Will an October Surprise Come in Tonight's Presidential Debate?

In the waning days of a presidential campaign, there is always talk of an October surprise engineered by the incumbent to hang on to office. Some are speculating that the Obama campaign will sign an agreement with Iran in which Iran agrees to halt its nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.

If that is true, then Obama's objective is to pull the rug out from under Romney by showing that he, Obama, succeeded in drawing us back from the brink of war with Iran.

With less than 3 weeks to election day, the timing of such a surprise is critical to the engineers who want to save Obama: The surprise must be close enough to the election that there is no time for the Romney campaign to recover, but far enough from election day that the message and its impact will reach throughout the public consciousness.

What would be, then, a good time for revealing such a major surprise? I think Obama might announce such a surprise in tonight's debate, perhaps in response to a Romney attack on the president's performance on the issue of Iran in general, or his slight of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Not only would such a stunning announcement on the debate stage meet the timing requirements for maximum effectiveness, it would make Romney look bad, and certainly throw him off the debate.

However, the reality of such an agreement with Iran is that Iran will not have any intention of abiding by the agreement. Obama knows this, of course, but if it will get him to Nov. 6 with the ace on the table, so be it.

Can Romney recover from that October surprise? Probably not. Swing voters will see an agreement as proof that Obama has solid control of foreign affairs, no matter that such an agreement will accomplish nothing more than securing Obama's reelection.

Obviously, concluding an agreement with Iran to stop its nuclear program, were it a real agreement on the part of Iran, as well as getting him reelected, are positive benefits for Obama, who will be happy with only the latter, if Iran is being disingenuous, but what are the benefits for Iran?

Iran will benefit from the lifting of economic sanctions, if only for the time it takes the administration to verify that Iran has breached the agreement, which, in any case will not happen until after the U.S. election.

But the long-term benefit for Iran is that it will continue to deal with a U.S. president who is indecisive as to what to do about Iran's nuclear program, and who does everything to keep Israel in check, giving Iran time to complete its nuclear weapons program.

That means that the answer to who won the American election is, of course, Iran.