President Donald Trump’s conflict with Iran has become a political liability for his administration. Since the last U.S. strikes on Iran fell on Sept. 8, Trump has publicly ruled out attacking Iran before the November midterm elections—and promised to end the conflict after them.

Then, rumblings grew that U.S. and Israeli military planners had reportedly drawn up new strike options against Iran, including the possible use of the largest non-nuclear weapon in the American arsenal: the GBU-43/B, also dubbed “the Mother of All Bombs”. 

The targets purportedly would be Iran’s nuclear facilities and energy infrastructure, though there are doubts about whether the bomb could penetrate Iran’s most deeply buried sites. According to these reports, Trump apparently is seeking a strike he could present as a military victory and then end the war without appearing to back down. 

But such an approach risks triggering a far wider war than Washington intends. Tehran remains unlikely to let Washington end the conflict quickly and, fearing a potential attack from the U.S., could itself strike first. Either scenario could lead to a new round of fighting far more destructive than the last.

Before the mother of all bombs

Reports of military plans involving “the mother of all bombs” came against the backdrop of two other worrying developments. First, Iran has been escalating its naval attacks, likely in response to increased flows through the Strait of Hormuz. Notably, two UAE-owned cargo ships, the GFS Pride and the Cape Dao, were struck in the Strait as part of this sharp uptick.

Secondly, diplomatic efforts appear to have hit a wall. In late September, Trump rejected the proposal Tehran had put forward on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly: an end to fighting on all fronts, including Lebanon; the lifting of the U.S. naval blockade and oil sanctions; the release of some of Iran’s frozen assets; and the reopening of Hormuz within seven days. Instead, Washington insists that Iran must take steps regarding its nuclear program as part of the package, something Iranian leaders say they will only do at a later stage. 

The timing of any U.S.-Israeli attack remains uncertain. While Trump has said he will not resume attacks before the midterms, Israel held its election on Oct. 27, a week earlier, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reportedly sought renewed fighting before both elections.

American and Israeli objectives may differ, of course. Trump appears to want something he can portray as a spectacular military victory without having to undergo another prolonged war, while Netanyahu’s rhetoric about “finishing the job” suggests more ambitious goals, potentially including toppling the Islamic Republic. Tehran seems to be preparing for either scenario with its own response: a prolonged, region-wide war designed to impose devastating economic costs.

Denying Trump a short war

The dominant perspective in Tehran is that the next war must be fought in a way that makes it so costly that a future U.S. president would not contemplate another. Hossein Mohebbi, a spokesperson for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said in late September that Iran “will not stop until we have driven the United States out of the region, punished the aggressor, and established permanent deterrence so that no one will dare attack Iran.”

That logic, should it prevail, rules out a symbolic, tit-for-tat exchange. In Tehran’s view, a limited American strike on Pickaxe Mountain, the fortified nuclear site near Natanz that Trump has repeatedly evoked, followed by a limited Iranian response, would send Washington precisely the wrong message: that it can attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, register domestic political gain, and pay a limited, acceptable cost. Iranian officials have therefore warned that even a symbolic, non-lethal strike would trigger a broad response, denying Trump the quick exit he may have asked of his war planners.

Under this scenario, Iran would target regional energy and economic infrastructure. “In a region where we cannot sell oil, no one will sell oil,” Ghalibaf has warned. The UAE is particularly exposed: Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, has accused it of oil “smuggling” in cahoots with U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). Rezaei also identified new potential targets: undersea cables, data centers, and AI infrastructure in the region, which he claims are worth “more than $2 trillion.” Ghalibaf subsequently extended the threat to regional governments and investors, threatening that anyone providing “funding, equity, land, or energy” to AI companies that “facilitate military aggression” against Iran “will face coercive action.”

If raising the cost of war is the first instrument in Iran’s calculus, duration is the second. Ali Balali, an adviser to the IRGC’s Aerospace Force commander, suggested Iran would conserve its arsenal in preparation for a prolonged confrontation, rather than expend it early. Two days later, Iranian Army spokesperson Mohammad Akraminia argued that the enemy’s weak point is a prolonged war.

