Iran’s parliament speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, mocked Vice President JD Vance on X early Thursday, a day after Tehran’s leaders celebrated the Republican midterm losses and warned Washington against renewing the war.
Ghalibaf quoted Vance’s post blaming the war for the party’s defeat. “Losing gambler energy, can’t walk away from the table,” he wrote. “Why not say this to your boss?”
BREAKING: Iran’s Speaker of the Parliament responds to Vice President JD Vance after he blamed the Iran War for the Republicans’ loss: "Losing gambler energy, can’t walk away from the table… Why not say this to your boss?" https://t.co/RBVhsSNGoL
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) November 5, 2026
Overnight, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said two oil tankers and a tugboat caught fire in the Strait of Hormuz after trying to use what it called unauthorized routes. One tanker struck a mine south of the strait, the IRGC said, and a supertanker caught fire leaving the eastern end of the waterway. A tug that went to fight that fire also burned, Reuters reported. The IRGC’s account has not been independently confirmed.
Separately, the British military said a tanker was hit by two projectiles about 50 nautical miles north of Qatar on Wednesday.
This site reported Wednesday that Iran had rejected the latest U.S. reply on reopening the strait.
Tehran reads the vote
“Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message,” Ghalibaf wrote Wednesday. If the U.S. government “betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare,” he added.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei wrote on X that if Washington persists, “the consequences of this grave miscalculation will extend far beyond what you have already witnessed.”
A written message attributed to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, posted on his website for Iran’s annual Nov. 4 anti-American commemoration, said anyone hoping for a change between American parties was “gravely mistaken.” It warned that “any repetition of aggression will take on far broader dimensions,” Iran International reported. Khamenei has not been seen or heard in public since the war began Feb. 28.
Washington keeps up the pressure
The State Department on Wednesday sanctioned two men and a Nigerian company it accused of helping Iran try to buy Chinese-made shoulder-fired air-defense missiles, known as MANPADS, through false end users. It named Mohammed Ali Tolibov, chief executive of Belarus-based Armory Alliance; Russia-based Alisher Domullodzhanov; and Vanguard Tactical Supply Limited.
The designations “close off more of the channels Tehran uses to try to rebuild its arsenal,” the department said, according to Anadolu Agency.
Trump told the Financial Times this week there were no immediate plans for new strikes but that U.S. forces were “locked and loaded if we need to go.” A source briefed on Qatar’s mediation told Reuters that mediators expected answers from both sides within 36 hours on a new proposal. A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran would not accept Washington’s “excessive demands.”
The bottom line
Tehran’s leaders are celebrating an American election as though they had won it, and they are misreading it. The midterms change who runs Congress in January, but the President remains commander in chief and the U.S. blockade remains in place.
The regime’s conduct this week shows why the pressure has to stay. It is laying mines in a commercial shipping lane, setting tankers on fire and shopping through front companies for missiles that can bring down American aircraft. The State Department was right to go after the brokers, and it should keep naming them.
Ghalibaf’s taunt deserves one firm answer from the whole administration. Whatever Republicans argue about at home, the terms for Iran should not change. The strait must reopen for good, the enriched uranium must be surrendered, and the arms pipeline to the Revolutionary Guard must be shut.