Iran’s Khamenei warns Trump loss at polls won’t end US hostility

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.

“Those who still harbour even the slightest hope that the behaviour of the hegemonic system might change through partisan or factional shifts, or who imagine that making concessions to the United States can dissuade it from hostility towards the Iranian nation, are seriously mistaken,” Khamenei said in a written statement published on his website.

Iran’s head of state, who has not appeared publicly since his father and predecessor Ali Khamenei was assassinated in a US-Israeli attack on his office in February, said 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 .

Khamenei’s statement came on the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, which Iran marks each year as the “National Day of the Fight Against Global Arrogance”.

“In the event of repeated transgression, it will take on much wider dimensions,” he said, warning that any renewed US attacks on Iran could lead to a wider conflict.

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, but argued that voters were reacting to higher petrol prices rather than the military campaign itself.

“I don’t think it’s the war,” he told Fox News on Tuesday. “I think it’s the gasoline prices.”

“People agree with what I’m doing on Iran, but they really probably weren’t willing to do the short-term consequences of paying more for gasoline.”

Trump also left open the possibility of a major new attack on Iran, telling the Fox & Friends programme on Tuesday that some people were pushing for what he described as a “heavy hit”.

“A lot of people would like to do the heavy hit. A lot of people wouldn’t,” he said.

Khamenei’s comments came as another top Iranian official struck a more conciliatory tone on Wednesday following the results of the US vote, which saw Democrats score a historic victory by taking control of both chambers of Congress.

“Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator with Washington and his country’s parliament speaker.

“If the US [government] betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare,” he added on X.

Mohammad Mokhber, an adviser and assistant to the supreme leader, said Trump had been “slapped in the face by his own people”.

“The true winner in this arena was Iran, which transferred the cost of the war into the United States,” he wrote on X.

But Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, warned that the Democrats’ victory could actually increase the risk of Trump escalating in the short term.

”He has shown a pattern in which, in face of humiliation and defeat, he becomes more reckless,” he said, adding that Trump could respond to the election by ramping up attacks against Iran out of “pure revenge”.

Parsi warned that the period between now and January, before Democrats take control of Congress, could be particularly volatile, as that’s when Democrats could try to use their new majority to restrict funding for the war.

“The combination of him running out of time and him becoming more reckless as a result of a defeat creates a very dangerous period for the next two months,” he said.

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, 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”.

Trump said the US was prepared to act, but suggested another attack might not be necessary as hopes for a negotiated solution linger.

“I’m ready, we’re ready. We’re locked and loaded if we need to go, but there may be no reason for it,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times.