Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade predicts a kinetic war with Iran before Labor Day

Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday predicted a “kinetic war” between the U.S. and Iran will take place prior to Labor Day, just two months before the midterm elections.

Kilmeade suggested President Trump will put economic pressure on Iran over the next several weeks, but that in the end, firepower will be necessary.

“I think the real story is what we do next in Iran. I think the president’s going to put the economic squeeze on them. I think the misery index is up to 91 percent,” Kilmeade said Tuesday on Fox News’s “The Five,” in comments highlighted by Mediaite.

“So, just my point is this: I think we end up in a kinetic war to finish this thing off before Labor Day because the Iranians need to understand who the superpower is,” he added later.

The Iran war has done damage to Trump’s polling numbers and is a concern for Republicans seeking to hold on to the House and Senate majorities in the fall. The war has led to high gas prices and raised costs on other products.

On Thursday afternoon, the average price of a gallon of regular gas in the U.S. was about $4.04, up from about $3.14 at this time last year, according to AAA.

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Monday said the Trump administration seemed to be on its “back foot” when it came to strategy in the Iran war, in spite of intense damage caused to Iran by American military strikes.

“Tactically, we have imposed a lot of pain on them through our U.S. military strikes against their air force, their navy, their militias, their ballistic missile forces — done a lot of tactical damage,” Esper said in an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill.”

Trump over the weekend said he is “low-keying it” on Iran.

In a nod to Kilmeade’s remarks about the economic pain that Iran is facing, Trump argued its economy is in bad shape.

“We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump told Axios on Sunday.