BAGHDAD, September 30, 2026 (DAILYNWZ) — Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has urged Americans to vote against President Donald Trump’s allies in Congress as U.S. forces complete their withdrawal from Iraq, while Qatar pushes to revive diplomacy aimed at ending the seven-month-old U.S.-Iran war.
In a 26-page letter published Tuesday, the Guards called on Americans to use their political power to remove current leaders and reject U.S. support for Israel and military intervention overseas. The appeal comes ahead of the November 3 congressional elections, in which Democrats are seeking to regain control of one or both chambers of Congress.
The letter is unlikely to reach large numbers of U.S. voters, but its themes overlap with domestic issues that have become politically difficult for Trump and his Republican Party, including the cost of living and the war in Iran. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published September 21 found that only 17% of respondents approved of Trump’s handling of living costs, while 34% approved of the U.S. strikes on Iran.
The U.S. military withdrawal from its remaining bases in Iraq, completed Wednesday, marks the end of a military presence that began with the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. The withdrawal was agreed under former President Joe Biden in 2024 and carried out by Trump’s administration. Iran and allied armed groups have portrayed the departure as a victory for their regional “axis of resistance.”
The war has meanwhile continued to reverberate across the Middle East. Iranian allies, including Yemen’s Houthis, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and armed groups in Iraq, have been drawn into the conflict. Iran has also restricted tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial energy route that carried about 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows before the war began in February.
Qatar has again taken on a mediating role, with U.S. and Iranian officials separately communicating through Qatari intermediaries on Monday. “We are exchanging messages between the parties, and we’re working towards establishing a common ground in order to get into a deal that would save all of us from the repercussions of the conflict,” Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari told reporters.
Talks have yet to produce an agreement on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Negotiations intensified around last week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York, but a broader settlement remains elusive.
Iran proposed a plan that would begin a seven-day countdown toward reopening the strait and pausing the fighting. Trump rejected the proposal on Saturday, although Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Sunday that Washington had not formally conveyed its rejection through mediators.
Trump has maintained that Iran must not obtain a nuclear weapon and has said the war will end soon. “I don’t know if they are going to give up yet but they’ll give up,” he told reporters Tuesday, adding that Iran was “doing very poorly.”
Iran says it does not seek nuclear weapons and maintains that, as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has the right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The United States possesses nuclear weapons.