Symbolic imageTrump keeps Iran strike option open as Tehran vows larger response after midterms
Trump says he has no immediate plans to attack Iran, but US forces are "locked and loaded". Iran's leaders present the Democratic midterm win as a rejection of the war.
On Wednesday, 4 November, a day after the midterms, Trump said US forces are ready to fire but there may be no reason to, FAZ reports. On Tuesday he had told Fox News that new strikes were possible and called the US bombing of an air defence site on Qeshm island a "minor attack", according to Le Monde. Democrats won both chambers of Congress, and Vice President JD Vance wrote on X: "The reason we lost is the war." Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei replied that US hostility will not change through party shifts or concessions, and that any renewed US aggression would meet a response "on a much greater scale".
Tehran claims the verdict
Parliament speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X that Americans "said no to war" and warned that betraying that will would bring a "nightmare". Security council secretary Mohsen Rezaei said Trump had suffered defeats on the battlefield and in Washington.
Talks stuck on seven conditions
Rezaei wrote on Tuesday that the US response to Iran's demands was "not convincing". He said Hormuz would open only once Washington answers Iran's seven conditions fully, while Qatar, Russia and China mediate, according to the Jerusalem Post.