Author: ELENA BECATOROS/JOHN SEEWER n Riyadh
Iranians on Wednesday struck a defiant tone, celebrating US voters’ rebuke of President Donald Trump in the midterm elections while many in the West Asia waited to see how the results could affect the Iran war.
Concerns about the war, particularly frustration over rising prices for fuel and other goods in the US, helped Democrats win control of both chambers of Congress in Tuesday’s vote, a sharp setback for Trump and his Republican Party. Iran’s supreme leader said those who think partisan changes in the United States can change its hostility toward the Islamic Republic are “gravely mistaken.”
In a letter shared on his social media account, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who hasn’t been seen publicly since the war began in late February, said: “If there are still those who harbour even a slight hope for a change in behaviour or partisan and factional shifts within the system of domination, or who imagine that by giving concessions to America they can dissuade it from hostility toward the Iranian nation, they are gravely mistaken.”
The broader region has been on edge for weeks over the prospect of the US resuming military operations against Iran for the first time in almost two months.