Day: October 27, 2026

7.3 million Israelis can vote until 10 p.m. local time, when the three main channels drop exit polls at once, and if those agree the shape of the night is usually settled before the real count, which runs into Thursday.

The last polls had Netanyahu’s bloc and the opposition led by former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party within a few seats of each other.

Today’s vote and next Tuesday’s midterms are the two dates the whole world has been waiting on, because everything else is frozen behind them.

A Netanyahu loss means weeks of coalition bargaining while the war decision sits in Washington’s hands alone, and a Netanyahu win means the man who wanted to strike last week gets his mandate.

Eight days, two elections, and a world on the edge of its seat.

Source: Times of Israel / Writer: Daniel

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, says he was told Iran read the incursion as bait, a push to make Tehran fire first and look like the side that started a war right before Israel’s election and the US midterms:

“They had concluded that the Israelis were trying to goad them into an attack, that this was a trap.”

If Iran had swung at the Gulf, it would have handed Israel the regional bloc it has been chasing for years.

@tparsi
Video
  Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal)🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iranian sources say Israeli jets crossed into Iran’s airspace this weekend and Tehran never fired back… because Iran decided the flyover was bait for a war before the midterms

Leaders from Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia sat in Tehran today asking for Iran’s help with the Houthis, and a blast at a radar site in Tabriz on Sunday that Iran says was leftover ordnance being detonated may or may not be connected to any of it.

Trita Parsi, who heard the airspace story from the Iranian side and is still working to confirm it, says Tehran read the whole thing as a setup:

“I think they had concluded that the Israelis were trying to goad them into an attack, that this was a trap.”

Trita says an Iranian strike on the Gulf would have handed Israel the Arab bloc it wants, so Iran sat still, and Israel going no further suggests the read may have been right.

He says Iran won’t push the Houthis off their demand to lift the air blockade even with a reported $1 billion Saudi offer on the table, and Tehran has lost confidence in Pakistan as a mediator, seeing it as passing along American messages.

He still puts a US strike after the midterms at 80 to 90%, and the one thing that could slow it is a clean Eisenkot win, since a new prime minister may not want his name on Netanyahu’s war.

@tparsi
Video
  —  https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2114864003478434243