The Levant Files

By Editorial Team of TLF Analysis · 5 Q&A On 3 November Americans elect all 435 House members and a third of the Senate, and with them the Congress that will sit for the last two years of Donald Trump's presidency. For the Levant the vote touches four files at once: the war with Iran, US military aid to Israel, Turkey's return to the F-35 programme and the oversight Washington applies to its partners in Syria and Lebanon. By Dr. Nikolaos Stelgias · Nicosia/Pyla · 2 November 2026 1. Why does a domestic US vote matter so much for the region? Because the Iran war has been on the ballot for months. Trump launched it on 28 February, and he has since tied its end to the electoral calendar: in September he said he did not expect the war to end, or oil prices to fall, before the midterms , and more recently he predicted it would finish right after the vote . Tehran reads the same calendar in reverse. Chatham House's Sanam Vakil told AFP that Iran is using pressure o...

By Dr. Nikolaos Stelgias Analysis · Iran · Turkey · Syria · Iraq Washington and Jerusalem are arguing about how deep their bombs can reach. The harder question is whether their aircraft can still reach Iran unseen. The route a third Iran war would take crosses Syrian and Iraqi skies. Ankara has spent a year trying to put radar under that route, and Baghdad can no longer pretend it is not there. On Monday 19 October, dozens of Israeli fighter jets and tankers flew east across Syria and Iraq on a flight plan that matched a strike on Iran. Short of the Iranian border, they turned around and went home. According to Axios , Israel told Washington in advance that it was an exercise meant to deter Tehran before the 27 October Knesset vote. Some US officials read it differently: they thought Israel wanted Iran to open fire and hand it a reason to strike. The sortie answered one question and raised another. Israel can still fly the route. But the route itself is now the weak point o...