The U.S.’s military intervention in Iran could roil next year’s House and Senate races in Michigan, a key battleground state that saw Democratic tensions play out last cycle over the war in Gaza.

Democratic candidates in particular there will be forced to navigate a political minefield when it comes to President Trump’s involvement in Iran, a conflict that is linked to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, which proved to be a major liability for Michigan Democrats during last year’s election.

But the conflict also raises questions for Republicans, who will need to win over Arab, Muslim and Jewish Americans statewide while navigating the Trump administration’s position on the broader conflict.

“The races next year should be really interesting, because in some ways, they're going to be a referendum on some of the key questions of who the Democratic Party is and who it will become,” said Abbas Alawieh, a senior Democratic strategist who was one of the leaders of the Uncommitted Movement last year, which sought to pressure then-President Biden over his stance on the war in Gaza.

That conflict became a flashpoint during the 2024 election, nowhere more so than in Michigan, which has a Jewish population of more than 100,000 while the Arab and Muslim American population is estimated to be about several hundred thousand in the state.

“The Middle Eastern vote, the Muslim vote in particular, has been moving slightly to the right over the last couple of elections and clearly Trump capitalized on it,” said Jason Cabel Roe, a Michigan-based Republican strategist.

“It remains to be seen that Muslim Americans, while they might not love Israel and may even hate Israel, they don’t necessarily love Iran,” he added. “And I do think that everyone recognizes that Iran has been for nearly 50 years the primary disruptive force in the region.”

The Uncommitted Movement — in which Arab, Muslim and progressive voters urged Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the primary........

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