
Democrats denounce transparency of injury figures in Iran
For their part, Democratic congressmen and senators denounced that the Trump administration has hidden the figures of those wounded in the Iran war, hours before Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appears before the Senate.
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Democratic Congressman Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, denounced in a CNN interview that Trump is not sharing casualty data from the Iran war with Congress.
After it was learned that three U.S. service members died last week as hostilities with Iran resumed, concern among Democrats over the cost of a war that has been dragging on since last February 28 is growing.
“We have never had a situation where we were at war and the president treated it as if it were his own war, without having to share information with the American people or with Congress,” Smith stated.
We recommend reading: Trump says November elections do not affect him regarding the Iran war
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer stated on the floor that “it is a disgrace that Pete Hegseth has hidden the casualty figures in the Iran war from the American public.”
“Yesterday we learned that the Pentagon did not disclose that our troops suffered nearly a hundred wounded during the final weeks of the war against Iran,” denounced Schumer, who demanded that Hegseth, Rubio, and Trump immediately inform “Congress in its entirety about the state of the war. To both Chambers. To both parties.”
Hegseth, and General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appear this Tuesday before the Senate Appropriations Committee to request an additional $87 billion to cover the costs of the war with Iran.
The U.S. military leadership has not appeared before the press since last May.
