After US President Donald Trump reiterated that his party lost the midterm elections because of the US-Israeli war on Iran, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi asked him to respect the wishes of the American people and end the war now.

“They did not like the war. They did not like the fact that gasoline went up, ‘cause I had it down at a low, there’s-a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel,” Trump said during a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday, while underlining reasons why Republicans lost the November 3 midterm elections.

Though Trump did not directly blame Israel for the war, Araghchi pointed out that people’s disgust with Israel is rooted in the fact that it has been largely seen as the reason behind the war.

Trump “clearly recognizes that the vast majority of Americans are disgusted with Israel” which has bamboozled successive “US administrations into forever wars,” Araghchi said in a post on X on Monday, November 9.

Earlier, US Vice President JD Vance had also blamed relations with Israel for the war on Iran, claiming it caused unpopularity for the Republican party in the elections and called for changes to those relations.

Araghchi affirmed there should be no further delays and the war should end as both the people in the US and the people of West Asia have seen and suffered enough.

Replying to a related question about the possibility of restarting the war, Trump contradicted his own statements made earlier on Wednesday and Thursday, claiming he is not looking to escalate the war as there is no reason for it now.

He further said that Iran’s nuclear program is practically over as they do not have any nuclear material left, and he “has stopped them from having a nuclear weapon.”

Trump claimed that though there is no need to strike Iran now, if such a need arises in the future, for example to attack Pickaxe Mountain (an alleged Iranian nuclear site) “we would have that done in one hour.”

Strait of Hormuz

When asked about the cost of the war and the deployment of US assets to protect navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, Trump claimed that the Strait was open.

He also claimed that all its allies in the region, including Israel, would not have survived without the US support and therefore they are going to pay for all the costs the US has incurred in the war and managing the traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has repeatedly denied US claims about the Strait being open. It has targeted dozens of ships trying to cross the Strait with the US help and claimed only ships coordinating with Iran are allowed to cross it.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced additional measures to control what it called the “smuggling” of oil through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, claiming to have destroyed the “enemy’s” navigation aid systems.

In an earlier post on Sunday, Araghchi had reiterated the Iranian proposal to open the Strait. He has said that if the US agrees to its demands the waterway would open in two days, asking the White House to learn from the American people and make its choice.

Araghchi had proposed last month that if the US agrees to its seven demands, including the end of the war on all fronts in the region, the lifting of all sanctions imposed since the collapse of the June 17 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), and releases its frozen assets, Iran will move to open the Strait of Hormuz within days.

The US has rejected the Iranian demands to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called them “outrageous and ridiculous.”

Responding to Rubio’s rejection, Esmail Baghaei, official spokesperson of Iran’s Foreign Ministry questioned his reasoning on Monday, claiming if anything was really outrageous and ridiculous it was the US-Israeli war on Iran.

US aggressive posture against Iran continue

The US has repeatedly quoted data to prove the “normalization” of the energy trade through the Strait of Hormuz, with Trump making claims that the US is in full control of the waterways.

The US Central Command has continued to make aggressive postures. On Friday, it launched fresh airstrikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island. Though Iran claimed the strike failed to cause any substantial damage.

On Sunday the US also announced the formation of a 20-member so-called “Iron Gate” task force in an effort to prevent the transportation of weapons and other goods through Iranian borders, as an extension of its naval blockade.

One of the objectives of the task force is to also prevent trade by land and the Caspian sea routes as a part of the US attempts to “economically isolate” Iran.

Over the weekend, the US Department of State also launched a so-called Rewards for Justice campaign, announcing a $20 million reward and “possible relocation” for “information about Iran’s nuclear program including its facilities, equipment, and associated personnel, such as those in the scientific community.”

Iran reacted sharply to the move, calling it a “bid to recruit accomplices for assassinations, criminal acts and further offensive.”

Adding to the confusion on Sunday, Trump also claimed that he is going to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in China next week, where they will be discussing the future of denuclearization and the “end of the war” on Iran.

Both Russia and China have been demanding the end of the US-Israeli war on Iran, with Russia even offering mediation.

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