Iran sees opening after Trump midterms setback but warns of wider conflict

Iran has seized on US President Donald Trump's midterm elections setback as evidence that his war policy is backfiring, portraying the Republican party's losses as a public rejection of the conflict.

But Iran's celebration comes with a stark warning: any renewed US military action could ignite a wider regional war, threatening assets beyond the Strait of Hormuz.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who leads Iran's negotiations, wrote on X: “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said no to war, and we endorse this message.”

He warned that if the US ignored public opposition and continued the war, “it will learn our 'no' comes with a nightmare”.

Supreme National Security Council chief Mohsen Rezaei said Iran had handed Mr Trump “a strategic defeat on the battlefield and in the Hormuz – and a political defeat in Washington”.

“Anyone who takes on Iran will pay the price – from the battlefield to their own doorstep,” he wrote.

Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani said those seeking to overthrow Iran's political system were now “on the path of downfall”. Ebrahim Azizi, a hardliner in parliament, went further, declaring Mr Trump had cemented his legacy as “the most failed president in US history”.

State media also presented the result as a setback for Mr Trump. The conservative Jam-e Jam newspaper declared it “The twilight of Trumpism”, while the mainstream Hamshahri daily ran a front-page image depicting Mr Trump blindfolded under the headline “Iran's shadow over US elections”.

The phrase “lame duck”, used in American politics to describe a president whose influence is diminished towards the end of his term, has also entered the Iranian political vocabulary. The loss of both chambers of Congress has fuelled speculation that Mr Trump is entering that phase of his presidency, although he retains substantial executive and military powers.

Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, dismissed expectations of any change.

“Those who still harbour even the slightest hope that the behaviour of the hegemonic system might change through partisan or factional shifts … are seriously mistaken,” said a statement attributed to him.

Warnings of escalation

But the rhetoric of victory has been accompanied by increasingly explicit warnings of escalation.

Brig Gen Esmail Qaani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, which oversees Iran's foreign proxies, warned a renewed conflict could extend beyond the Strait of Hormuz.

The US military “should know that today the entire resistance is one front”, he said. “Otherwise, there will be a war with weapons in Hormuz and the liberation of Bab Al Mandeb [strait].”

With the Strait of Hormuz already subject to a US naval blockade and Iranian restrictions, renewed attacks by Yemen's Tehran-backed Houthi rebels could further threaten regional shipping and energy exports.

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How the Iran war cost Trump the midterms

The military warnings come as Iran signals it is preparing for further attacks rather than assuming the US election will produce a diplomatic breakthrough.

Iran's IRGC on Thursday claimed that two oil tankers and a tugboat caught fire in separate incidents in the Strait of Hormuz overnight. It also said it had seized two US Lucas-type drones after taking control of them electronically. The claims have not been independently verified.

A Reuters report before the election said Iranian officials had deliberately prolonged negotiations in a bid to weaken Mr Trump politically, while getting ready for possible US and Israeli strikes.

“Iran is preparing for renewed Israeli and US attacks, not for a deal with America to end the war,” one official said. “The clerical establishment is determined not to give Trump a political victory.”

'Another President Carter'

But there are concerns Tehran could miscalculate the consequences of Mr Trump's political setback.

Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, told CNN: “There's definitely still the risk that a president who has lost at the ballot box might feel that he needs redemption on the battlefield.

“And I think one particular problem that a lot of the regional countries, especially the ones that are involved in mediation – like the Qataris and the Pakistanis, are worried about at this point is that the Iranians are pretty determined to turn President Trump into another President [Jimmy] Carter, meaning to politically defeat him by dragging this confrontation out and not realising that now might be the right moment to try to give him a face-saving way out of this conflict,” said Mr Vaez.

“He is certainly weakened politically at home, but that doesn't mean that the United States is weakened militarily and would not be able to resume this war.”

The reference to former president Jimmy Carter recalls the 1979-81 Iran hostage crisis, when Iranian revolutionaries seized the US embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans captive for 444 days.

The crisis became a defining foreign policy failure of Mr Carter's presidency and contributed to his defeat by Ronald Reagan in the November 1980 election.

Mr Carter's difficulties were compounded by the failure of Operation Eagle Claw, a military attempt to rescue the hostages in April 1980. The mission was aborted after mechanical problems and a collision between aircraft in the Iranian desert killed eight American servicemen. The hostages were released on January 20, 1981, the day Reagan took office.

The election does not remove Mr Trump's authority to order military action.

Democrats will take control of Congress in January, giving them greater influence over military spending, oversight and the administration's foreign policy, but not an automatic veto over presidential decisions.