Presidents Obama And Trump Held Competing Midterm Rallies On The Same Day. They Clashed On Iran.

At a midterm rally in the Georgian city of Perry on Saturday President Donald Trump praised his administration's prosecution of the war with Iran and attacked former President Barack Obama's policy towards the Middle Eastern country.

"I terminated one of the worst deals ever made: Barack Hussein Obama's JCPOA, or as more people call it, the Iran nuclear deal, which was a road to a nuclear weapon to Iran," Trump said.

"We obliterated Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity with Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Epic Fury. We defeated them militarily, financially and otherwise," the president continued.

Operation Midnight Hammer refers to U.S. military strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure in June 2025, whereas Operation Epic Fury was the codename for the joint Israeli-U.S. military campaign launched against Iran in February, which marked the starting point of ongoing hostilities.

Although Trump recognized that oil prices are currently "temporarily" high, he promised that they would "be falling dramatically in a short period of time as soon as that war's over." He also said that events in the Middle East were ultimately enriching the U.S. to the tune of "hundreds of billions of dollars" because of increased oil activity in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

Brent Crude, the international benchmark, surpassed $117 a barrel on Friday, its highest level since April, whereas West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, closed at above $103 on Friday, its highest level since May.

Also on Saturday, former President Barack Obama held rallies in both Cleveland, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan in support of Democrat candidates. At both rallies, Obama addressed similar talking points, praising his own deal with Iran and criticizing Trump's handling of the hostilities and their financial repercussions.

"The current president chose to make a series of bad decisions. Most importantly, he decided to start an unnecessary war that nobody asked for," Obama said in Ohio.

"Iran didn't have nuclear weapons because I had put a deal in place that everybody acknowledged kept them from getting nukes, and I didn't have to fire a missile to do it. I just had to engage in diplomacy," Obama said.

"Iran now has veto power over the Strait of Hormuz where oil goes through the the world market. This is the reason why the price of oil is up. Nobody disputes that. This is the reason the price of diesel is up. This is the reason why the price of just about everything is up," he continued.

According to the AAA, the average gas price on October 25 hit $4.29 per gallon, compared to $2.98 at the beginning of the Iran war, whereas diesel was $6.35 per gallon, compared to $3.76 at the beginning of the Iran war.

In Michigan, Obama urged voters to back Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who also praised Obama's record on Iran, and contrasted it with Trump's.

"President Obama, he contained the nuclear threat without war," whereas "Trump got us into a war we've got no business fighting," El-Sayed claimed.

The deal that Obama, El-Sayed and Trump were referring to was officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and was signed in 2015 by the U.S., Iran, China, France, Russia, the UK, Germany and the EU. The deal stipulated that Iran would limit its uranium enrichment levels and allow international inspections of its facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In exchange, the U.S. lifted significant oil and economic sanctions on Tehran. The U.S. withdrew from the deal in 2018 under the first Trump administration.

Supporters of the deal argued that it prevented Iran's development of a nuclear weapon via diplomacy, rather than conflict, whereas critics argued that important restrictions on Iranian enrichment levels were time-limited and therefore did not preclude the possibility of Iran developing a legal nuclear program in the future.