Donald Trump has acknowledged that the US-Israeli war on Iran contributed to his party’s heavy losses in Tuesday’s midterm elections, in which Democrats won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
“I think a part of it was Iran,” Trump told Fox News. In a separate interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said: “Iran was a piece of it.” He nonetheless defended the conflict. “I did the right thing. I would have done it again,” he told the Journal.
The war, now in its ninth month, has been consistently unpopular with American voters. Democratic candidates seized on it throughout the campaign, arguing that the conflict had pushed up the cost of fuel and consumer goods. Republicans had run in 2024 on a platform that included a promise of “no new wars.”
Trump has given mixed signals throughout the conflict on its aims and duration, at times threatening to escalate US military strikes and at other times suggesting he could end the fighting quickly.
In Tehran, the election results were welcomed. Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf wrote on X: “Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message.”
