Donald Trump won the presidency twice on a promise to keep America out of foreign wars. Now he is commanding one - and the cracks in his political base are already showing. Polls taken before the strikes on Iran revealed deep opposition to military action, cutting across party lines and into the heart of the MAGA coalition.
Dana Stroul, a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, writes in Foreign Affairs that myriad polls in January and February showed that the prospect of war with Iran was "deeply unpopular" in the United States, as reported by "Hvylya". A CNN survey released this week found 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the current campaign.
The problem runs deeper than general public opinion. Influential figures within both parties - and particularly within Trump's own MAGA movement - are "increasingly questioning the very value of the U.S.-Israeli relationship," Stroul writes. A protracted conflict will only deepen this skepticism.
Meanwhile, Iran is striking civilian airports, hotels, port infrastructure, and energy installations in Gulf states whose leaders Trump considers key allies. This threatens not only American troops and civilians but also global energy markets and the entire Gulf business model built on the absence of conflict within their borders.
Stroul warns that "the coming days and weeks may well fracture the MAGA coalition as casualties rise" - or as Trump fails to end the fighting quickly. The president who promised no more foreign wars now faces a choice between escalation toward regime change in Tehran and an early off-ramp that may satisfy neither his base nor his Israeli partners.
Read more: Trump's Early Threats May Have Backfired: How the Ultimatum Provoked a Deadly Reaction From Tehran