President Donald Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that the US-Israeli war on Iran played a role in his party’s sweeping defeat in the midterm elections, as Democrats won control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
“I think a part of it was Iran,” Trump told Fox News in an interview; “Iran was a piece of it,” he separately told The Wall Street Journal.
But despite the Republican losses on Tuesday — and his campaign promise of “no new wars” — Trump stood by his decision to attack Iran.
“I did the right thing,” he said in his interview with the Wall Street Journal. “I would have done it again.”
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The war, now in its ninth month, has been unpopular among Americans since it began. On the campaign trail, Democratic candidates across the country blamed the conflict for driving up the cost of gas and other goods.
Trump has offered shifting goals and timelines for the war, alternately threatening to ramp up US military strikes and saying he could end the conflict at any time.
In Tehran, the US election results were met with satisfaction. “Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on Wednesday on X.
