As the president tries to extract the US from his Iran war quagmire, leadership in Tehran is only too happy to crush his midterm dreams
In the aftermath of his devastating election defeat, the US president remained haunted by regrets over Iran.
Months before Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan, eight US servicemen died in a botched high-risk rescue mission that failed to secure the freedom of dozens of US hostages seized in Tehran.
As he addressed students and academics, keen for reflections on his single-term presidency, one of the students asked Carter: what do you most regret?
“Not sending more helicopters for the the hostage rescue,” he immediately replied, according to Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, who hosted the former president. “It was very much on his mind,” said Sabato.
Carter’s fate nearly half a century ago may also be on the mind of Donald Trump as he prepares to embark upon a midterm election campaign over the coming months, while embroiled in a military struggle with Tehran. The Iranian regime is proving equally intractable to that faced by his Democratic predecessor.
Trump’s efforts to finish the war he started along with Israel almost six months ago, on 28 February, have foundered after a ceasefire agreement signed in June collapsed – leaving Iran in control of the strait of Hormuz, a waterway that was the conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies before the conflict.
The Iranian stranglehold has pushed up oil prices, stoked inflation and raised living costs in the US, all as Trump’s Republican party already faced an uphill struggle to retain control of US Congress in November’s midterm elections.
With public support for the war running low, polls show a majority of American voters believe they are worse off since Trump returned to office in January 2025. That indicator alone has echoes of Reagan’s famous question to voters during his 1980 presidential debate with Carter: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
While the circumstances are different, Trump’s troubles have a broader resemblance to Carter’s dilemma, which began when revolutionaries stormed the US embassy in November 1979 and held 52 diplomats and military personnel hostage.
That was compounded after a daring rescue attempt the following April had to be aborted when three out of eight helicopters deployed on the mission developed mechanical faults. One of the remaining craft collided with a transport plane, killing eight US servicemen and intensifying the ignominy.
Later efforts to negotiate the hostages’ release before the presidential election failed, most notably on the weekend before polling day, when a putative deal collapsed, making Carter’s electoral defeat almost certain.
They were eventually released after 444 days in captivity, minutes after Reagan was sworn into office on 20 January 1981.
The historic parallels are imprecise, but sufficient to be perceived by both Trump and Iran’s current leaders, analysts say.
“Carter couldn’t change course, and maybe that’s what’s most applicable, because Trump can’t change course either,” said Sabato. “Carter was stuck because, after the failed rescue, the hostages were dispersed throughout Iran and there was no way to recover them.