President Trump and Iran

He thinks the Texas GOP primary is the country.

"They thought they were going to outwait me; you know, ‘we'll outwait him. He's got the midterms.’ I don't care about the midterms. Look what happened last night, that was the prelude to the midterms. People understand it, they know that, very simple, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon." — President Trump on Wednesday.

By referring to “last night,” the president appears here to assume that the country is the same as the Republican primary voters in Texas, where his preferred candidate Ken Paxton won. That electorate not only doesn’t represent the country, it doesn’t even represent Texas. Tuesday, fewer than ten percent of the registered voters in Texas voting.

Broader polling of the public on the issue of Iran shows: 60% of Americans now explicitly disapprove of the President’s handling of the conflict (a PBS News/NPR/Marist poll), while a concurrent Economist/YouGov survey shows that twice as many Americans oppose the war in Iran as support it, with an identical 60% of the country openly opposing the war entirely. (If the country believes that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, as the President says, this finding suggests that they do not think the war is the way to go about achieving that end.)

YouGov tracking notes that 80% of Americans anticipated from the outset that the war would become a prolonged conflict lasting months or years, while an overwhelming 66% told Ipsos researchers that the U.S. should pull out immediately—explicitly choosing an expedited exit even if it means admitting failure and leaving its strategic goals entirely unachieved. (Again, if the country believes that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, a majority advocating for a pullout does not think the war is the way to achieve that goal.)

The Ipsos Iran Conflict Tracking Dashboard shows that 52% of Americans state that taking military action in Iran has not been worth it, compared to just 23% who believe it has been.

According to the NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll, 61% of Americans believe U.S. military action in Iran has ultimately done more harm than good, and 62% believe the administration’s choices have weakened the United States’ standing on the world stage.

The Economist/YouGov Poll indicates that 38% say neither country is currently winning the war, 32% believe the U.S. is winning, and 16% believe Iran is winning.