Since the Iran war began nearly three weeks ago, President Trump has routinely (and accurately) boasted of America’s battlefield dominance. On an almost daily basis, he recounts how Iran’s navy, missile sites, and military infrastructure have been decimated or completely destroyed. He is, with good reason, supremely confident in American arms. This week, responding to NATO allies who refused to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open, the president declared that, “we don’t need too much help, and we don’t need any help, actually.”
And so far as it goes, Trump is right. The United States is dominating the battlefield in Iran without any help from NATO allies. On Tuesday, U.S. warplanes dropped multiple 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions on Iranian coastal missile sites near the Strait of Hormuz, the first major action in its effort to secure the strait and clear the way for the thousands of commercial vessels now trapped in the Persian Gulf.
There is no question of American battlefield dominance thus far in the war. Yet the Trump administration now faces a different sort of challenge that cannot be quantified in missile strikes or sunk ships. The paradox of U.S. strategic power is that while no nation in human history has ever been able to wield so much military might, the American democratic system of government means the deployment of that power is contingent on public opinion.
In practice, that means America’s obvious superior military capability against Iran does not necessarily guarantee what military strategists call escalation dominance. The U.S. military has better weaponry than any other country, our Armed Forces are vastly superior in every way, and our industrial base dwarfs Iran’s. On the battlefield, there is no question that the Americans will prevail.
But one of the lessons of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is that escalation dominance, at least for a democratic country like the U.S., depends in part on political will, which in turn depends on public opinion. If the American people turn hard enough against a conflict, the U.S. military can win every battle and America will still lose the war.
This is especially salient in a conflict like the Iran war. The Trump administration has given multiple justifications for launching the war, which has contributed to a public atmosphere of confusion about American war aims. A recent Washington Post poll found that 65 percent of respondents don’t think President Trump and his team have clearly explained the goals of the war. As Byron York points out at The Washington Examiner, this is despite weeks of the administration saying what it’s goals are: Destroy Iran’s missiles and missile production, destroy its navy, destroy its ability to project power through regional proxies, and prevent it from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.
So why do so many Americans still not think Trump has explained his war aims clearly? Writes York: “Perhaps it is because they understand the goals, as stated, but do not find them particularly persuasive or compelling.”
As the war continues into its third week, it’s becoming clear that to achieve its stated goals, the Trump administration will likely have to escalate in ways that risk widening or prolonging the conflict. And this is where public opinion might limit what the president can do precisely at the moment he needs to act.
For example, reopening the Strait of Hormuz might require the invasion and occupation of a vast swath of Iran’s southern coast, including the islands that make up Iran’s southern maritime frontier. Invading and occupying this area would require a massive deployment of U.S. ground forces, which would be just one part of an operation that would last well beyond the original four or five weeks the White House initially predicted for Operation Epic Fury. Even assembling the forces necessary for such an operation would extend that timeline out by months, and once Iran’s southern coast is occupied, it’s unclear how long U.S. forces would have to remain there.
This is just one scenario in which the Trump administration might soon be running into trouble. The war in Iran is not popular. Since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on February 28, the RCP polling average shows nearly 49 percent of Americans disapprove of the war compared to only 44 that percent that approve. Some individual polls, like a recent one from The Economist/YouGov, show a much starker divide, with 56 percent opposed and only 33 percent in support.
That’s a bad sign, even if these same polls show overwhelming support for the war among Republicans and self-identified MAGA voters. One recent NBC News poll, for example, found a whopping 90 percent approval among MAGA Republicans for military action in Iran. Yet MAGA Republicans only make up about 30 percent of the GOP. Among non-MAGA Republicans, that same poll showed that 36 percent disapprove of the Iran war.
What’s more, all the polls show huge partisan divides, with massive supermajorities of Democrats opposing the war. This matters not just for the 2026 midterms but also in the near-term, over the next three to six months. It’s unlikely that Democrat voters are going to change their views, no matter what happens on the battlefield. But among Republicans, escalation by the Trump administration — such as the deployment of thousands of ground troops to Iran’s southern coast — might well contribute to erosion of support. Part of Trump’s appeal to disaffected Republicans and Independents, after all, was that he would avoid embroiling the U.S. in open-ended Middle East wars. If that’s what Iran turns into, Trump’s support in his own party could begin to erode — even more so if an extended war brings higher gas prices and economic pain for ordinary Americans.
There are signs that the Trump administration is not as attuned to these risks as it should be. On Tuesday, Kevin Hassett, a top economic advisor to Trump, said that if the war in Iran drags on it will hurt consumers, but that consumer pain is “the last of our concerns right now.” The economy, inflation, and the cost of living were among the first concerns of voters in 2024, and will likely be among their first concerns in 2026.
When Hassett says that a drawn out conflict with Iran “wouldn’t really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all,” that might be true on a macro level, but on a household level it would be hugely disruptive. If war with Iran means Americans are suddenly paying $5 or $6 a gallon for gasoline, or can’t afford to pay their heating bill, it won’t matter what the macro effects are because voters are going to be angry.
All of this to say that public opinion, not military capability, is what really limits the reach of American strategic power. Given the polling so far on the Iran war, it might not be long before public opinion begins to play a role in what the Trump administration can realistically accomplish on the battlefield, and how the president decides to define what victory looks like in the end.