Timing is a third dimension in Iranian thinking. Iranian military officials have increasingly mentioned the possibility of striking first, preemptively. Akraminia stated that if Iran were to conclude that an attack by the U.S. and/or Israel is imminent, “we will certainly engage in preemptive warfare.” Mehdi Mohammadi, strategic affairs adviser to Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, went further, arguing that a successful strategy requires not only striking first but also delivering a decisive blow capable of “changing the balance.” There is thus at least the possibility that Iran might move early, and then fight long.

That could occur due to miscalculation resulting from ambiguous American and Israeli signals: leaked strike plans, carrier and amphibious deployments, and aircraft approaching but not entering Iranian airspace. Military experts in Iran see this pattern as an effort to normalize military activity and regain the element of surprise. Tehran could thus mistake military signaling for an imminent attack and strike preemptively, even though it may not want another round of war.

The fourth element concerns the range of those Tehran would hold responsible in the event of an attack. On Oct. 5 Ali Abdollahi, chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, declared that if the United States acted against Iran “directly or indirectly through Israel,” Iranian forces would retaliate against the United States. The warning carries more weight in the wake of Trump’s decision to openly back Netanyahu ahead of Israel’s election. Indeed, some in Tehran interpreted this as a signal that Washington would allow Israel to strike Iran after the midterms. As a result, Tehran has made clear that even were Israel to carry out the attack on its own, U.S. forces and assets in the region would face retaliation. 

Widening the map

This interpretation suggests that the scope of Iran’s response to a U.S. strike likely would be far wider. Its conduct in Hormuz since late September offers a preview of how it could broaden the conflict. When the UAE, backed by CENTCOM, kept oil moving through a southern corridor along the Omani coast, the IRGC shifted its attacks from small shuttle tankers to supertankers and stated that vessels using the “illegal corridor” would be “pursued and interdicted across the region.” Strikes followed off the UAE coast and near Qatar. An escalation in the region could drive Iran to go after vital energy and other infrastructure across the Gulf. 

Iran’s regional partners also could widen the conflict, although Tehran does not fully control their actions. In Yemen, the Houthis have already opened a second maritime front in the Red Sea, threatening shipping and increasing pressure on Saudi Arabia. In Iraq, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, an Iran-backed militia, has threatened to fight if Iran faced an existential threat. The conflict could also extend to Europe through indirect operations. 

There may already have been attempts in this vein: British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said a suspected September plot near RAF Fairford, a base used by U.S. bombers, was “almost certainly” directed by the IRGC. Tehran denies involvement, but the incident raises the prospect of covert operations against American military assets beyond the Middle East.

Tehran is also preparing for the possibility of a ground operation inside Iran. According to Iranian Army Ground Forces commander Ali Jahanshahi, more than 50 units are deployed along the borders, from the northwest to the Makran coast, and abandoned airfields have been identified as potential enemy landing sites. Iranian security forces have also conducted preemptive operations against Baluch armed groups in the southeast and launched drone and artillery strikes in Kurdish border areas amid concerns that they could open an internal front during an external attack.

A war meant to be the last

Both the U.S. and Iran run the risk of serious misjudgment. The U.S. may believe it can be master of the scope and duration of a war, only to find that Iran holds the key. This power means Iran need not let the conflict end quickly or painlessly.  

For its part, Tehran—which survived the fierce exchanges that began in late February, continued through April, and have since become more regionalized—may be convinced that a wider conflict this time again would establish lasting deterrence. But conditions that made this strategy relatively effective in the past have changed, partly because of Iran’s own actions.  The more Tehran expands its targets, the more it risks turning neighbors that sought to stay out of the conflict into supporters of its defeat. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have reportedly agreed to coordinate their military support on behalf of anti-Houthi forces in Yemen, while Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has offered to help defend Saudi Arabia against Houthi attacks. For the Gulf monarchies, the stakes are becoming existential: either Iran’s leverage is broken, or their access to world markets will remain dependent on Iranian restraint. 

