TEHRAN -- Iranian officials on Wednesday said the U.S. midterm elections results constitute a public rejection of President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, with Parliament Speaker Muhammad Bagher Ghalibaf warning Washington that any attempt to override the voters’ will would carry severe consequences.
“Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message,” Ghalibaf, who also serves as Iran’s chief negotiator in talks with the United States, wrote on X. 
“If the U.S. government betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare.”
The remarks came after Democrats captured both the Senate and House of Representatives in Tuesday’s vote, a result widely attributed to voter anger over soaring living costs and the economic fallout of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, now in its eighth month. 
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei addressed Trump directly in a post on X, saying “the American people have now sent you a clear message”. 
“Pride comes before a fall,” Baghaei wrote, saying Trump dragged the United States into an “unlawful and atrocious war against Iran” out of “greed and hubris” and in the service of Israel’s “deceitful regime”. 
He said Trump’s calculations have failed and his strategic misjudgments have become “painfully clear,” adding the U.S. administration fundamentally misunderstood Iran and underestimated the resilience, determination and national pride of the Iranian people. 
Baghaei warned that if Trump continues to “disregard reality, dismiss the lessons of history, and persist in this dangerous course,” the consequences “will extend far beyond” what Washington has already witnessed. 
“Attacking Iran does not bring victory. It only results in defeat,” he added, saying Iran could not be intimidated by threats or brought to its knees through aggression.
Central Bank Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati linked the election outcome to Iran’s economic resilience, saying that a month after the central bank’s currency intervention, experts could better assess its effects on the market. 
He said efforts to engineer Iran’s economic collapse within two weeks instead led to the “political expulsion of Republicans from American legislation”.
Deputy Parliament Speaker Ali Nikzad told lawmakers that U.S. sanctions havefailed to break Iran’s economy or force its people to surrender. 
“The enemy’s efforts to bring down Iran’s economy have failed time and again,” Nikzad said, adding: “These defeats are the aftershocks of defeat at the hands of the Iranian people.”
Judiciary chief Gholam Hussein Mohseni Ejehi wrote on X that “Trump failed both in war and in politics. We will certainly impose even more defeats upon him”.