WASHINGTON, D.C. – The ripple effects of new wars in the Middle East and rising gas prices are unsettling Americans, according to a series of polls, but a month into the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, lawmakers are showing little appetite to rein in the conflict.
That was evidenced earlier this week when the US Senate again failed to pass the so-called War Powers Resolution, which would limit US President Donald Trump’s ability to unilaterally wage the war that began with the US-Israel attack on February 28th.
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In the Republican-controlled chamber, the bill passed 53-47, as it had on March 4, with senators voting along party lines, with one Republican, Rand Paul, voting yes and one Democrat John Fetterman voting no. Democrats in the chamber have promised weekly votes to force the issue.
Meanwhile, despite evidence that Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, which is also narrowly controlled by Republicans, have the votes to pass their own war powers resolution, party leaders are reportedly refraining from voting on it.
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said it signals a potential wariness among party members about moving beyond “token opposition” as the Trump administration continues to press ahead with the controversial war.
“There are (lawmakers) who are caught between support from the pro-Israel lobby and other political factors and the fact that this war is extremely unpopular,” Abdi told Al Jazeera.
“I also think there’s a perception that Trump is suffering. He’s bleeding politically and they don’t want to stop the bleeding.”
A month on, the Trump administration has not articulated a unified endgame for the conflict, instead praising Iran’s decline in military power and the assassination of senior officials.
Observers have warned that the war appears to have entered a phase of attrition that strategically favors Iran, with, as US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard put it, “the regime remains intact but has been significantly degraded.”
Opinion polls continue to show widespread disapproval of the war, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Wednesday showing 35% support and 61% disapproval. President Trump’s overall approval rating fell to 36% this week, the lowest since taking office.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, also released Wednesday, found that 59% of Americans believe U.S. military action in Iran has gone too far.
Last week, President Trump continued to send conflicting messages about the war, insisting that talks with Iranian officials were ongoing and announcing a cease-fire plan that Iran later rejected.
This comes as the Pentagon deploys more US troops to the region, making a ground invasion more likely.
Republican unity?
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers have so far largely lagged behind Mr. Trump, with many party leaders cheering the U.S. military’s efforts and accepting Mr. Trump’s claims that the conflict will last for weeks.
“Republicans are saying it in a big way, but for (U.S. House of Representatives) Thomas Massie and probably Rand Paul, they will support anything Donald Trump does,” Republican strategist and former Colorado Senate candidate Eli Bremer told Al Jazeera. “Everyone is very firm in their positions, but things can change.”
Given the fickle nature of U.S. public opinion, he argued, Republicans seem to appreciate that short-term pain won’t necessarily have a big political impact in November’s midterm elections if President Trump can claim some degree of victory in the coming weeks.
The main test, he said, is whether Trump can secure the Strait of Hormuz, even if it requires a ground deployment, thereby stabilizing global oil markets and creating a perception that the United States has “bringed Iran to its knees.”
“On the contrary, if this situation continues for another eight weeks, three months, or an undetermined period of time, and gas prices in the United States continue to rise and rise, Democrats will use that to argue that President Trump said he was trying to avoid ‘endless wars,’ and then look at what he has gotten us into,” Bremer said.
Opinion polls generally show high support for the war among Republicans, with about half of respondents in an AP-NORC poll released Wednesday saying that U.S. military action was “mostly the right thing to do.” A quarter said the war had gone “too far.”
Funding frictions and MAGA objections?
One early step in the partisan friction was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent request for $200 billion in war funding, which some Republicans see as a violation of President Trump’s “America First” pledge.
“The answer to most things is ‘I don’t know,'” centrist Republican Lisa Murkowski recently told reporters in connection with the funding request. She asked for a public hearing in the case.
Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, once considered a rising star in President Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, told reporters that she was “tired of the industrial war complex taking our hard-earned tax dollars.” Another MAGA loyalist, U.S. Congressman Eric Burleson, called for the Pentagon to pass an audit before providing additional support for war funding.
Meanwhile, Nancy Mace said Wednesday after the House Armed Services briefing on Iran: “To reiterate, I have no intention of supporting Iranian ground forces, especially after this briefing.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a longtime Iran hawk, has vowed to push for a so-called “reconciliation bill” to provide funding. The controversial legislative mechanism allows the Senate to pass funding bills with a simple majority of 51 Republicans, rather than the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
It remains unclear how meaningfully the war divided Trump’s base.
Top opponents include influential figures such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, who have been vocal critics of the war, Israel’s apparent influence on U.S. military operations in the Middle East, and contradictions to President Trump’s campaign promises on so-called forever wars.
White House officials have repeatedly pointed to a series of polls showing extremely high support for the war among people who call themselves MAGA Republicans, including a recent NBC poll that showed 90 percent of so-called MAGA voters supported the war.
Some political watchers say the results could be misleading. Those who have strayed from decisions about the war may no longer identify with a movement that many see as inseparable from Mr. Trump’s personality.
Jim Geraghty, political correspondent for the conservative National Review, recently wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post that “when this group of people strongly opposes it, they eventually stop calling themselves MAGA.”
Michael Ann Perlberg, associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the influence of figures like Carlson and their ability to transform right-wing politics should not be underestimated.
“These are people who have a lot of supporters. I think this is going to be a long-term change, a generational divide,” he said. “I think the narrative that the United States went after Israel into this war is pretty uncontroversial at this point and is widely accepted by many people.”
“We’re seeing general skepticism about the U.S.-Israel alliance from a nationalist point of view, and the question is, ‘How does this serve U.S. national interests?'” he said.
How long can it last?
The length and nature of the war will ultimately determine its political impact.
Perlberg argued that while critics often compare the war to the quagmire of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the so-called “Global War on Terror,” the nature of the conflicts puts it in a different category.
The regime has so far relied solely on air power during the conflict, which has lasted more than a month. The potential deployment of troops appears to be aimed at more serious objectives than total occupation.
That keeps U.S. casualties in the war relatively low, while keeping the Trump administration’s broader objectives for the conflict out of reach. Combined, this could become a recipe for violent conflict to become the norm in American national life.
To date, at least 13 U.S. military personnel have died in the war.
“Unless U.S. military casualties spike, I don’t think Republican lawmakers, at least those loyal to President Trump, will feel the American people’s war weariness as a result of casualties,” he said.
“However, there will still be consumer war fatigue when it comes to price increases,” he said.
If the ripple effects of war continue.
NIAC’s Abdi told Al Jazeera: “This kind of sobering effect for Republicans may still be well away from the midterm elections. We think Republicans can still hang on to Trump without hurting their prospects.”
“They need to calculate when to jump on this issue,” he says.