In this way, a war intended to deter future American attacks could instead strengthen a regional consensus that Iran must be dealt a serious blow rather than accommodated or bargained with.

Ultimately, diplomacy remains the only way to prevent the gap between American and Iranian perceptions and risk calculus from triggering another, potentially even more costly round of confrontation. Without it, Washington could launch a limited strike expecting a quick exit, or Tehran could strike first fearing an imminent attack. Either scenario could trigger a prolonged regional war that the U.S. wishes to avoid and a growing alliance against the Islamic Republic for which Iran would pay a price.

During the presidential election of 1863, at the height of the Civil War, federal troops reportedly descended on polling places in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri and prevented people they deemed disloyal from voting. This prompted a fierce national debate that culminated in Congress passing an 1865 law barring federal “troops or armed men” from “any place” where an election is being held. The central goal of this law, according to its proponents, was “to prevent the President and his officers from interfering in elections,” which are run by the states. Keeping armed federal officers away from the polls, they argued, was necessary to preserve democracy, even in the midst of civil war. 

This has been the clear law, and the respected policy of every presidential administration, for over a century.

Until now. 

Ahead of the midterms, top Trump Administration officials have publicly refused to rule out the possibility of sending federal agents to the polls. In September, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed that immigration officers could be sent to polling places to “serve a warrant” as part of immigration enforcement operations or if “there is a threat” to those polling places, adding “we’ll be where we need to be.” 

“ICE isn’t there to patrol the polling places,” hedged Mullin. “We’re there to enforce specific threats.”

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel similarly said, “If there’s a reason to go there because there’s been a violation, we will, otherwise we won’t.”

It is clear to us, and to legal experts, that barring extreme circumstances, sending ICE or FBI agents to the polls would be flatly illegal under the 1865 law, and several others. As Daniel Caine, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointedly said this August, any request to send military troops to election sites would be an “unlawful order.” The same holds true for any other armed federal agents.

The only exception to the prohibition is to “repel armed enemies of the United States.” The Congress of 1865 originally included a second exception, allowing armed federal agents to “keep the peace at the polls.” But Congress repealed that exception in 1909 because lawmakers feared that federal authorities could point to any kind of disturbance as a pretext to deploy federal forces. 

In other words, unless a hostile foreign power attacks voting sites using weapons, it is a crime for any armed federal agents to go to those sites, even to quell a disruption. And they are certainly not allowed to show up for routine policing or immigration actions. 

If sending ICE to the polls is so plainly illegal, then why do top administration officials keep refusing to rule it out? Context is important. The federal government has been conducting indiscriminate and often violent immigration enforcement actions in communities across the country. At the same time, the administration has been peddling conspiracy theories about widespread illegal voting, often targeting communities of color. The administration has redirected thousands of homeland security agents away from critical transnational security threats to hunt for elusive noncitizen voters. 

These efforts are not uncovering any significant problems. Federal and state law already bar noncitizens from voting in federal and state elections, and our election system does a terrific job of ensuring that only eligible citizens vote, with vanishingly rare exceptions—as dozens of studies, election reviews, and painstaking investigations have already confirmed. 

This intimidation campaign is taking a toll. According to a University of California, San Diego poll conducted last month, a staggering 40% of voting-age American citizens expect ICE agents to be at the polls this November. Black, Hispanic, and Asian American voters are three to four times more likely than white voters to worry that they will be questioned by ICE at polls or that members of their racial or ethnic groups will face intimidation at the polls. This fear is real.

