This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
It’s clear that regime change is among the biggest objectives of the U.S. war in Iran.
“I have to be involved in the appointment” of Iran’s next leader, President Donald Trump said on March 5, 2026.
Trump has also said he might put U.S. boots on the ground to get the job done.
Trump now joins a long list of modern U.S. presidents – from Franklin Roosevelt to Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush and Barack Obama – who started wars to either overthrow hostile regimes or support embattled friendly governments abroad.
For all the parallels to history, though, Trump’s Iran war is historically unique in one critically important way: In its early stages, the war is not popular with the American public.
A recent CNN poll found that 59% of Americans oppose the war – a trend found in poll after poll since the war began.
As an expert on U.S. foreign policy and regime change wars, my research shows that what’s likely generating public opposition to the Iran war today is the absence of a big story with a grand purpose that has bolstered public support for just about every major U.S.-promoted regime change war since 1900. These broad, purpose-filled narratives generate public buy-in to support the costs of war, which are often high in terms of money spent and lives lost when regime change is at stake.
Two historical examples
In the 1930s and ’40s, a widely accepted – and largely true – story about the dangers of fascism spreading and democracies falling galvanized national support in the United States to enter and then take on the high costs of fighting in World War II.
Likewise, in the 2000s a dominant narrative about preventing a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and stopping terrorism brought strong initial public support for the war in Afghanistan, with 88% support in 2001, and the war in Iraq, with 70% support in 2003.
With no comparable narrative around Iran today, Trump and Republicans could face big problems, especially as costs continue to rise.
No anti-Iran narrative
Iran has been a thorn in the side of many American presidents for a long time. So, what’s missing? Why no grand-purpose narrative at the start of this war?
Two things.
First, grand-purpose narratives are rooted in major geopolitical gains by a rival regime – the danger to the U.S. For the anti-fascism narrative, those events were German troops plowing across Europe and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the anti-terrorism narrative, it was planes crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Gains like these by rivals prove traumatic to the nation. They also dislodge the status quo and provide the opportunity for new grand-purpose narratives with new policy directions to emerge.
Today, most Americans see no existential danger around Iran. A Marist poll from March 3, 2026, found that 55% of Americans view Iran as a minor threat or no threat at all. And the number who see Iran as a major threat, 44%, is down from 48% in July 2025.
By contrast, 64% of Americans saw Iraq as a “considerable threat” prior to the 2003 U.S. war in Iraq.
The poll numbers on Iran aren’t surprising. Iran is far from a geopolitical menace to the United States today. To the contrary, it’s been in geopolitical retreat in the Middle East in recent years.
In the summer of 2025, Iran’s nuclear nuclear enrichment facilities were significantly damaged – “completely and totally obliterated,” according to Trump, though there is no confirmation of that claim – during the 12-Day war between Iran and Israel.
And in recent years, Tehran has lost a major ally in Syria and witnessed its proxy network all but collapse. Iran has also faced crippling economic conditions and historic protests at home.
As the polls show, none of that has sparked a grand-purpose narrative.
Missing a good story
The second missing factor for narrative formation today is any strong messaging from the White House.
In the months prior to World War II, Roosevelt used his position of authority as president to give speech after speech, setting the context of the traumatic events of the 1930s, explaining the dangers at hand and outlining a course going forward. Though less truthful in its content, Bush did the same for nearly two years before the Iraq War.
Trump did almost none of this storytelling leading up to the Iran war. Five days before the war started, the president devoted three minutes to Iran in a nearly two-hour State of the Union Address.
Prior to that, he made a comment here and there to the press about Iran, but no storytelling preparing the nation for war. Likewise, since the war began, the administration’s stated reasons for military action keep shifting.
No wonder 54% of Americans polled disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran and 60% of Americans say Trump has no clear plan for Iran. Also, 60% disapprove of Trump’s handling of foreign policy in general.
By comparison, Americans approved of Bush’s handling of foreign policy by 63% in early 2003.
Absent a cohesive, unifying story, it’s also no surprise there is lots of political fracturing today.
Partisan divides run deep – Democrats and independent voters strongly oppose the war. But Trump’s MAGA coalition is cracking too, with people like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene sharply criticizing the war.
The way out
If he opts for it, there is an off-ramp for Trump from the Iran war. It’s one he knows well.
When U.S. leaders get caught up in costly regime change wars that outrun national support, they tend to back down, often with far fewer political costs than if they’d continued their unpopular war.
When the disaster referred to as Black Hawk Down hit in Somalia in 1993, killing 18 U.S. Marines, President Bill Clinton opted to end the mission to topple the warlords that ruled the country. Troops came home six months later.
Likewise, after the Benghazi attack killed four Americans in Libya in 2012, Obama pulled out all U.S. personnel working in Libya on nation-building operations.
And just last year, when Trump realized that U.S. ground troops would be necessary to topple the Houthi militant group in Yemen, he negotiated a ceasefire and ended his air war in that country with no significant political fallout.
With Trump’s Iran war, gas prices keep rising, more soldiers are likely to die, and stocks are highly volatile.
Backing down makes a lot of sense. History confirms that.
That is the ticket. Trump just declares victory and surrenders. The press will report the victory and I ran will be a step more powerful. This isn’t a fight with a small time enemy like the Houthis or the Somalis. Iran is a big powerful country with a long memory. Somebody needs to remind America how we became the great Satan in 1979. They have a long memory.’
God stop taking about putting the Sawh’s son on the throne. It isn’t going to happen and only makes the American international cocktail circuit look like it is filled with fools.
It’s not going to be so easy to extricate the US presence from Iranian airspace nor directly policing the Gulf from here on in. The problem is the bitter taste the whole thing has left in the mouths of our allies in the region. The Saudi’s will want us to keep wasting our political capital to see a monarch again in charge of Iran. The other Gulf states will be very worried if we leave…so we can’t do that (without significant blowback). It’s a stupid war with no easy way out for us.
For Israel, this sort of stupidity is just business as usual. Now we are taking on that stupidity ourselves. And we have basically no word or promise that anyone in the region will actually believe given how the Israeli-US attack on Iran went down this time. The Israelis (nor NATO) are unlikely to protect Gulf State airspace and shipping lanes on our behalf if/when we try to extricate ourselves, so we’re on the hook 100% for the disaster we’ve unleashed on the region now. And Russia and China also know this.
We’re now either forced to entirely leave the region or stick it out there to a grimly uncertain long-term. This thing is a serious cock-up. Maybe there’s an exit strategy but it ain’t going to be pretty either for our treasury or for our political standing in the entire Middle East (if not the entire world).
TSF looks terrible in the official White House picture attached to the article. Surely he can’t continue to waddle this earth for much longer? He golfed yesterday, but before that was a three week break since his last cheating outing.
This unpopular war is about to get even more unpopular — after days of evading and stalling, White House Propaganda Minister Karoline Leavitt was finally forced to admit this afternoon that U.S. casualties are “in the neighborhood” of 150 seriously wounded. A lot of folks are saying that the true number is more like 650 -1000 U.S. casualties so far, with about 20% of those being killed. And this is just from drone and missile strikes before any boots are even in Iraq.
As we know, there is NOTHING about which they won’t lie.
Citation definitely needed on that - as that level of casualties would indicate a massive failure in US air defence, and those purported numbers are way higher than the civilian run rate in Ukraine.