Iran crows after Trump midterm poll debacle
Tehran taunted President Donald Trump over his midterms defeat on Wednesday as the US leader admitted the war against Iran was the key factor in his stinging electoral rebuke.
As thousands mocked Trump at a rally in the Iranian capital, a senior official said the Islamic republic had handed him a strategic and political defeat.
Eight months after US-Israeli strikes started the war, voters angered by rising diesel and consumer prices turned on Trump’s Republicans, who lost control of both chambers of Congress.
“The Iranian nation handed Trump a strategic defeat on the battlefield and in the Hormuz—and a POLITICAL DEFEAT in Washington,” Mohsen Rezai, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on X.
‘The reason we lost’
Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei warned the war could widen if US attacks resume, after Tuesday’s US strikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s blockade of shipping in the strait, gateway to the Gulf’s energy exports, has sent oil prices soaring, pushing up living costs.
The President said it was “largely true” that the war caused his defeat, after Vice President JD Vance said it was “the reason we lost.”
“I think it’s largely true because it drove the gasoline up a little bit short term,” said Trump, when asked about Vance’s comment.
“But at the same time, if I had it to do again, I’d have to do it again. Because long term, it’s the only answer. You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” he added.
However, Trump ruled out firing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a staunch proponent of the war, saying: “I think he’s doing a very good job.”
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday that the Iran war “must end” and suggested his party’s incoming majority in Congress could use their control over government funding to press for that goal.
‘This war must end’
“This war must end. It must end,” Schumer told journalists, later noting that the “power of the purse” is “one of the ways of deterring a president who does war without the consent of the American people.”
In Tehran, demonstrators chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” beneath a giant display declaring: “The people of Iran set the price.”
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator in talks with Washington, wrote on X: “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message.”
Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei also hailed the election results, saying Trump had been “defeated both militarily and politically.”
Fresh strikes
The midterms results could constrain Trump’s ability to enact his agenda, though the president retains the power to order new strikes.
On Tuesday, the United States launched strikes on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz, with Iranian state media reporting five explosions in rapid succession.
“They built an anti-aircraft facility … As soon as it was completed, we hit it last night very nicely,” Trump told US media, but he called it a “minor attack.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said a US MQ-1 drone was “intercepted and destroyed” over Qeshm Island. There was no confirmation from the US side.
