Republicans blame Iran war after Nov. 3 midterm losses

Republican leaders blamed the Iran war after Nov. 3 midterm elections in which Democrats were projected above 250 House seats and took the Senate, Firstpost reported in a Nov. 6 explainer.

The result would give Democrats their largest House majority since 2008 and has pushed Republican figures including JD Vance, Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz into public fault-finding before 2028.

US Vice President JD Vance said the conflict, which began in February, was central to the Republican defeat. “The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote on X, according to Firstpost.

Vance also cited voter anger over the cost of living, inflation and the current US relationship with Israel, which receives billions of dollars in annual US aid. “But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there,” he wrote.

Firstpost also reported that Vance had begun trying to build a new political alliance aimed at disaffected supporters of President Donald Trump. Paul Musgrave, associate professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera that Vance “is trying to represent a more isolationist wing of the Republican Party, and is willing to walk away from the war and probably other commitments to win favour with a large part of the Trump base”.

Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, also faulted the war. Firstpost said Cruz argued on his podcast on Wednesday that the conflict “should have been brief, decisive, and over,” and wrote on X that it had “dragged on too long”.

DeSantis, Florida’s outgoing governor, described the elections as “close to an extinction-level event” for Republicans. He also criticised congressional resistance to releasing files tied to Jeffrey Epstein and called for stock-trading restrictions on lawmakers and executive-branch officials.

The debate has immediate foreign-policy stakes because Republican criticism is now focused on a Middle East war that party figures say damaged their voters’ support. It also feeds the early 2028 positioning of Vance, DeSantis, Cruz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Firstpost cited a Bloomberg report saying Rubio was considering leaving Trump’s administration, possibly before a 2028 presidential bid. The report, citing sources, said Rubio had not decided whether to leave his roles as top US diplomat and national security adviser, and that no timetable existed.

Rubio rejected the reports in comments to the New York Times. “It has always been my plan to work for President Donald Trump until the end of his term,” he said, adding: “I don’t know where these things come from, to be honest with you.”

Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, called the Bloomberg article “totally made up” and described The Independent’s reporting on Rubio as “completely baseless fake news,” according to Firstpost.