Fox News hawks who suggested in June that President Donald Trump should “slow-walk” the Iran war to preserve the GOP’s political standing in the months leading up to the midterms and then resume combat operations after Election Day are now predicting that major U.S. strikes are imminent.

“The thing that's going to get the president's attention — I don't care whether he keeps both houses [of Congress] or doesn't, or loses both — is going to be Iran,” Fox & Friends co-host Brian KIlmeade said on his Fox News Radio show Thursday. “He wants to get this thing done before January to start his final two years, and then you’ll watch oil and gas go down, along with foreign fertilizer and especially diesel.”

If such predictions come to pass, those MAGA pundits will have encouraged what amounts to an effective hoodwinking of the electorate by a president who deliberately deprived voters, who broadly oppose the war, of critical information about his intentions to resume it.

The Iran war marked the most consequential test yet of the Fox-Trump feedback loop, with the network’s coverage and its hawkish hosts playing a critical role in encouraging the president to launch the operation in February. While the war’s supporters tried to declare the war a victory almost immediately, it quickly settled into a costly stalemate after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, sending the prices of oil and gas soaring.

After Trump’s June signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Iranian regime that largely failed to resolve the U.S. war aims, right-wing hawks called for a new strategy of holding off on the war to limit Republican defeats in the election, then resuming combat.

Fox’s Mark Levin suggested on social media that the U.S. “consider slow walking the enemy, building up our munitions, our oil reserves, get the price of gasoline down, get through the midterms, then knock them out.” His colleague Hugh Hewitt agreed, adding that it would be “right and proper” for Trump to be “factoring in the realities of domestic politics” because GOP control of Congress “isn’t just a political goal for Republicans, it’s critical to the national security.”

Brian Kilmeade was even more direct about the strategy. “The closer it gets to the midterms, I think the less likely the president [is] to act,” he explained to his Fox & Friends co-hosts. “But after the midterms, the gloves come off.”

This line of discourse initially struck me as a way for Fox’s Iran hawks to cope with Trump backing away from the war they had demanded without criticizing him. But ultimately, the administration seems to have followed the plan the hawks laid out, keeping the war, which is deeply unpopular with the public, under wraps until after the elections.

The memorandum of understanding frayed over the summer and then expired — and Trump did not respond by ordering the resumption of combat operations. That reduced the war’s salience in the months leading up to the vote. At Fox in particular, Iran coverage cratered as the network’s commentators focused on subjects more unifying for the right.

And four months after Kilmeade predicted a return to combat “after the midterms,”, with Election Day in sight, his prophecy seems on track to be fulfilled. The Pentagon recently bolstered U.S. forces in the region and reportedly provided Trump with plans for major Iran strikes. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who has been briefed on the plans, describes them as “insane” and likely to trigger “devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law.”

The Iran hawks who urged Trump to tamp down on combat operations until after the midterms seem aware of what action the president intends to take.

Kilmeade’s comments on Fox last week followed similar statements on his radio show in recent weeks.

“We seem poised to go back to war after the midterm elections,” he said on October 23, later adding: “My sense, after the midterms, there's a plan in place to go back in, even though the oil has gotten up almost to pre-war levels in the Strait of Hormuz.”

“I think the president is really thinking about going back in right after November 3 and finishing it off,” Kilmeade further claimed last Monday. “This is what I hope. I want a bunch of different military plans and executions. I want the president to push on this plan to make it effective. Understand that they’re going to bomb our bases and go for the pipelines.”

Hewitt and Levin have been somewhat less specific, even as they broadly insinuate that new strikes are on the horizon. Hewitt said on Thursday that “the Iranian regime will be going away soon”; earlier in the month, he said he doesn’t “expect the president to keep the guns holstered.” Levin, meanwhile, has suggested that the increase in U.S. forces means “something is stirring” and claimed that “Iran is going to be addressed further is what I'm reading and seeing.”

Other well-connected Fox hawks have further suggested that the U.S. will soon return to combat operations against Iran.

“I do not believe President Trump will pass this problem to his successor,” senior strategic analyst Jack Keane, a retired general, said on the network last week. “He's going to finish it. Asked whether “America and Israel have a plan to go after Iran, in Iran, to finish it … [and] take that action imminently,” Keane replied, “I don't think we would wait too long to do that.”

And Sean Hannity, confronted on Thursday by a radio caller disenchanted with Republicans, told that caller: “Gas prices will drop. This war in Iran will end sooner than later. I'm telling you.”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters