WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials have told several Middle East countries and regional allies to be prepared for potential renewed military action against Iran after next week’s midterm elections in the United States — as well as the possibility that Iran will attempt to retaliate against them, according to two diplomats briefed on the matter.
Both of the diplomats spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment about the sensitive warnings conveyed by U.S. diplomats and defense officials.
President Donald Trump has not made a final decision on whether to carry out new strikes against Iran, the diplomats stressed. The president, however, has repeatedly said that he is weighing ordering new military action once the critical Nov. 3 elections in the United States are over.
Those threats and the fresh U.S. urgings for allies to prepare for potential retaliation are putting the region on alert that a return to major operations could now be on the horizon.
The White House and U.S. officials declined to comment.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Wednesday in a post on X that Tehran “continues to give diplomacy a chance to succeed” and is working with mediators to review ideas that Tehran included in a proposal floated last month — summarily rejected by Trump — that the Iranians still want to see used as the basis to return to a ceasefire.
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates foreign ministry issued a statement urging the sides to “exercise wisdom and pursue political solutions to help contain tensions” and prevent a return to full-scale operations in the war that began in late February.
The U.S. has told regional allies that the new round of military action could last for several days, but regional officials are bracing for Iran and its proxy groups to retaliate — leading to a fight that could last even longer, the diplomats said.
The allies have also been urged by U.S. officials to take precautionary measures in anticipation that Iran's response will include retaliatory strikes on energy facilities and other crucial infrastructure.
While the U.S. has not carried out a strike against Iran since early September, the situation in the Middle East has become more complicated.
The conflict has spread, with Iran-backed Houthi rebels carrying out attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure and airports. A Saudi-led coalition has responded with its own deadly attacks on Houthi-held territory in Yemen.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Gulf nations being briefed to be prepared for potential escalation by the U.S.
It's unclear how soon after Election Day that the U.S. military would be ready to potentially resume strikes.
The Pentagon late last month deployed the USS Theodore Roosevelt, along with a series of amphibious landing ships with Marines aboard -- roughly 9,000 troops in all -- from San Diego to the Persian Gulf to bolster the U.S. military in the region.
At the time, one U.S. official said this deployment could lead to an unusually high naval presence of more than 20,000 sailors and Marines, as well as hundreds of aircraft, in the region, which has only occurred a handful of times in the last two decades. The Navy had three carrier strike groups in the Middle East in April for the first time since 2003.
Trump, who has focused in recent weeks on campaigning for Republicans ahead of the Nov. 3 elections, has been evasive about what he plans to do next with Iran.
The war has proved to be a heavy weight on Republican candidates as they make their case to voters who are fatigued by rising gasoline prices, a byproduct of the war that's driven up costs across nearly every sector in the global economy.
The cost of fighting the Iran war to American taxpayers has grown to $47.1 billion, according to the latest estimate the Pentagon has provided to Congress.
While campaigning for Republicans, Trump has consistently assured voters that the war’s end is near, while also threatening that a new round of bombing could be coming once the election passes.
During a campaign stop in Lubbock, Texas, on Tuesday, Trump said a conclusive end to the eight-month-old conflict could be coming “in a couple of weeks, if you don’t mind.”
“Somebody asked me before, when will the war in Iran end?” Trump said earlier in the same address. “I said, ‘Whenever I want it to end.’ It’ll be very quick, but we have to have it end properly, with total and complete -- a total statement, they will never have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump may be looking at a postelection timeline for possible action, but the region is on edge that Tehran could do something provocative before then -- especially if they feel U.S. actions is imminent, said Jonathan Schanzer, executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank.
“Why would they wait until after the elections here ... if they could initiate it and potentially gain the upper hand?” he said.
Magdy reported from New York. AP writers Konstantin Toropin and Seung Min Kim contributed reporting.
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Donald Trump told Texans they'd better accept data centers in their communities and floated making Venezuela the 51st state as he stumped for Republican Ken Paxton on Wednesday, while Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico said a “corruption crisis” plagues U.S. politics.
Social media videos believed to be produced with artificial intelligence and linked to Russia are misusing real people’s names and photographs to spread disinformation about two Democratic Senate candidates in the final stretch of midterm voting.
And Republicans have spent an estimated $183 million on television ads focused on transgender-related attacks against Democrats as Americans go to vote, betting that struggling GOP candidates can leverage the divisive cultural issue to overcome concerns about Trump’s leadership and the state of the economy.
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The Georgia senator, who doubles as the senior minister at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, is rousing the capacity crowd at a metro Atlanta arena as if it’s his Sunday morning congregation.