But despite all the administration’s threats, voters should not be intimidated. The law protecting election sites from federal forces is ironclad. Anyone who violates that would be committing a federal crime. Federal and state laws also prohibit any effort to intimidate voters, wherever it occurs. A broad array of civil rights groups and labor unions have already filed lawsuits to hold the federal government accountable for its intimidation efforts—including The Brennan Center, where we work. Other lawyers across the country are poised to run to court to protect elections if federal agents do unlawfully show up to polls.

Outside court, election officials, state government officials, law enforcement, and voter protection organizations are prepared to respond to any instance of voter intimidation. That includes de-escalation and backup plans, including changing voting sites if needed, to ensure that all Americans can continue to vote safely. Voters are determined and undeterred, as millions so far have already cast their ballots by voting early and by mail.

Our advice to concerned voters: make a plan to vote as early as you can. Voters have multiple options to vote with confidence. In addition to voting at the polls on election day, they can vote early in person or vote by mail ballot, dropping it off in secure ballot drop boxes, at an election office, or by mail. You can also go vote with a trusted group of loved ones or neighbors. 

It is an outrage that the federal government has refused to rule out the idea of federal agents at the polls. In our view, it is part of a campaign to intimidate voters and undermine our elections. 

The only way it will succeed is if voters don’t show up.

Recently, one of us learned that her five-year-old was forgotten at school. The teenage neighbor who usually walks him home got distracted and forgot to collect him. Luckily, it was easy enough while working from home to dash out, stop at school, and then return to the laptop as he constructed a “dino-chicken-car” with some Legos. The crisis became a non-issue thanks to remote work.

Juggling parenthood and work is tough, and it shows up in our stress levels. The American Psychological Association reports that 48% of parents say that on most days their stress is completely overwhelming—around twice as many as other adults.

Remote work seems to offer a solution. Parents can put dinner in the oven between meetings so that food is ready before kids’ hangry tantrums arrive. A youngster with a virus can sleep through it while Dad takes calls over Zoom, so what would have been a sick day turns into a mostly-productive day. The time-bind that made it feel impossible to show up for one’s kids and for one’s career can seem less, well, binding.

But, weirdly, the rise of remote work hasn’t necessarily improved parents’ mental health, and may have even harmed it. In research published in Science, we considered the mental distress of over half a million Americans, measured by taking medication for depression or anxiety, seeing a mental health professional, and other factors. We compared people in jobs that could be done from home, like software engineers and customer service representatives, to those whose jobs necessitate in-person work, like mechanical engineers and cashiers. 

If remote work were a panacea for parents, we would expect the mental health of parents in remote-capable jobs to improve a lot with the rise of remote work. But we didn’t see that result. Instead, parents in remote-capable jobs saw bigger increases in reported depression and antidepressant use than those working in-person jobs.

How can remote work, something that so many parents feel eases their days, be potentially harmful to their mental health? Two factors contribute to this phenomenon.

First, remote work blurs boundaries. When people work remotely, they are much more likely to work at odd hours, answering emails in the wee hours of the morning and returning to tinker with presentation slides late at night. It’s as though once work could be completed at home, any home-time became fair game for work-time. Being always on for work can make the time-bind pinch in new ways. Parents can struggle to feel fully present for either their kids or their work.

Multi-tasking isn’t limited to odd hours outside the workday. Recent research documents that parents who work at companies that allow remote work tend to use less paid childcare. Using less paid childcare can be great for parents’ pocketbooks and their ability to see their kids more frequently. But it also increases stress if it means that parents are trying to work while also encouraging their toddler to take a nap or their middle schooler to do their homework. 

A recent Pew Research Center survey of 2,242 working parents found that doing work-related tasks while spending time with kids was more common among those who worked remotely than those who rarely or never did. But these interruptions undermine our ability to do work, and research has traced these family interruptions to lower wages among mothers working while doing “passive” childcare. 

Multitasking is painful when it feels as though we’re failing our colleagues and our kids. Something has to give.

The second flaw with remote work is that it deepens isolation that parents already experience all too frequently. Parenting can be lonely. Much of the time that Americans spend with their families is quite nuclear, just with kids and perhaps a partner, but without many other adults around. 

