Emerging from the still-smouldering ruins of the Republican midterms defeat on 3 November, JD Vance appears to have alighted on a strategy to salvage his candidacy for the 2028 presidential election: blame war with Iran. “The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone,” the US vice president wrote in a 600-word post on X the morning after the election, which has so far been viewed more than 70 million times. “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.”