The election is “about the character of the country” and “spiritual wickedness in high places,” Warnock said, blasting Republicans from Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson to Georgia’s leading Republican candidates.
“They have made Jesus a victim of identity theft,” he said of Republicans who’ve backed healthcare cuts alongside tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals.
He specifically called out Johnson for his public piety.
“You can’t pray over the people” and then “prey on the people,” said Warnock, a potential 2028 presidential candidate.
He added that Trump’s second presidency “is a crime syndicate operating out of the Oval Office.”
Warnock is speaking ahead of Georgia’s Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms and former President Barack Obama.
The Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan told reporters after an event in a Detroit suburb that he wanted U.S. tax revenue to be spent “to build schools and opportunity here, rather than sent abroad to drop bombs on anybody.”
“I don’t think we should be funding foreign militaries generally,” El-Sayed said. “That’s Israel. It’s also Egypt. It’s also Saudi Arabia and Qatar and UAE,” referring to the United Arab Emirates.
His answer was in response to a question about a controversial ad published by Rebellion PAC, which El-Sayed disavowed, that features two people saying they can’t afford groceries because their money needs to go to Israel’s military.
“That has nothing to do with our campaign,” El-Sayed said. “It’s certainly not what I want to be talking about right now.”
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs says the Justice Department’s list of 405 supposed noncitizen voters in the state is “deeply flawed.”
The DOJ on Monday sent Hobbs a letter asking him to make sure election officials don’t count any ballots turned in by those people unless the state can confirm they’re valid voters. It followed a similar request in California and was the Trump administration’s latest attempt to sow doubts about the election.
Hobbs responded Wednesday, saying a cursory review reveals that many on the list are U.S. citizens, not registered to vote or have inactive registrations. Hobbs said that without proof of ineligibility, it would be “irresponsible and illegal” not to process ballots from registered voters.
The DOJ said the 405 suspected noncitizens had voted more than 1,500 times. Hobbs’ office noted that one person on the list last voted in 1994. The state has processed more than 113 million ballots since then.
The Federal Election Commission says access has been restored to a website for online filing of campaign finance disclosures.
The website was taken offline without explanation on Monday. The website for searching already-filed reports was unaffected by the outage.
Hecklers yelled “go home” and “you lied about your citizenship” while filming the Democratic candidate for Senate before being escorted out by security.
The crowd chanted “USA” to drown out the protesters and El-Sayed led the crowd in singing a short snippet of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” by Steam.
El-Sayed is speaking to a crowd of about 120 in a live music venue in Wyandotte, Michigan, a southwest suburb of Detroit that sits along the Detroit River.
Asked about Bolsonaro’s assertion that he won the presidential elections in Brazil, the U.S. president said he would not comment.
Instead, Trump said he has given Bolsonaro a “pass” to come into the country.
“I won’t get involved,” Trump said. “It was a very strange election, that’s for sure.”
The president made the comments in response to a New York Times report that Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign was involved in an effort to recruit a second Dan Sullivan to run against Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan in a bid to confuse voters.
Trump, making the comments to reporters on Wednesday as he prepared to fly to Ohio, called it “voter fraud at the highest level.”
“It turned out it was a scheme by the Democrats. That’s what they do best: They cheat,” Trump said.
Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton responded Wednesday to waves of GOP television ads that suggest he protected a predator.
Hamilton, who is in a tight race against Republican Sen. Roger Hamilton, is senior pastor of the nation’s largest United Methodist Church. Republicans are highlighting two cases of an adult leader’s alleged sexual abuse of teenage boys at annual church camps in 2005 and 2006.
“They’re desperate and they are twisting the truth,” Hamilton said after a Topeka campaign stop.
The church investigated the 2005 incident but didn’t report it to authorities, and the man returned in 2006. After the second incident was reported, the local prosecutor did not pursue criminal charges.
The church has since required all incidents to be reported. Hamilton said the church should have gone to authorities in 2005 and he made a mistake in not personally checking to see that the man didn’t return in 2006.
A lawsuit filed Tuesday against Cobb County election officials says about 2,900 voters are “on the brink of disenfranchisement” because they haven’t received the ballots they requested. The county contracted with Fort Orange Press, based in Albany, N.Y., to mail out the ballots.
The company did not immediately respond Wednesday to messages seeking comment.
The lawsuit alleges that ballots reported as “issued” after Oct. 5 have experienced an “unprecedented lag” and says the “only plausible explanation is a breakdown in the out-of-state private vendor’s ability to deliver ballots to voters in a timely fashion in accordance with state law.”
