We’re used to Americans, at least as judged by polls, going into wars generally supportive and then trailing off quickly as the complications and fatalities mount. Some of that is a rally-’round-the-flag effect. In some cases there’s been a precipitating event which the public wants vengeance for. Here we are seeing none of that. The public was very skeptical going in. And the attack itself seems to have done nothing to change that. A new CNN poll has the familiar 59% of Americans disapprove of the attacks and expect things to get worse. What is most interesting to me, however, is not so much public opposition but the disconnect between elite and popular opinion.
What strikes me in these poll numbers and my general read of the moment is not so much the opposition to the conflict, though that’s certainly there, as how irrelevant most Americans see this conflict to anything that is happening in the country. You’ve got economic concerns over affordability, health care, the long half life of the shock of the pandemic. You have the domestic political situation, which many Democrats see as an existential battle over the future of democracy and the country itself. MAGA may be thinking about crime, the culture war, mass deportation and more. But neither of these worldviews hold much place for a regime change war against Iran, especially one that seems to be escalating rapidly.
Meanwhile, elite opinion is very different. Most of what I have read is at least skeptical of Trump’s war for obvious reasons. But it is mostly still grounded in decades-long conversations about the wisdom, utility and possible success of overthrowing the Iranian regime by military force. We hear all the arguments both on possible new dawns in the Middle East following the extraction of the terroristic clerical regime as well as on the likely blowback and regional chaos. The specifics of these debates seem less important than the fact that the debate over all has probably been discussed in the U.S. commentariat more than any other single issue in foreign policy for decades.
The killing of Ali Khamenei at a moment when his regime was already deeply enfeebled really may be a game changing moment for Iran. Perhaps, even some critics say, Trump made a big gamble and won. Maybe a relatively stable and intact new Iranian regime can emerge and Trump will get credit from the public?
But again, what you see most clearly is how disconnected this entire elite discussion is from public opinion. Trump might get lucky and hasten the fall of the Iranian government by killing Khamenei. But I don’t get the sense much of the public cares. A clear majority opposes the whole thing. But it doesn’t seem like ingrained anti-war sentiment, the kind of thing that will bring people into the streets, at least not now. It reads more like a grand “what the F is this about.” It’s not simply a war of choice against an already deeply enfeeble regime. It starts unpopular and seems all but certain to get more so. Not mostly because Americans are against wars (some of the time) but because nothing about this war we started seems tied to the issues that are currently animating the public mind.