Iranian leaders claim Republican midterm losses as anti-war rebuke

Democrats weren’t the only ones celebrating Republicans’ resounding defeat in the midterm elections: Iran’s leaders also took a victory lap on Wednesday.

Iran presented the results – where Democrats made gains even in traditional Republican strongholds – as a rejection of President Donald Trump’s war and a decisive referendum on the economic toll it took on American voters in the months before the election.

“The process of the collapse of the United States has accelerated,” current Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said on an official English-language account on X.

“Conscience or cost of living, the Americans said NO TO WAR, and we support this message,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who also served as Tehran’s chief negotiator in negotiations with Washington, said on X.

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In this photo obtained from Iranian news agency ISNA, Mojtaba Khamenei (center), son of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, walks on a street in Tehran on May 31, 2019. (Hamid FOROUTAN/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)

“If the US government betrays its public desire to serve international payers and blackmailers, it will learn that our NO comes with a nightmare,” Ghalibaf added.

Khamenei, meanwhile, appeared to suggest that Iran would stand its ground rather than negotiate with the United States.

“The great Satan (the United States) wants the capitulation of the Iranian nation. The slightest inclination towards submission would result in the loss of the immense capital acquired through the blessings brought by the blood of our martyrs and the sacrifices of the entire Iranian nation,” he wrote in another article on X.

“This would encourage the enemy to launch more wars and carry out its next acts of aggression.”

The statements came after Democrats took control of Congress Tuesday night in a political bloodbath for Republicans, delivering a major rebuke to Trump after a campaign dominated by concerns over affordability and the months-long war with Iran that the president had repeatedly promised was nearing an end.

When the attacks began earlier this year, Trump said they would last a week, perhaps a little more than a month. This has been going on for more than eight months now.

Trump calls Iran conflict a ‘soft war’ and insists we hold the cards ahead of midterm elections

Iran wasn’t the only issue that drove voters to the polls — but the conflict became increasingly intertwined with Americans’ economic concerns as the war drove up energy prices and impacted the costs of gas and most goods.

Polls conducted before Election Day showed deep public dissatisfaction with the Iranian conflict.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf speaks during a news conference in Tehran, Iran, November 27, 2024. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS)

Trump himself acknowledged after the results were announced that Iran had “in part” played a role in the Republicans’ losses, while continuing to defend his decision to go to war.

Vice President JD Vance was much more blunt, writing in a lengthy X post: “The reason we lost was the war. »

“If you want to argue that it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do it,” he continued. “Say it was worth paying for. Agree or disagree, at least it’s honest.”

Other voices in Tehran also called for justification following the results.

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Iranian Parliament Deputy Speaker Ali Nikzad called the Republican losses “aftershocks” of what he described as Trump’s defeat at the hands of Iran, while a senior official in Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s office said the war and U.S. support for Israel had brought the Republicans a historic electoral defeat.

Trump entered the conflict predicting a short war.

From the first days of Operation Epic Fury, the president repeatedly stated that the campaign would take approximately four to six weeks and quickly declared that U.S. forces were “significantly ahead” of schedule. The US and Israeli strikes quickly eliminated senior Iranian military officials and damaged Tehran’s military infrastructure.

But the war proved much easier to start than to end.

Iran responded by choking commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that before the war carried about a fifth of the world’s oil supply, while launching attacks on the Persian Gulf’s energy infrastructure. Shipping through the strait came to a near halt in the first weeks of the conflict, removing millions of barrels of oil from global markets and sending energy prices soaring sharply.

Iranian attacks have damaged oil and energy facilities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and elsewhere in the Gulf, further reducing supplies. By the end of May, more than 1.1 billion barrels of crude that would normally have reached global markets had been disrupted, according to the International Monetary Fund.

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What Trump initially described as a matter of weeks instead stretched into much of 2026, as the administration struggled to secure lasting freedom of navigation through Hormuz and Iran retained the ability to threaten commercial shipping and its Gulf neighbors.

A satellite image shows the Strait of Hormuz, a key maritime passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, vital for global energy supplies. (Amanda Macias/Fox News Digital)

The economic consequences followed Americans home.

Oil prices surged after the war began, impacting gasoline and other consumer costs just as Republicans headed into midterm elections already dominated by concerns over affordability.

Even after U.S.-led operations restored much traffic through Hormuz in the fall, oil flows remained below prewar levels and Iran continued to attack commercial shipping.

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The prolongation of the conflict has also complicated Trump’s efforts to argue that the war had already achieved its central goals. In October, the president denied ever promising that the entire conflict would end within four to six weeks, saying that timetable only referred to eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat.