A new poll paints a bleak picture of public support for Operation Epic Fury: just 27 percent of American adults approve of the US strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader. The Reuters/Ipsos survey, which published Sunday, found 43 percent disapprove and 29 percent are undecided. The poll also found that about half of Americans believe the president is too willing to use military force to advance U.S. interests. Overall, 56 percent of those surveyed said Trump’s readiness to deploy military power is excessive.
A nation divided
Views on Trump’s use of force broke sharply along partisan lines, with a vast majority of Democrats – 83 percent – stating the president is too quick to resort to military action, according to the poll. Among Republicans, just 23 percent expressed the same concern, and 60 percent of independents shared that view. The survey, conducted online with 1,282 U.S. adults nationwide, had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
War powers showdown
About nine in ten respondents said they had heard at least a little about the strikes, which began early Saturday morning and have resulted in at least three American casualties. In a Sunday interview with the Daily Mail, Trump projected that the war would take 4 weeks. Despite initial rounds of praise from Capitol Hill Republicans, the Trump administration is now facing increased scrutiny for the attacks after news broke Sunday of US troop casualties and injuries.
Absolutely unacceptable
Longtime Trump supporters are now bashing him for running on a campaign to end military conflicts in the Middle East, while some historically vocal anti-war voices, including Trump’s past self, now cheer the actions on. ‘This was absolutely unnecessary and is unacceptable,’ former US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned from her seat last month, said on X. ‘Trump, Vance, Tulsi, and all of us campaigned on no more foreign wars and regime change. Now, America soldiers are dead,’ Greene noted. Representative Thomas Massie, a libertarian Republican who has not been afraid to blast the Trump administration when he disagrees with them and has also been a lead advocate for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, wrote, ‘PSA: Bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein files go away, any more than the Dow going above 50,000 will.’
Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence who ran a presidential campaign on a platform of avoiding an Iranian war, oversaw the operation from the White House Situation Room alongside Vance, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. In 2019 Gabbard released a fundraising video in 2019 titled ‘Trump’s Path To War With Iran,’ in which she urged voters to ‘stop Donald Trump from starting a war with Iran.’ Vance, as recently as October of 2024, was against the US going to war in Iran as well. During an appearance on podcaster Tim Dillon’s show, Vance noted, ‘our interests, I think, very much, are not going to war in Iran.’
Vance also noted at the time that the Israelis, as well as the Gulf Arab States, should ‘police their own regions in the world.’ Numerous statements made by Trump during Barack Obama’s presidency, and even during his campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, always pinned the possibility of war with Iran on his political opponents. Harris herself rebuked Trump’s attack, noting in a statement that she was ‘opposed to a regime-change war in Iran,’ and ‘that troops are being put in harm’s way for the sake of Trump’s war of choice.’