Remote work is also lonely. In our study, we found that the rise in remote work in the wake of the pandemic increased time spent alone by an hour a day for people in remote-capable jobs. The combination of both working and parenting outside a communal context can translate into a shortage of adult connection. Parents toggle between kids demanding attention and work demanding attention. The small interactions with peers and colleagues that nourish us disappear. And that ends up draining us in the long run.

As a result, remote work is not yet shoring up parents’ well-being. Yet carefully constructed remote work can be a boon for parents. Several strategies would help.

First, we must re-establish boundaries. It needs to be socially acceptable to truly sign off from work. This is unlikely to stick unless leaders and managers consistently encourage and enforce it. The desire to prove commitment will be too much of a lure for many to fully disengage without explicit support from higher-ups. Instead, managers need to ensure that those who were offline during a conversation still have an opportunity to contribute. By looping them in, leaders can make it okay to be fully present with work, and at other times, with family.

Second, we must structure in-person work so that it includes parents. When parents must pick up their kids from school daily, a hybrid schedule with full days in the office and full days remote may not be especially helpful. Instead, a shorter in-person workday, where you can sign off at 3 or 4 p.m., do pickup, dinner, and bedtime, and then sign back on might work better. In-person work doesn't need to happen every moment of every day, but scheduling it during school hours can help include parents more fully. 

For dispersed teams, off-site gatherings can be a valuable way to form connections. But to be inclusive, these meetings should be scheduled far in advance, since parents most likely need to secure additional support at home.

Finally, orienting doses of in-person work around connection can help alleviate loneliness. Make time for a social lunch with coworkers, even if it’s a brief one. For in-person meetings, book a meeting room rather than defaulting to the convenience of Zoom. Advocate for a team off-site gathering. A recent experiment shows that when remote workers at a call center came together in-person just once a month, they felt more connected to one another and were also more productive given what they learned from one another.

Remote work holds the potential to improve the lives of working parents. But to do this, remote work cannot just devolve into multitasking work and parenting. And it ought not deepen the isolation of modern parenthood. Instead, we need remote work with boundaries and human-to-human connection with colleagues—including colleagues who might happen to be parents.

When shipping through the Strait of Hormuz ground to a halt in March, energy importers relearned an old lesson: a country that buys its energy as fuel, cargo by cargo, also imports every price shock. The consequences of how governments respond to this truth will soon reverberate beyond energy markets. 

Decisions made today to secure more reliable energy may help determine where factories are built, which countries manufacture the technologies powering the global economy, and how vulnerable nations remain to the next disruption in oil and gas supplies. These decisions will define which countries emerge as electrostates, with the power to shape and control future economies.

New analysis by We Mean Business Coalition published today looking at electrification across 16 countries reveals how unevenly this transformation is progressing. The United States is doubling down on domestic oil and gas production, while China is rapidly electrifying its economy and consolidating its lead in electric technology manufacturing. Others are now moving in China's direction. France plans to lift electricity's share of final energy from 27% to 38% by 2035, Canada to double its electricity supply by 2050, and Europe wants to become the world's first “electro-continent.”

Rather than simply ranking countries, the Electrification Competitiveness Index maps two dimensions: the deployment and market uptake of electric technologies, and the policies and conditions supporting further progress.

Across the 16 economies, the median score for enabling conditions is 67%, compared with 45% for deployment and market conditions. In other words, in most countries, policy is running ahead of the market. Part of that gap is a time lag, but it also shows the distance between preparing for electrification and achieving it at scale. Successful electrification requires not simply more policies, but better-aligned policies that reinforce one another and give businesses the confidence to invest.

