For Washington, 3 November was a day of voting and a day of statements: while Americans chose a Congress, Trump announced an end to aid to Israel and called an overnight strike on Iran a “minor attack”, and Washington and Moscow confirmed the date of talks on Ukraine. None of these three stories has ended: each has a date or a condition that will arrive later than the election results.
3 November worldwide
- $4 bn
annual US aid to Israel that Trump says will end by the end of 2026 - 10–11 November
trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi - 72 hours
the self-sufficiency period the European Commission urges citizens to prepare for - 21 November
expiry of the OFAC licence for negotiations on selling Lukoil’s foreign assets
From the review’s materials
- $4 bn
The ballot box and the microphone
US midterm elections take place in the middle of a president’s term: the House is re-elected in full and a third of the Senate is renewed. According to the University of Florida, as Anadolu cites, almost 59 million Americans voted early, against 45.9 million in 2022. The first results have already appeared: according to Anadolu, the Associated Press called the re-election of Democratic Senator Mark Warner in Virginia and the win of Democrat Roy Cooper in North Carolina, where he took a Senate seat from the Republicans. These are individual seats, not the balance of the chambers: counting in other states continues.
Earlier the same day Trump, in a phone interview with Fox News, said the US is ending its $4 billion a year in aid to Israel: he had agreed this with Benjamin Netanyahu several months ago. Asked whether it was military aid or money, Trump, as BolNews reports, answered: “Any way you want to define it.” According to the Times of Israel, the decision surprised Israeli officials, and Netanyahu did not comment on it. The current US–Israeli agreement provides about $3.8 billion a year until 2028, as The Tribune cites Fox News data, so it remains a question what will replace the payments. Trump added that Israel will be able to buy American weapons, and explained the decision politically: according to him, Democrats use this aid as an argument against Republicans.
Iran: a strike that was “not war”
In the same interview Trump said that after the elections he is “not looking to kill lots of people”, but warned that if necessary it would come to that. He called the overnight strike on a newly completed Iranian air-defence site on Qeshm island a “minor attack” that “wasn’t war”, and explained that its construction had been watched for more than two months.
Diplomacy runs in parallel. Qatari mediators passed a draft memorandum to Iran on Monday evening, the US approved it, sources of the Qatari paper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed said; Saudi Arabia and the UAE were also briefed and agreed. According to these accounts, Tehran will announce a concession on its nuclear programme and Washington the release of part of Iran’s frozen assets, simultaneously. The source contains no confirmation from Washington or Tehran.
The Strait of Hormuz already works by its own rules. Amir Hayat Moqaddam, deputy chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Committee, said that ships from India, China, Iraq and Qatar pass the strait freely and the Americans do not intercept them; by his account Tehran collects fees from Indian and Chinese vessels and lets Qatari ones through free. These are the words of an Iranian lawmaker, not a government decision: they cannot be independently checked from the report.
Abu Dhabi: a table with a date
For the talks on Ukraine the date has been named and confirmed from two sides. US special envoy Steve Witkoff announced that a trilateral meeting of the US, Ukraine and Russia will take place in Abu Dhabi on 10–11 November. Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the Russian delegation will arrive there; presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky remains the chief negotiator. The American delegation, Interfax reports, will be led by Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
While the delegations gather, in Kyiv, as RBC reports, from the evening of 3 November trams and trolleybuses were temporarily suspended because of a critical situation in the power system.
Europe prepares for three days
Meanwhile the European Commission presented guidelines on emergency preparedness, set out by Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management Hadja Lahbib. The main idea is self-sufficiency in the first 72 hours of a crisis: citizens are asked to keep a stock of essentials, and countries are encouraged to bring preparedness into school curricula.
What next
The election results will become clear as votes are counted. We wrote separately about the swap of securities for Lukoil’s assets: the licence for negotiations expires on 21 November, and the deal has a Kazakh angle — stakes in Karachaganak, Tengiz and CPC. Aid to Israel, according to Trump, will end at year-end. Abu Dhabi convenes in a week: for now that date is the only thing known for certain about the talks.
