Trump keeps extending the Iran war. Republicans are losing patience.
Why this matters: political developments that affect policy direction and public trust.
Republicans keep lengthening President Donald Trump’s leash on Iran. First, they hoped he would stick to his initial four- to six-week timeline for the war. Then, they gave him 60 days; then, until summer. Now, battleground GOP party chairs, campaign officials and strategists are coalescing around Labor Day as their hard deadline, according to interviews with more than a dozen people. It’s different this time, they say: September is the unofficial kickoff of general election season, when more voters tune in and the stakes get higher. Amid rising U.S. casualties, gas prices and fertilizer costs, these Republicans indicated the political risk of the ongoing war is heightening as the midterms draw near. “By the first of September … it needs to be resolved,” said Dan Naylor, who runs the Lackawanna County GOP in a critical House battleground district in Pennsylvania. “You get more focused on the election at that point in time, and we need to be able to point to falling prices.” Still, Naylor said he and many other Republicans believe Trump is doing what “needed to be done” in Iran and acknowledged the president is unlikely to “draw a line in the sand” for an end date given the complexity of the situation. “I believe that voters need some time to see prices coming down before Election Day,” said a Nevada GOP strategist working on battleground House races, who – like others in this story -- were granted anonymity to speak candidly about the midterm landscape. “If we can get this normalized with some time, we’ll be okay. But if we’re looking at Labor Day coming up on us, and we still have $5 a gallon gas, we’ll be in big trouble.” A senior White House official said Friday that a preliminary deal with Iran to end the war is close but not final, putting the chances of success at 80 percent to 85 percent, as lingering skepticism hangs over the negotiations. A deal would bring a sigh of relief to war-weary Republicans — and they expressed faith that it would come to fruition.