Obama Says Iran Is “In A Stronger Strategic Position Now Than Before The War Started”

With midterms right around the corner, Democrats are capitalizing on Trump’s unpopular war in Iran. At a Saturday campaign rally in Michigan, former President Obama said Iran “now has veto power over the Strait of Hormuz,” the route oil takes to reach the rest of the world. “So they’re in a stronger strategic position now than before the war started,” he said.

NOW – Obama says that Iran is “in a stronger strategic position now than before the war started.” pic.twitter.com/0nCKTKg7CF

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) October 24, 2026

Obama spoke on the first day of early voting in Michigan, where he took the stage at Cass Technical High School in Detroit to boost Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. His stated agenda included the need to “end this war and stop corruption in Washington.”

Obama also made the Iran case earlier in the day at a Cleveland rally for Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton. There he called it “an unnecessary war that nobody asked for and nobody voted for,” per Fox News, and asked the crowd, “how’s that war going?” after saying “seven months later,” according to Newsweek. He also called Trump administration officials, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth among them, “not serious people.”

On the nuclear file he said “Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons because I had put a deal in place” and that Trump “pulled out of it, starts this war,” as PolitiFact recorded. PolitiFact’s account of the 2015 deal: Iran agreed to give up about 97 percent of its enriched uranium stockpile and about 70 percent of its centrifuges, and the IAEA found no violations beyond minor ones in the 28 months the deal ran before Trump withdrew in 2018.

In June, Obama told NBC’s Today that “it feels like we’re back where we were before we started the war, except maybe a little bit worse off,” the Washington Examiner reported. Now the argument is that Iran came out ahead.

The strait is where the claim gets tested. In mid-October, flows out of the Gulf of Oman fell to 9.1 million barrels a day, from an early-October peak of 17 million, according to UBS Evidence Lab data. LNG flows were about 25 percent of pre-conflict levels, down from near 50 percent a week earlier, and the bank counted no Iranian crude loadings.

Iranian drones had hit 24 commercial ships in October as of Oct. 14, and two Emirati container ships, GFS Pride and Cape Dao, sank within 24 hours, as we reported. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told state TV: “We target five or six of these every night.” NPR reported in August that Iran aims to ban U.S. and Israeli ships from the strait and charge everyone else a toll.

Critics rejected the premise. Hudson Institute’s Rebeccah Heinrichs replied that the regime is missing “its Ayatollah, its missile force, its nuclear scientists,” and listed its oil-shipping capability, covert tanker fleet, navy, steel sector and currency stability among the losses, PJ Media said.

Trump is scheduled to campaign for Senate candidate Mike Rogers in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday afternoon, per the Epoch Times.