Another October Surprise?

The Democrats would love the Iranians to pull off their own October Surprise this year. 

Kenneth R. Timmerman | October 24, 2026

The Democrats first invented the term “October Surprise” in 1980, to describe what they claimed were secret efforts by the Reagan campaign to delay the release of our hostages in Tehran until after that year’s presidential election. 

Depending on the version you read, the negotiations with Iranian intermediaries were conducted by vice-presidential nominee George H.W. Bush or by Reagan’s campaign manager and future CIA Director, Bill Casey.

Abolhassan Banisadr, who was Khomeini’s spokesman during his brief exile in France and later became the Islamic Republic’s first president until he broke with Khomeini in June 1981, was absolutely convinced the October Surprise was real. But neither he, nor Democrat conspiracy-theorists such as Gary Sick, were ever able to prove it.

I interviewed most of the alleged co-conspirators as a young journalist in Paris in the mid-1980s, and I can tell you definitively: it never happened.

But that hasn’t stopped the Democrats from believing it was true in 1980, and continuing to attempt their own October Surprise against Republican presidents ever since.

President Trump this week accused Iran of “making up fake hits, mines, and everything else” in an effort to drive up the price of oil before the midterms.

And they have had some success, with the price of Brent crude briefly spiking to $116/barrel and West Texas crude topping $102, primarily because of supply bottlenecks in Asian markets. 

The job of Republicans and the President is to convince Americans that high gas prices are a small price to pay for preventing a nuclear-armed Iran with missiles pointed at us and at Israel. 

And those who argue Iran does not have ICBM capabilities, let me remind you: they don’t need them. 

As I pointed out........

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