President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended the war with Iran as worth its political price, even as he conceded it helped sink Republicans in Tuesday's midterm elections — and offered no clear answer on when, or how, it will end. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump agreed with Vice President JD Vance that the war had hurt the party at the ballot box, but insisted it would not change his course.
"I knew the war was going to impact it," Trump said. "But whether it impacted it or not, Iran can't have a nuclear weapon." Asked whether the conflict had been worth it, he replied, "I do. Yeah. I mean, well, you have no choice," according to Anadolu Agency. "The Iran thing we had to do, and we continue to do it."
"Largely true": Trump sides with Vance
Trump called Vance's long post blaming the war for the defeat "good," and said the vice president's diagnosis was "largely true because it drove the gasoline up." Still, he said, "if I had to do it again, I'd have to do it again because, long term, it's the only answer," adding that "as far as that war is concerned, I would have done nothing different." He also blamed the result on his own absence from the ballot: "we weren't able to transfer the love to candidates."
"Whenever I wanted to"
The ambiguity deepened when reporters pressed him on a timeline. Asked when the Iran war will end, Trump answered in three words.
"Whenever I wanted to," he said — adding, according to TASS, "but it's got to be done right, and we're never going to let them have a nuclear weapon." When a reporter reminded him that he had said the war would end immediately after the midterms, Trump pushed back.
"I didn't say that," he replied.
A war of shifting messages
The remarks add to a string of shifting statements. On Monday, Trump told Fox News, "This isn't a war. This is a very soft war," and in a radio interview in late October he predicted fuel prices would "drop like a rock" once it ended, NBC News reported. In a Wall Street Journal interview on election day, he said "Iran was a piece of it" but "I did the right thing. I would have done it again."
The U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28. A June memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran called for an immediate halt to hostilities, but U.S. strikes resumed on the night of July 8 over disputes on the Strait of Hormuz, TASS noted. Democrats, who will control both chambers of Congress in January, have already vowed to act: "We will pass a bill to stop the Iran war," Rep. Ted Lieu said on Wednesday. Later in the day, Trump told CNBC he could work with the new Democratic majorities on "many more things than people understand."
Videos: White House remarks, 4 Nov 2026. Photo: The White House / Wikimedia Commons (archive)
