US President Donald Trump has acknowledged that the war on Iran played a role in the sweeping losses his Republican party suffered in the midterm elections, which saw Democrats seize control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Candidates who had campaigned against the war were among the night's most notable winners. Reflecting in separate interviews on what drove the heavy defeats, Trump said: "I think a part of it was Iran.. Iran was a piece of it."
Even so, the president defended his choice to join Israel in attacking Iran, a decision that ran counter to the "no new wars" message at the heart of his 2024 presidential campaign. "I did the right thing," Trump told the Wall Street Journal. "I would have done it again."
The United States and Israel launched their war on Iran at the end of February. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reportedly presented Trump with intelligence from Mossad that persuaded him a strike would push the Iranian people to rise up and topple their government.
That scenario did not unfold. Although the campaign killed a string of Iranian leaders, including former supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the government in Tehran remains intact. Iran's military has taken control of the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices surging worldwide.
The resulting spike in petrol prices and the broader cost of living in the United States became a central theme of Democratic messaging, with candidates across the country pinning the economic pain squarely on the war.
Trump's stated aims for the conflict have shifted repeatedly, and the war has remained consistently unpopular with the American public. Asked after the results about reports he had weighed using a nuclear weapon against Iran, he replied: "I don't need it, we've knocked them out already, 90 percent."
In Tehran, the election outcome was greeted with satisfaction. "Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message," Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X on Wednesday.
