Vice President J.D. Vance blamed sweeping Republican losses in the midterm elections on public discontent over the U.S. war with Iran, in an apparent break with the Trump administration, which has repeatedly claimed victory in the costly conflict.
“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote in a lengthy social media post Wednesday morning after Democrats won control of the U.S. House and Senate during Tuesday’s elections. His comments came after President Donald Trump on Tuesday night told The New York Times that going to war with Iran was a “very wise decision,” and that Republicans largely lost because he was not in the race.
Though votes were still being tallied as of Wednesday afternoon, Democrats had secured enough victories for a majority in Congress, flipping Senate seats in historically red states like South Carolina, Texas and Kansas.
“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so,” Vance continued on X. “But everyone knows why we lost,” he added, calling for “honest conversation” about the country’s next steps.
Public support for the Trump administration’s war with Iran sank in July, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, which found that just one in three Americans supported the conflict. The poll also found that four in ten Republicans — and 69% of Americans — did not think Trump had “clearly explained the goals of U.S. military involvement in Iran.”
The U.S. military has spent more than $47 billion on its war with Iran, Reuters reported last month, a number more than 25% higher than the Defense Department’s July estimate. That estimate included $6 billion to replace military equipment lost during the war, such as aircraft and drones, and more than $29 billion to replace costly munitions.
The war has depleted up to two-thirds of the Pentagon’s missile-defense interceptors since July 2025, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis, leaving the U.S. military with fewer available for future conflicts. The analysis found that rebuilding those stores could take at least five years.
Trump has reportedly been polling his advisors on whether he should fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CBS reported Wednesday afternoon. Hegseth has been the subject of increasing scrutiny over the Pentagon’s handling of the war, with some lawmakers previously calling for him to be impeached.
Hegseth has blamed the war’s mounting costs on former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and prior Pentagon leadership.
“The amount of neglect, the amount of stale thinking and bureaucracy was staggering when we took over,” Hegseth told senators during a July hearing to request additional emergency funding — $67.1 billion — for the Iran war and other department expenses, such as the National Guard deployments to the U.S. southern border and Washington, D.C.
The U.S. launched its war against Iran on Feb. 28, and since then, more than 860 troops have been wounded and at least 23 have been killed, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System.
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