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. But this is not the first time an agreement seemed imminent, only for the war to continue.  

The cracks within the GOP have started to spill into public view, with some candidates emphasizing the need for the war to wrap up soon, even if they agreed with its initial goals.

Rep. Ashley Hinson, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Iowa, acknowledged at a campaign event at the end of last month that the war would become a “political liability” if it drags on beyond “the next couple of weeks.” Sen. Jon Husted, who is running for a full term in battleground Ohio, said earlier this month he’s not sure how the war is going to come to an end but “it needs to,” referring to the stalled and uncertain negotiations with Iran. And Sen. Pete Ricketts, who is running for reelection in Nebraska, said on local radio this week that he wants to see “a diplomatic solution” to the war “as quickly as possible.”

In May and June, eight Republican lawmakers sided with Democrats to vote against Trump’s war powers — extraordinary breaks from the president that included some of the most at-risk Republicans on the House and Senate battlemaps, like Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and Michigan Rep. Tom Barrett. (Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie and Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who also supported the measure, lost their reelections to Trump-backed challengers earlier this year.)

Most of those Republican members, including Reps. Warren Davidson, Barrett and Fitzpatrick, defended their defections as standing up for Congress’ authority to decide the length and scope of military action taken. Massie has long been opposed to American military intervention.

“It would be nice to see some more progress on the negotiations,” said a national Republican operative working on Senate races. “The goals are worthy, but obviously, if this is continuing to go on into late summer, into the fall, it’s going to continue to present issues.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Republican hand-wringing about the war’s impact on the midterms comes at a moment when Trump has shown little interest in off-ramps in the Middle East. The president has been vocally  frustrated with Iran’s unwillingness to sign on to his administration’s demands. On Thursday morning, he vowed to strike the country “VERY HARD TONIGHT,” before reversing course later that afternoon.

He also said his goal was to seize Kharg Island, a key Iranian oil hub, in an operation that could imperil American troops, but that he doesn’t believe “America has the stomach for it.”

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who holds significant influence over the young, anti-interventionist wing of the GOP, said on his show Thursday that the president “is a spotty commander-in-chief and certainly no diplomat and obviously not a dealmaker.”

“What we’re beginning to understand, unfortunately, for the rest of us, are not just the limits of Trump, but the limits of American power,” said Carlson, who has emerged as one of the most prominent anti-war voices.

Even if the war ends soon, it could take months for gas prices to return to pre-war levels, Republicans and economic analysts have warned, increasing the urgency on Trump to exit before the last primaries wrap up.

“Veterans support Trump and what he’s doing overall, but the longer it drags out, the economic impact is a reality that we’re seeing on the ground,” said Mark Lucas, a Trump ally and founder of Veterans Action. “And that’s why we’re very supportive of President Trump getting to a peaceful resolution.”

“What good does it do us if September 15 rolls around and prices come down, but people are about to start voting?” the Nevada-based GOP strategist said.

Polling shows that support for the Iran war is weak among Americans — and many say it is making their financial situation worse, a warning sign for Republicans staring down a November election that will likely hinge on voters’ cost-of-living concerns. A recent POLITICO Poll found a majority of Americans, including a sizable share of Trump’s own voters in 2024, say he has not done enough to protect them from the economic fallout from the war.

A majority of Republican voters still approve of the conflict, underscoring their ongoing trust in the president,but that support could slip the longer it continues.

“People have short-term memories, but if challenges lag on and it starts becoming the thing heading into the fall, there’s a liability there,” said Tyler Campbell, an Iowa-based Republican strategist unaffiliated with the major races. “Urgency is kind of important right now, so hopefully it will come to a resolution.”

Since the start of the war, Republicans have offered conflicting deadlines about how long it should last. In March, Trump said the war would be a “short-term excursion”; later, he criticized Americans’ lack of patience and boasted that the Iran war was significantly shorter than World War II or the Iraq war.

Republican lawmakers and candidates, dealing with an increasingly frustrated base, have been telling voters for months that the conflict would resolve sooner rather than later, only to be proven wrong.

In March, Rep. Juan Ciscomani, running for reelection in his battleground Arizona district, told a local reporter that “everybody wants it to end as soon as possible, and that’s my objective as well.” In April, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, up for reelection in Florida, told a podcaster that “everything should be wrapped up shortly.” And in May, Rep. Brad Finstad of Minnesota told local radio he hopes the war “is addressed and ended as soon as possible.”

“We cannot be fighting everybody else’s wars,” said Susan Ruch, the Carson City, Nevada GOP chair. “I do not want it to be a forever war, and I think the Iranians, if they do not want this form of government, at some point they have to figure out how they’re going to do it.”

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