China scores highest on deployment, with extensive electric vehicle adoption and an industrial base producing much of the equipment the world needs to electrify. It already manufactures more than 80% of global battery cells. But its transition extends well beyond transport: electricity's share of China’s final energy consumption has doubled since 2005, with electrification spreading across industry, buildings, and transport. Although much of its electricity (54%) is still generated from coal, the plan is to replace that with clean power. What’s more, given China’s manufacturing dominance, as other countries electrify, they must make a choice: where to compete in electric technology manufacturing and where they might gain more from cheaper imported equipment.

Europe is one region trying to revive industrial competitiveness while reducing its exposure to imported fossil fuels, a vulnerability the Hormuz crisis has brought sharply back into focus. Electrification is central to both ambitions. Brussels wants to double electricity's share of final energy to 46% by 2040, yet that share has been stuck at around 23% for a decade, and the economics of switching remain difficult for many businesses. In Britain, industrial electricity costs over five times as much as gas per unit of energy, while factories in Germany and the U.K. face significant grid-connection constraints. France and Spain are better positioned in several respects, with more favourable electricity prices and stronger deployment, but across Europe the challenge is increasingly one of turning established policy frameworks into commercially viable investment.

Businesses deciding where to build factories, expand production, or replace equipment must also weigh electricity costs and grid access alongside skills, suppliers, and markets. If electrification remains difficult or expensive, businesses may postpone modernisation, continue investing in fossil-fuel equipment or direct new investment towards locations offering better conditions. Over time, this could reshape Europe's industrial geography, influencing where manufacturing capacity, jobs, and technological expertise develop.

In the U.S., existing deployment provides a foundation for further electrification, but policy reversals and infrastructure constraints raise questions about momentum. More than two terawatts of generation and storage are waiting in interconnection queues. Washington's focus on expanding fossil-fuel production risks leaving American manufacturers competing in a global market whose growth is increasingly driven by demand elsewhere.

For developing economies, electrification offers a different prospect: the opportunity to build modern energy and transport systems without first replicating the fossil-fuel infrastructure that wealthier countries are now spending heavily to replace. Ethiopia is already showing what is possible, with rapid electric vehicle adoption despite electricity reaching only around 60% of its population. Indonesia, the Philippines, and South Africa face greater barriers, including limited grid investment and electricity systems still dominated by fossil fuels.

Seizing those opportunities will depend on access to finance, reliable grids, and policies suited to each country's circumstances. Without them, emerging economies risk investing scarce capital in infrastructure that may become increasingly expensive to operate or eventually replace.

As this global shift evolves, economies powered increasingly by domestically generated electricity become less exposed to global fuel markets, but more dependent on access to batteries, electrical equipment, minerals, and the technologies needed to build and maintain their infrastructure. The concentration of manufacturing capacity in a handful of countries creates vulnerabilities of its own. Yet a dependency on equipment you buy once is very different from a dependency on fuel you buy every month. When a shipping lane closes, a fuel-importing economy feels it within days. If solar panel exports stopped tomorrow, the panels already installed would keep generating for decades.

Electrified economies also need far less energy in the first place. Burning fuel in engines, boilers, and power stations wastes around two-thirds of the energy that goes in, mostly as heat. Electric motors and heat pumps do the same work with a fraction of the input. So electrification does not simply swap one import for another; it can shrink the energy bill. The European Commission estimates that meeting its 2040 target could cut E.U. spending on fossil fuels by up to €260 billion a year.

This presents governments with a different industrial and energy-security challenge: not simply how quickly they can replace fossil fuels, but whether they can build the electricity systems, industrial capabilities, and trading relationships that make the transition economically resilient. Climate policy and industrial strategy are becoming impossible to separate, as the technologies needed to cut emissions also become central to economic competitiveness.

When governments meet in Antalya, Turkey, for COP31 in November, the U.N. climate conference president will push for a global goal to raise electricity's share of final energy from around 20% today to 35% by 2035. That shift deserves greater attention than it is getting. The transition from fossil fuels to electricity will not end competition over energy resources and technologies. It will change what countries compete for, what they need to import, and where economic power is concentrated. The electrostates of 2035 are being built now.