Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has said that anyone expecting a shift in the United States’ policy towards his country is “seriously mistaken”, hours after midterm elections dealt a blow to President Donald Trump. His comments came as other Iranian officials struck a more optimistic tone on Wednesday, following the results of the US vote, which saw Democrats score a major victory by taking control of both chambers of Congress. He said that Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz had shattered the “myth of America’s invincibility”, and warned that any renewed US attack would draw a far wider response.
Trump himself has acknowledged the US-Israel war on Iran that began in February likely impacted his Republican Party’s poor performance in the elections, saying voters were probably not ready “for the short-term consequence of paying more for gasoline”. Khamenei said Iran’s confrontation with the US had reached a point where “every day and every hour” had become a time of resistance against “the Great Satan”. His message was to mark the National Day of the Fight Against Global Arrogance, which falls each year on November 4, the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran.
The supreme leader described Iran’s management of the strait and what he called the elimination of US military bases in regional countries as a reaction to US “aggression and crimes” during the war. The supreme leader struck a “cautious” note on Wednesday, warning that a party shift in the US would not persuade Washington to abandon its hostility against Iran, noted Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar Atas, reporting from Tehran. This contrasted with a more celebratory mood among other Iranian officials reacting to the Republican defeat, Atas said.
Mohammad Mokhber, an adviser and assistant to the supreme leader, said Trump had been “slapped in the face by his own people”. Judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei wrote on Telegram: “Trump was defeated both in war and in politics; we will certainly impose further defeats on him; this is still only the early outcome.” He added that November 4 “has always been a day of defeat for the Americans” and honoured “the dear martyred students of Minab”. Mehdi Tabatabaei, deputy head for communications at the president’s office, said Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, “blind adherence” to Israel’s interests and the “futile war” with Iran had handed the Republicans their biggest defeat.
Atas said Iranians believe a Democratic-controlled Congress could restrain Trump and make him “less reckless” over the war, with some Republicans wary ahead of the 2028 elections. But some in Tehran fear that because officials have framed the result as a defeat imposed by Iran, Trump could “personalise the matter” and launch a new round of war “in an act of revenge”. The US has warned it could carry out a short but intensive military campaign against Iran after the midterms.
Hamidreza Moghadamfar, an adviser to the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said Iran would hit targets beyond US bases if Gulf states allowed Washington to launch attacks from their territory. Speaking at a rally in Bandar Abbas, he named the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and said Iran would respond with a “new doctrine and new technology”.
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