A lawyer for Cobb County said in an email that the county disagrees with the scope of the problem but agrees there were some ballot delivery delays. He said a notice was put on the county website instructing affected voters how to request a new absentee ballot to be delivered by express mail with prepaid return express delivery.
The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday announced that goods by the Chinese biotech company BGI are prohibited from entering the U.S.
BGI Group, based in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, is a genomics and biotech company that develops genetic sequencing technologies for research, healthcare and commercial use, the federal agency said. It has controlling stakes of BGI Genomics and MGI Tech. All three are added to a blacklist by the Department of Homeland Security under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
The law that took effect in 2022 bans imports of goods made with forced labor in China’s ethnic Xinjiang region.
BGI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told U.S. President Donald Trump in a telephone call that Turkey was monitoring developments in the Strait of Hormuz and Yemen and supporting diplomatic efforts to resolve the issues, according to the Turkish presidential communications office.
During Wednesday’s call, Erdogan also told the U.S. president that Turkey was ready to help revive negotiations between Ukraine and Russia aimed at ending the war.
The two also discussed efforts to strengthen ties between Turkey and the United States ahead of the next year’s centenary of their diplomatic relations, the communications office said in a statement.
A State Department official says Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pulled down plans to travel with President Donald Trump to a midterm campaign event in Ohio later Wednesday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Rubio’s schedule had never been formally released, said “as often happens, schedules change and the secretary is no longer traveling with the president today.”
The official gave no reason for the cancellation of the trip, which would have been Rubio’s second campaign-related journey with Trump in two days.
On Tuesday, Trump coaxed Rubio onto the stage in Corpus Christi, Texas, and his top diplomat made very brief nonpolitical comments about how he was honored to serve the country and work for Trump.
Secretaries of state have traditionally avoided domestic politics for protocol and legal reasons and Rubio appeared to tread a fine line at the Texas event, which coincided with an announcement of a major delivery of crude oil from Venezuela, an issue on which he has been intimately involved.
—- Matthew Lee
A federal judge on Wednesday said the Trump administration can’t run its government-funded pro-Trump ads for now, siding with Democrats who had sued over the TV spots.
The Democratic National Committee had argued the ads were illegal government-sponsored propaganda.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan’s temporary restraining order has little practical impact before the election because the administration was already ordered to temporarily stop airing the ads in a different case.
But the ruling is another blow against the administration in its efforts to promote Trump’s political message in the final stretch before the midterms.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has met with counterparts from Australia, Japan, India and other nations in the Philippines for annual defense talks among Southeast Asian countries.
Speaking at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference, Hegseth said the U.S. would defend its interests and its allies in the region, while their respective navies would keep cooperating.
“These are not symbolic things, they are concrete demonstrations of what serious partners do,” Hegseth said. “Serious partners train together, learn together, plan together and build the confidence and competence necessary to prevent conflict.”
Hegseth met with Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh to discuss the progress of a defense partnership, which has included information sharing and a recent joint exercise, the Pentagon says. Hegseth also met with Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr. to discuss recent military cooperation.
The Federal Reserve kept its key rate unchanged Wednesday at about 3.9% despite elevated inflation, while providing little hint about the central bank’s next moves.
“Inflation remains elevated,” the Fed said in a statement released after its two-day policy meeting. Holding off on an increase will allow “the accumulation of more information” that will help determine what policy the Fed should pursue “to ensure a timely return of inflation” to the central bank’s 2% inflation target, the statement said.
The Fed, led by Chairman Kevin Warsh, raised its benchmark rate last month for the first time in three years, defying President Donald Trump’s demands for rate cuts, in an effort to get inflation back to its 2% target in a “timelier” manner. The Fed is tasked by Congress to combat inflation, and it does so by lifting rates to slow borrowing and spending and cool price increases.
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The civil rights groups argued in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Northern California that the administration’s systemic effort to comb records looking for rare instances of noncitizen voting targets naturalized citizens but not people born in the U.S.
They argued that’s a violation of those citizens’ rights.
“The Unlawful Voter Initiative therefore subjects naturalized and derivative citizens to investigatory scrutiny related to voting qualifications that natural-born citizens do not face,” the lawsuit argues.
The lawsuit is one of many against the initiative and comes as the Trump administration is using the list to try to force California to set aside up to 20,000 ballots from what it suspects are noncitizens.
A federal judge in Oakland has already ordered the administration to stop using the program but the administration is appealing that ruling.
