President Donald Trump was able to purge his most vocal critics within the Republican Party, as Americans voted for the congressional candidates who will run in November’s midterm elections.

One of the most prominent politicians to be unseated was Representative Thomas Massie, who pushed for the release of the Epstein files.

The Democratic Party partially released a report about performance that noted “a persistent inability or unwillingness to listen to all voters”.

Host Steve Clemons asks former Trump aide Hogan Gidley, and Matt Duss – former adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders – about the challenges facing both parties.

How will Iran war fallout impact upcoming US elections? | The Bottom Line

When United States President Donald Trump measures success by counting how many Iranian leaders the US and Israel have killed or how many Iranian boats or missile launchers have been destroyed, he’s looking at the “wrong metric”, argues a former US special envoy to Iran, Rob Malley.

Malley told host Steve Clemons that the only way out of this war is “a settlement that respects our core interests, but also theirs”.

To calculate the odds of a deal, Malley said, psychologists may be more useful than experts because “it really depends on the mindset of President Trump.”

Former US negotiator with Iran: Trump falling into Vietnam trap

When the United States threatens to take over countries and destroy civilisations, “these are the wild gesticulations of a sinking enterprise”, argues Richard Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts.

Wolff tells host Steve Clemons that US leaders refuse to face the reality that the US empire is in decline. Around the world, he adds, people are “deeply internalising” the lessons from the US's inability to defeat Iran.

The people in the US are becoming “bitterly angry” at their situation, where the richest 10 percent of Americans own 80 percent of corporate stocks, making the stock market “utterly irrelevant” to the masses.

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Is the US empire in the middle of a long decline?

Israel is in a race against time to “lock in its domination” across the Middle East, argues former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy.

Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, tells host Steve Clemons that Israel’s strategy of “permanent war” allows for only two types of countries in the region: either dependent, or “too collapsed, failed and fragile to pose any challenge”.

Israel can try to block a US-Iran deal by advocating for “just one more major military operation” against Iran, and “heating things up” with constant attacks on Lebanese and Palestinians despite ceasefires on paper, Levy says.

Israel’s strategy of ‘permanent war’: A race against time? | The Bottom Line

Despite on-again, off-again negotiations, the United States has no other option but to pursue a diplomatic solution with Iran, argues Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Nasr tells host Steve Clemons that the US-Israel war on Iran has shown the limits of military force.

“You don't go to the table to demand surrender. The other side is not going to surrender because they haven't lost. So you have to cut a deal,” Nasr said, adding that Iran’s objective is to make sure the US and Israel understand that “war with Iran isn't easy”.

Has Iran exposed the limits of what US can achieve by force? | The Bottom Line

Iran will not be left alone to live in peace and prosperity “unless and until it normalises its relationship with the US and accepts Israel as a legitimate player in the Middle East”, argues University of South Florida political scientist Mohsen Milani.

Milani and former White House official Elisa Ewers tell host Steve Clemons that another major stumbling block in Iran-US talks is uranium enrichment. If that is not resolved, or a vague interim deal is made in lieu of a more rigorous treaty, “in two or three years from now, we might see the outbreak of another war”, says Milani.

What would it take for the Iran-US talks to succeed? | The Bottom Line

In this episode, experts with divergent world views agreed on one thing: it’s unlikely that the United States will resume the war on Iran.

Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton tells host Steve Clemons that he still hopes for “regime collapse” in Iran, but that US President Donald Trump has failed to achieve his goals.

In the second half, Georgetown University Associate Professor Nader Hashemi argues that the war had an opposite effect – strengthening Iran – and that the people of the region view the war “through the prism of the genocide in Gaza and what Israel is doing in Lebanon right now”.

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How shaky is the Iran-US ceasefire? | The Bottom Line

The greatest threat to stability in the Middle East is not Iran, but “the US working closely together with Israel”, argues United States political scientist John Mearsheimer.

Mearsheimer tells host Steve Clemons that the notion that the US and Israel are making a safer, more stable Middle East is “ludicrous”. And the idea that Iran is “the great destabiliser” in the region is “a myth that the US and Israel purvey”.

After US President Donald Trump insisted that “We have all the cards; they have none”, Mearsheimer says the exact opposite is true - “and that's why we are in desperate straits”.

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Mearsheimer: No signs of quick end to US-Israel war on Iran | The Bottom Line

“The US has won” because Iran has become “incapable of being a significant threat” to the United States for at least three years, argues retired Lieutenant Colonel James Carafano, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Carafano tells host Steve Clemons that even if Iran were to rebound, “Trump will just mow the grass… and bomb them back to where they were.”

The importance of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's ability to control access to it are exaggerated, Carafano argued.

Israeli ideas of changing the government in Tehran are “irrelevant”, Carafano added, “because they can’t do it without us”.

Why does Trump say the US ‘already won’ the Iran war? | The Bottom Line

“There is no good outcome” that can be gained from the United States-Israel war on Iran, argues the former ambassador of France to the US, Gerard Araud.

Responding to US President Donald Trump’s attempts to get European countries more involved in the war effort, Araud tells host Steve Clemons that “If you wanted us at the landing, you should have thought of us at the takeoff.”

Araud says the current moment is similar to the US quagmire in Vietnam in the 1960s, when the White House continued to surge and escalate, creating “an illusion” that the war was nearing a conclusion.

Why is Trump asking for Europe’s help in war on Iran? | The Bottom Line

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