Bowen: Trump's loss limits powers at home, but it will likely be different abroad

Donald Trump deals in superlatives, so there is political karma in the sheer size of the defeat handed to him by a big majority of the voters of America.

But do not expect him to go gentle into the political twilight of his career. Losing both houses of the US Congress limits his capacity to dictate, manoeuvre and disrupt at home.

Abroad it is likely to be different.

As president of the United States and commander-in-chief of its armed forces he retains broad powers to use America's military might.

It is not easy to predict the actions and oscillations of Donald Trump. As president, he has turned policy u-turns into weapons. Some things, though, are constants.

One is his contempt for those he regards as losers, and his determination never to be seen as one.

The president might be tempted to blot out the electoral rout of the midterms by taking actions abroad. He might try to make moves that he can boast about as the decisive and victorious moves of a strong president, undiminished by an election that he insists, despite all the evidence, that was only lost because he was not on the ballot paper.

In the weeks leading up to the midterms the deployment of US forces and Trump's own, often belligerent, statements ramped up talk that the US was getting ready to go back to war with Iran.

On the eve of the elections, the US carried out a limited bombing raid on an Iranian island in the Gulf.

Before he was hospitalised with a stroke, the US Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, went to a classified briefing about potential military options for renewed war with Iran.

Without going into detail, he condemned the plans as "insane", warning that they would trigger a "devastating escalation".

There has been speculation that the Americans have plans to bomb civilian infrastructure.

Not only would that be likely to constitute a war crime, it might also be answered by devastating Iranian strikes on equivalent targets on US allies in the Gulf. Its list of potential targets could start with the United Arab Emirates, which is as close to Israel as it is to the US.

The regime in Tehran watches political developments in the US closely. It has not concealed its satisfaction that the consequences of its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz have become a domestic political issue in the US.

Tehran is aware of the damage caused to Trump and the Republicans by the sustained rise in the prices of everything (from petrol and diesel to agricultural fertilisers) caused by the war and its attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Speaker of Iran's parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted a warning on social media.

He said: "Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message. If the US govt betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare."

Benjamin Netanyahu, now acting prime minister of Israel after its election last week, and manoeuvring hard to form a new government, has repeated that he wants to bring down the Islamic regime in Tehran.

Reports in Israel and the US say that he is pushing Trump to go back to war.

Netanyahu does not have the seats to form a new government with his outgoing coalition.

But if a major war restarted and was sustained, and if Israelis came under direct fire, he could have new options of forming a unity government that he would use his considerable political skills to dominate.