DelBene does not dispute that her party’s prospects have been boosted because “people are hurting from the broken promises from Republicans” and the Trump administration.
But while campaigning for Democrats in Ohio, DelBene said she’s met voters who have bought into the party’s own ideas about countering Republicans.
“Absolutely, people are also voting to have representatives who are going to fight for them and fight for the future of our communities,” she said.
Would-be Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and many Democratic nominees have pledged legislation to restore Affordable Care Act tax breaks, reverse Republican Medicaid cuts, hold votes against the Iran war and undo Trump’s tariff regime.
DelBene said Democrats will “focus on lowering costs, making sure that folks in our country have healthcare, making sure that we have a House of Representatives that’s standing up to corruption and actually doing its job as an independent branch.”
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., is in Ohio campaigning for Democratic nominees, incumbents included, as her party tries to flip the House.
“We are gonna take back the majority, and we’re gonna have a strong governing majority,” DelBene told AP, while stopping short of a specific number.
Democrats’ battleground includes 92 districts nationwide: 26 they hold now and 66 Republican-held or newly drawn by GOP legislatures. Republicans held a 220-215 advantage before state-level redistricting that Republicans hope yields several more seats.
Democrats’ battleground list includes many districts Trump won by double digits, even 20 points.
“We’re gonna win in some of those,” DelBene said, saying Democrats have recruited nominees “who are deeply connected to their communities, who are authentic and independent-minded and have crossover appeal.”
DelBene also will campaign with Democrats in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, who is running for reelection, said during a news conference in Little Rock, Arkansas on Wednesday that he is confident the GOP is going to take the Senate and House majority.
“It’s nip and tuck all around the country, but we’ve got great candidates running,” Cotton told The Associated Press during a news conference about a bill he introduced to jam cellphone signals in prisons.
Cotton joined Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr in Little Rock to announce an upcoming vote on the Cellphone Jamming Reform act to help stop contraband phone usage in correctional facilities.
“For the last two years, we’ve been able to take important public safety initiatives like this one here today to protect our communities from contraband cellphones,” said Cotton who was optimistic about a “successful” midterm election in November.
The figure from U.S. Central Command, provided to Congress and obtained by The Associated Press, offers the most up-to-date cost for the conflict since it was launched by the United States and Israel eight months ago.
The latest price tag shows a $3.5 billion bump in spending since early September, when the figure stood at about $43.6 billion.
The growing cost of the unpopular war and its economic ripple effects on energy prices could hurt Republicans in next week’s midterm elections.
Trump has said new strikes on Iran are an option after the midterms and is sending more military resources to the Middle East, despite initially promising Americans a military campaign that would last only a matter of weeks.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is on the campaign trail to try to shore up his razor-thin Republican majority.
His campaign said he’s visiting 21 districts across 13 states, starting Tuesday through Election Day, stumping for both challengers and incumbents in narrowly divided districts, including many he’s visited before.
On Tuesday, he campaigned with New York Rep. Mike Lawler. On Wednesday, he was to campaign with Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry and Derrick Merrin in his challenge to Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur in Ohio.
On Thursday he’ll be in Wisconsin with Rep. Derrick Van Orden and Arizona with Rep. Juan Ciscomani. Friday he’ll be in Pennsylvania with freshman Rep. Ryan Mackenzie.
He’s also campaigning for Reps. Zach Nunn of Iowa and Jen Kiggans of Virginia, and challengers Michael Bouchard in Michigan, Greg Cunningham in New Mexico, Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina, Eric Conroy in Ohio and Michael LiPetri Jr. and Jeanine Driscoll in New York.
A plan to give Americans easier access to unproven peptide drugs favored by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was opposed by most Food and Drug Administration scientific staff members, according to six people familiar with the policy’s development.
The people spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential government deliberations.
The document covers certain injectable peptides popular within the wellness industry. It recently underwent regulatory review at the White House, typically the final step before publication.
FDA drug staffers warned it could undermine the agency’s longstanding mission of keeping unproven health products off the U.S. market, according to the people familiar with its development.
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Opposition presidential candidate Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro arrives at his election night event after the presidential runoff in Brasilia, Brazil, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026.(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Attendees listen to Democrat James Talarico address supporters at a rally for his U.S. Senate campaign in Lubbock, Texas on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Lekan Oyekanmi)
Former President Barack Obama, center, joined by Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Abdul El-Sayed, left, and Democratic gubernatorial nominee and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson raise hands during a campaign event at Cass Technical High School Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026, in Detroit.(AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters as he arrives on Air Force One, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
