Tuesday Morning Politics: State of Iran War; Home Stretch to Midterms

Brian Lehrer (0:10)

It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Hope you had a great Labor Day weekend in the sunshine. If you are off, and for those of you who worked this weekend, who labored on the holiday weekend that celebrates working people, right? Thank you. And I hope everyone you served at least noticed that you were working. Thank you to all the people in the hospitality and entertainment industries who worked so that everyone else could play. Thank you always to everyone in the first responder professions and the medical and other care professions that need people every single day. Thank you to all the building staff and sanitation workers and others keeping the 365 days a year infrastructure going. And everyone else and all the other categories I left out a day after Labor Day.

Thank you if you are working.

They say Labor Day begins the sprint to the November elections every year. And so it is. Here we are in 2026, right? In the battle for control of Congress. Almost all the primaries already in the books. Election Day is eight weeks from today.

Early voting begins weeks before that. Mail-in voting as well, which may or may not be disrupted to any degree by the Trump executive order to the postal service. That's playing out in the courts. And you probably missed this even on Labor Day weekend, Sunday to be precise. The Trump administration filed a request with the Supreme Court to let its restrictive mail-in ballot rules take effect. Jonathan Lemire from The Atlantic has an article called The Real Reason Trump Wants Economic Sanctions in Iran. The Real Reason Trump Wants Economic Sanctions in Iran. Yes, Jonathan has a specific midterms theory for that, which he will share with us in just a second.

Here's a clue to what that is.

Trump telling a reporter on Friday that he doesn't even call it a war. He calls it small potatoes.

Donald Trump (2:08)

Well, I'll tell you what, a lot of people don't call it a war. I call it a military conflict because it's small potatoes for us. It's not a big thing. We did Venezuela and we did this.

In Venezuela, we lost nobody and in this we lost 18 people. And in Vietnam, you lost 100,000 people. And in other conflicts, you lost tens of thousands of people. I would say that it's intermittent. We do intermittent strikes.

Brian Lehrer (2:36)

Trump on Friday. So let's start there with Jonathan Lemire, staff writer for The Atlantic, co-host of Morning Joe on Ms Now, and author of the book about another recent election that I'm sure even he hopes doesn't offer the chance for a sequel, the book, The Big Lie, Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and The State of American Politics After 2020 Jonathan, for you as a sports fan, I'll say, happy opening day to the final innings, the fourth quarter, the deciding set, pick your sports metaphor, and thanks for helping to kick it off or tip it off with us.

Jonathan Lemire (3:11)

Well done, well done. I'm always happy to be here. And you were right, pick your sport. But this is this retort.

And this is when traditionally Americans start paying attention to an election. And we know, of course, some of these campaigns have hoped that their opinions have been baked in long ago. But this is two months. And certainly, as you say, Brian, the war in Iran looms large.

Brian Lehrer (3:38)

The article, your most recent article, unless you dropped another one in the last hour and a half or so, is called The Real Reason Trump Wants Economic Sanctions in Iran. Okay, Jonathan, please reveal what you think that real reason is.

Jonathan Lemire (3:53)

Well, first, let's talk about the stated reason, which is to bring Iran to the negotiating table in a real way. And there's some validity to this. We know that the military strikes have not worked. We know that Trump is, when he blusters and threatens more kinetic attacks, Iran has learned to call those bluffs. And yes, there has been exchange, there have been some days of possibilities, relatively low-level stuff in recent weeks. So if war's not working and the negotiations long ago broke down, and frankly, most observers believe that Iran got the better of that MOU, that Moran of Understanding that was signed a couple of months ago, that leaves the US with one card left to play, and that is economic sanctions, trying to really ramp up pressure on Iran by, at least in theory, also targeting the countries that still do business with Iran. Now, we'll see if there's real follow-through there with Russia, China, North Korea.