Vice President JD Vance has directly blamed the war on Iran for his party's heavy defeat in the midterm elections, questioning whether the conflict was worth handing control of Congress to the Democrats.
"The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night," Vance wrote in a lengthy post on X. "If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so."
He added: "Everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there."
Vance is widely seen as a likely presidential candidate in 2028 and the heir apparent to President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again movement. He has also served as a key negotiator with Tehran as Washington and Iran search for a way out of a conflict that has strained both economies and driven global fuel prices higher.
His public statements on Iran have consistently been more dovish than those of other senior figures in the administration. The post-election message appears to be the closest he has come to openly parting ways with Trump on an issue that threatens to follow Republicans as long as the fighting continues.
Citing a pollster he called "one of the smartest people I know", Vance said ending the Iran war and "changing our relationship with Israel" ranked among the top four concerns of surveyed Americans who backed Trump in 2024 but intended to vote Democratic in the 2026 midterms.
Trump struck a sharply different tone after the ballot box rebuke, telling the Wall Street Journal he had no regrets about starting the conflict. "I did the right thing. I would have done it again," he said.
The contrasting responses from the president and his deputy underscore the political strain the war has placed on the Republican Party, with control of the Senate now ceded to Democrats for the coming years.
