'I think a part of it was Iran': Trump acknowledges war's impact on midterm election losses - Middle East Eye
US President Donald Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that the war on Iran played a part in the Republican party’s sweeping midterm election losses.
Democrats won control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, with politicians who had campaigned on their opposition to the war scoring notable victories.
In separate interviews reflecting on the reasons behind his party’s heavy defeats, Trump said: “I think a part of it was Iran… Iran was a piece of it.”
Nevertheless, the US president stood by his decision to join Israel in attacking Iran, which also went against the “no new wars” messaging of his 2024 presidential campaign.
“I did the right thing,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal. “I would have done it again.”
The US and Israel went to war with Iran at the end of February, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reportedly presented Trump with intelligence from Mossad convincing him that doing so would lead the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government.
But despite killing a slew of Iranian leaders, including former supreme leader Ali Khamenei, the government in Tehran has remained intact and the Iranian military has seized control of the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices skyrocketing across the globe.
The attendant rise in the cost of petrol and other goods at home in the US was a theme of the Democrats’ messaging, with candidates across the country blaming the war for the high cost of living.
Speaking to Middle East Eye’s Rhana Natour, Abbas Alawieh, founder of the Uncommitted Movement and candidate for the Michigan State Senate, says voters lost trust in Democratic leadership in 2024 because they were out of touch with ordinary working people in America. https://t.co/U2Jf5dukKs
Trump has chopped and changed his stated priorities for the war, which has remained consistently unpopular with Americans.
Asked after the midterm results about reports that he was considering using a nuclear weapon on Iran, Trump said: “I don’t need it, we’ve knocked them out already, 90 percent.”
In Tehran, the US election results were met with satisfaction. “Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Wednesday on X.
