Donald Trump had a short and a long answer when asked whether the war in Iran, which the US launched along with Israel in February, was the reason for his Republican Party’s defeat in the midterm polls on Wednesday.
Trump followed up with longer sentences. “At the same time, if I had to do it again… I will have to do it again,” he added, apparently speaking of strikes on the country.
Vance said many voters who backed Trump in the 2024 presidential polls abandoned Republicans due to frustration over the Middle East conflict.
“Largely true,” he said, when a reporter at the White House mentioned Vice President JD Vance’s X post that “the reason we lost is the war”. “I think it’s largely true because it drove the gasoline [prices] up a little bit in the short term,” he said of Iran as a factor.
VP Vance says Iran war was ‘the reason’ Republicans lost midterms U.S. Earlier reporting noted: “The reason we lost is the war. Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, however, noted that even though the midterms dealt a blow to Trump, Washington’s policy towards Tehran will not shift.
Vice-President JD Vance said on Wednesday (November 4, 2026) that the Iran war was the reason Republicans lost the midterm elections, as he sought to distance himself from the conflict ahead of a possible 2028 White House run.
He said the Democrats, who now control the US Congress, should not be “destructive”. He mentioned the “veto” he has as President over the legislature’s power to change policy — a caveat he added repeatedly during the election process too. Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezai said earlier on Wednesday that Tehran had now handed Trump a “strategic” and a “political defeat”, as the Democratic Party seized control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in a historic blue wave. “The Iranian nation handed Trump a strategic defeat on the battlefield and in the Hormuz — and a political defeat in Washington,” Rezai said on X, referring to Iran’s blockade of key sea trade route Strait of Hormuz being major leverage during the conflict. He said that the American people were bearing the brunt of the financial burden of the war. “Anyone who takes on Iran will pay the price-from the battlefield to their own doorstep,” he warned. “Those who still harbour even the slightest hope that the behaviour of the hegemonic system might change through partisan or factional shifts, or who imagine that making concessions to the United States can dissuade it from hostility towards the Iranian nation, are seriously mistaken,” Khamenei said in a statement. “Should such aggressions be repeated, the war’s scope will become much wider,” he added. The president himself said so last night,” Mr. Vance said in a lengthy post on X, apparently referring to President Donald Trump’s remarks that the war was “part of it” but remained justified.
Earlier reporting noted: U.S.
