Can Trump Convince Americans War with Iran Is Worth It?

Bombs are dropping, drones are flying and U.S. troops are dying in the Middle East. But the Trump administration still has to get an unenthusiastic American public up to speed about why the Pentagon intervened there in the first place.

Critics say Trump is not doing enough to reach skeptical Americans about the administration’s ambitions — and that the war’s unpopularity may only increase the longer that the U.S. is involved.

Those critics aren’t just Democrats. Even some in the interventionist wing of the Republican Party think that the administration hasn’t done enough to get the public on board.

“I think the appetite for a bogged-down conflict in the Middle East is not there with the American people,” Rep. Michael McCaul, a retiring Republican and a former chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told NOTUS. “On the PR side, I think they need to make the case, and what’s the objective? I think the real question is what’s gonna happen next, and how long?”

McCaul pointed to the absence of administration officials on Sunday news shows in the aftermath of the initial strikes and said he’d like to see more administration officials doing public appearances.

Trump’s limited public addresses on the strikes mark a stark departure from efforts of previous administrations — in particular, the Bush administration worked arduously to market its Iraq War to the American public and sought approval from Congress. Bush administration officials flooded the airwaves to articulate threats from Iraq, real or not, and by the time troops were gearing up for an invasion, they knew they could rely on the support of a majority of Americans.

Karen Finney, the press secretary for Hillary Clinton in the early 1990s, said Bush’s approval ratings were key to America’s buy-in. Bush, according to Finney, “had the popularity to lose. Trump doesn’t.”

“He had a lot more political capital to spend when he went to sell the war in Iraq,” she said. Of course, she added, he lost it after it became clear that the administration misled the public about the weapons of mass destruction, which then became a line of attack for the opposition in the 2006 midterm elections.

“You have a president now that has no political capital, and he hasn’t even tried to sell it,” she said.

Some congressional Republicans say there may be more public support than it seems. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, a longtime foreign policy hawk, said he believes “more people realize the threat that Iran poses” than those who don’t, despite polls that so far have shown otherwise.

“Yeah, I care about public opinion. I care especially about informed public opinion, when you really talk to people, as opposed to a quick poll,” Smith said. “That may be indicative of where people are, but the threat is overwhelming. It’s an existential threat to our allies in the region. And over time, it’s an existential threat to the United States.”

Trump has not delivered a live speech making his case for war, instead relying on social media, ad hoc interviews with reporters and remarks at unrelated public events. He announced the strikes via a video posted on Truth Social early Saturday morning and followed up with a slew of posts defending the conflict. He’s given at least 18 brief phone interviews with reporters and has answered questions at public appearances this week.

“Having a strategy for maintaining public support for the use of military force is critical for the foreign policy of any democratically governed state,” Christopher Gelpi, a political scientist at the Ohio State University who studies public perception about military conflicts, said in an email. “While the President has a free hand to do whatever he wants in the short term in foreign policy, popular disapproval eventually catches up even to very popular presidents.”

For the administration’s part, the White House is chalking up the lack of enthusiasm to the mainstream media.

“The president knows the country is smart enough to read past many of the fake news headlines produced by people in this room that this action was unjustifiable,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt argued at a briefing Wednesday after a reporter asked whether Trump believes Americans back the conflict. The White House did not answer questions from NOTUS about how it plans on gaining more support for the conflict, either.

Terry Szuplat, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama, told NOTUS it could be helpful for the administration to explain to the public what specific threat Trump was responding to — if such intelligence exists.

“He has a responsibility to go out and address the American people. And if there’s intelligence that backs up his claims about an imminent threat, then they need to declassify it and show it to the American people,” Szuplat said.

It’s unclear how long this war may drag on, even to the officials calling the shots. The administration’s projected timeline for the country’s engagement is getting muddier by the day: Trump said Monday that there’s no definitive end date to what he initially presented as a monthlong war. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that “we have only just begun to fight.”

“This whole military campaign might be at its peak popularity right now, and it’ll get less popular over time,” said Seth Masket, a University of Denver political scientist and the director of its Center on American Politics. “But he’s been doing a good deal without a lot of public support, and without much pushback from people in his own party in Congress, and he’ll likely continue to do that for some time.”

Ahead of the U.S.’s initial strikes, 56% of Americans said they had little or no trust in Trump’s judgment about the use of military force abroad, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted Feb. 19-23.

Immediately after the strikes, only 27% said they supported them, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found. While it appears that Trump’s base is largely rallying behind the intervention for now, a protracted boots-on-the-ground war, especially one pursued based on ever-changing and all-of-the-above rationales, might be harder to sell to a broader populace that largely believes the U.S. should not have invaded Iraq.

Dina Smeltz, a polling expert with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, pointed to a Chicago Council survey conducted just before and after the strikes that found about half of Americans approved of the U.S. military action against Iranian nuclear targets. But when questions weren’t pegged to nuclear targets, that support dropped.

“It’s hard to galvanize public support when the reasoning behind the military action as well as the U.S. objective for the ongoing military action is not yet clear,” Smeltz added.

Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor Wednesday that he supported Trump’s actions — but that “a president’s clear authority to use military force does not absolve him from a responsibility to place his national security decisions on the broadest possible political foundation.”

“Because presidents hold such expansive constitutional authority, it’s incumbent on them to ensure such use is judicious, rooted in core national interests and broadly supported by the American people,” McConnell said. “Connecting ends and means is the essence of strategy, and it’s important for the administration to explain to the American people how they intend to do so.”

Beyond the immediate political ramifications of the war, veterans say public support is hugely important for military operations.

“Any time you commit the troops ahead of public opinion, it results in disaster — from Vietnam to Iraq to everywhere in between. When you don’t have the American people behind the operation, it undermines the operation,” said Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq War veteran and the founder of Independent Veterans of America. “Not even George Bush was this disrespectful of the Constitution, of Congress, and of public opinion. Iran is much less popular than the war in Iraq was at this point.”

Republican Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, who is expected to vote yes on the House’s war powers resolution, said he shared similar concerns about the public not backing military operations. As a veteran, he said the absence of congressional approval put servicemembers, who swear to uphold the Constitution, in a bind.

“The Founding Fathers had that in mind as one of the main reasons that you have Congress vote, is when a country goes to war, you would want the country at war, not just our military. And our country goes to war, constitutionally, when Congress authorizes it,” Davidson said. “You engage the public first, you build the case for it. And so it is a little unprecedented the way that this was rolled out.”

Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, who served four tours in Iraq, said the lack of clear objectives from the Trump administration is surely “disheartening” for the troops engaged in these operations.

“What most of all servicemembers want is truth from their commanders, and they’re not getting it because Trump has not told Congress or the American people, let alone our troops risking their lives, what his objectives are, why their lives are worth this fight,” Moulton said. “Social media videos and callous disregard for the families of the fallen doesn’t cut it.”

Still, Trump has plenty of cheerleaders in Congress who say he’s doing a good job of getting Americans on his side.

“Most Americans understand you don’t want the largest state sponsor of terrorism getting a nuclear weapon,” Rep. Jim Jordan told NOTUS. “I think they get it, and they appreciate the fact that President Trump makes decisions that are good for America, good for Israel, and good for the world.”

When asked for examples of how Trump has gotten those Americans to approve of the war, Jordan pointed to the fact that “he’s put out videos, he’s doing interviews.”