Israel and the US are both going to the polls - the consequences will be global

In the next week, two sets of elections will be held on two continents, the outcomes of which could have profound consequences for the world.

By a fluke of electoral timetabling, millions of voters around 6,000 miles apart will unite in exercising their democratic rights within days of each other.

Voters in Israel go to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new parliament; a week later, voters in the United States will elect a new Congress.

A former speaker of that Congress, Tip O'Neill, may have once said that "all politics is local". But the consequences of these elections will undoubtedly be global.

For these elections are not just proximate, they are intertwined.

The future governance of Israel will have a lasting impact on the Middle East and wars raging across the region.

And any change in the electoral map of America could shape not just those wars but also the future of the global economy.

Between the two there is a physical connection: the lobby group Republicans Overseas Israel estimates about half a million Israelis with American passports can vote in both polls.

Marc Zell, the group's chairman, said these electors could influence tight races in the US, such as the Michigan senatorial contest, in which he estimated 10,000 absentee ballots would be cast from Israel. "They can really make a difference," he told the BBC.

But the policy connection is perhaps deeper - and most acute regarding the US-Israeli war on Iran. The massive aerial attack, which began in February, destroyed many military targets and killed much of Iran's leadership. But it failed to overthrow the regime which hit back hard across the Gulf and seized control of the Strait of Hormuz and much of the world's energy supply.

The Iran question

The sheer fact of the elections has already shaped decision-making.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used the campaign to talk up the possibility of launching a fresh attack on Iran.

He has made new claims – without providing evidence – about Iran's nuclear threat, insisting again the Islamic regime must be overthrown.

His aim: to shore up his reputation as a security leader, which took such a battering after the deadly 7 October Hamas-led attacks on Israel.

US President Donald Trump has added to the speculation of renewed attacks on Iran by endorsing Netanyahu's re-election campaign, saying both men should "soon finish the job" in Iran.

Yet for all the sabre-rattling, there have also been contradictory reports that Trump intervened to restrain Netanyahu from attacking Iran before polling day, fearing a fresh spike in energy prices would remind US voters of his unpopular war.

So might an attack on Iran, then, be delayed until after the elections? Israel's media is full of speculation Netanyahu could try to engineer his survival by attacking Iran as caretaker prime minister after the election.

He would argue, so the theory goes, for a government of national unity – involving him – rather than a coalition between opposition parties. Netanyahu has long been seen as a great survivor of Israeli politics. If he were to lose power, he would face an official inquiry into his actions before the October 7 attacks and renewed legal proceedings involving allegations of corruption.

So real is this speculation that Netanyahu's rival, the former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, has already ruled out joining any unity government. Like all mainstream Israeli politicians, Eisenkot sees Iran as an existential threat to Israel and supports military action against the Islamic regime. But he has explicitly warned against escalating the war for political purposes.

'Legacy mode'

Certainly, Trump may be more willing to attack Iran after the midterms if he is unconstrained electorally and hoping to extract himself from the war with one more push. Some analysts believe Iran is so economically weak from the war and economic sanctions that a fresh round of military strikes might encourage Iranians to overthrow the regime. Others see this as yet more wishful thinking. It is a strategy that has repeatedly failed, but still has currency in Washington.

"After the midterms, he will be in legacy mode," one well-placed Western diplomat told me. "He will want to show agency on anything that is not the quagmire at home."

In Israel there is a broad consensus across most parties about the threat from and the need to constrain Iran. But if voters elect a new government, they might have a prime minister with less political and personal investment in fresh attacks.

In those circumstances, Trump has suggested his thinking may change, too. "If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi [a nickname for Netanyahu], America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so," he wrote on social media.

Little wonder policymakers in Tehran have been following US opinion polls as closely as any analyst inside the Washington beltway. The risk, of course, is that any post-electoral strikes would plunge the Middle East into fresh chaos if Iran were to retaliate hard.

Publicly and privately, Iranian officials have threatened to hit airports, pipelines, undersea cables, energy facilities, desalination plants as well as US bases and warships.

Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote in the Financial Times that new attacks would put "civilian lives and the wellbeing of all regional states and the global economy at great risk".

It's the economy

The two elections again intertwine around the global economy. Affordability and cost of living have dominated campaigning for the midterms, issues made worse by Trump's war that raised prices as Iran choked the flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz.

The economy is also an election issue in Israel, where voters face high costs and low wages. But here, too, the war plays its part with soaring defence spending putting even more pressure on the public finances.

Trump has sought to appease voters ahead of the midterms. He has lifted sanctions on Russia, hoping in vain that by importing diesel from Moscow, prices might fall significantly. He has been taking a tough line with Ukraine, calling on its leadership to make concessions in the hope – also so far in vain – of claiming a foreign policy victory.

But Republican ire at his controversial strategy is growing. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a frequent critic of Trump, told CBS News: "If the President wants to actually bring down energy prices, he can do it by solving the Iran problem, not by doing a solid [favour] for Vladimir Putin."

One consequence of the Iran war – along with Israel's military operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank – is that traditional bipartisan support in the US has fractured. Abdul El-Sayed, the left-wing Democratic candidate for the Senate in Michigan, campaigns on cutting military aid to Israel. "An ally that takes your money, to push you into wars you shouldn't be fighting, is not an ally," he told ABC News.

The US and Israel initially attacked Iran to destroy its ballistic missiles, degrade its nuclear capability, weaken its support for proxy militias and even oust the entire regime. Since then its war aims have changed to reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Brad Lander, a Democratic congressional candidate in New York who also sits on the left of his party, chose even to travel to the West Bank only days before polling. He helped Palestinians harvest olives and was briefly detained by Israeli forces, all grist to his social media electoral mill. In the history of US politics, this is not normal. Even Netanyahu is warning that Israel may in future have to survive without a US security blanket.

Of course, if Israel's prime minister were to lose, his departure would end a scratchy bromance that has seen Trump blow hot and cold. Last week the president called his Israeli counterpart a "great warrior prime minister". During the summer, he said Netanyahu was "effing crazy". A new Israeli leader would have to forge a new relationship with an outgoing US president, a very different dynamic.

If the Democrats were to win greater control in Congress, that might place some check on blanket US support for Israel. Congress has traditional powers that it can use to restrain military spending. It could also cut military aid to Israel. But as president, Trump would retain significant executive power – and a veto – to continue prosecuting the conflict as he saw fit.

The decision by Israel and the US to go to war with Iran earlier this year transformed the global economy and international geopolitics. The choices voters in both nations make in coming days may shape where the world goes next.

Top image credit: Getty.

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• US midterm elections 2026
• Benjamin Netanyahu
• Iran war