US Vice President JD Vance says Iran war is 'the reason we lost' midterms 2026; Trump responds

United States Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday blamed the Iran war as reason for Republicans' loss in midterm elections 2026. 'If you'd like to argue it was worth it,' he said, 'then do so'.

The statement comes as Democrats are riding their sweep of Congress into a new era, eager to meet voter demands for change with plans to tackle high costs of living and confront US President Donald Trump's final years in the White House.

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"The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night," Vance said in a post on X.

Speaking on the US election results, Iranians struck a defiant tone, celebrating American voters’ rebuke of Trump while many in the Middle East waited to see how the results could affect the Iran war.

However, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father and former Supreme Leader was killed in the opening strikes of the war in February, dismissed the prospect of any major change in the US approach to the Islamic Republic.

“If there are still those who harbor even a slight hope for a change in behavior or partisan and factional shifts within the system of domination, or who imagine that by giving concessions to America they can dissuade it from hostility toward the Iranian nation, they are gravely mistaken,” he said on social media.

Vance blamed the war for the Republicans' electoral losses, saying voters who backed Donald Trump and him in 2024 switched to Democrats in 2026 over the conflict.

In a post on X, Vance said the main problem was not voter turnout but the defection of Trump-Vance voters who were unhappy with the administration's policies.

Also read: From Iran to trade, how the US midterms impact the rest of the world

Vance cited polling by a pollster he described as having accurately predicted the results, which found that voters who had abandoned Republicans identified four key reasons for doing so: ending the war, focusing on the cost of living and inflation, putting America First, and changing the US relationship with Israel.

"Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats," Vance said.

He added that Republican turnout had been stronger than expected in several states, with Florida's electorate being nine percentage points more Republican than Democrat, only a couple of points below its 2024 composition.

Vance acknowledged that the party could have done better on turnout in some places but maintained that it was not the primary reason for the losses.

Vance also criticised suggestions that Republicans should respond to the losses by supporting amnesty, arguing that such proposals would not address the reasons voters had turned away from the party.

He said an honest discussion about the party's future must begin with acknowledging the impact of the war on its electoral performance.

Trump responds to Vance comments on Iran war

Speaking to reporters about Vance blaming the war with Iran for the Republicans’ defeat in the 2026 midterms, Trump said, "I'll get along, with the Democrats, unless they want to be destructive. But they have the power of the veto, so we don't like what they're doing. But they've already called, and they want to talk about things."

"You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. You have no choice," he said, adding that he thought the oil would go up a lot more, and he took the decision on that basis.