Trump is facing a major Iran war hurdle — this time on the homefront
An Iran war that was supposed to be brief, and then was supposed to be over, is imposing an increasing price on Donald Trump’s presidency.
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We’ve seen a second term of a Republican administration go this way before.
There are distinct echoes of George W. Bush’s Iraq war — the conflict that Trump has long excoriated — in the president’s predicament.
Now, the Iran war is different than Iraq: There is no ground invasion, no regime change, no occupation, no counter-insurgency.
The casualties aren’t close to the same scale, and Trump has been fighting Iran for months, whereas George W. Bush was embroiled in Iraq for years (and so were his successors).
Yet the political trajectory looks similar.
Then, as now, an unpopular conflict is putting downward pressure on a Republican president’s approval rating.
Mainstream pollsters routinely have Trump’s approval rating below 40%, and some put it below 35%; Fox News has him at 39%, while CNN (34%) and AP (33%) are lower.
At this juncture of Bush’s second term, his average approval rating was a roughly comparable 38%, although he had further to fall as the war continued and the financial crisis hit.
If the Iran war is not exacting nearly the same price in blood and treasure as the Iraq war, it is inflicting a direct economic cost on Americans that wasn’t present during the Iraq war.
It was often said of violent clashes in the streets of the United States in the 1960s, “The Vietnam war has come home.”
Well, the Iran war came home the first time the average price per gallon of gasoline went above $4.
Trump would have much more leeway to engage in a protracted operation to bring Iran to heel if the public could, in effect, forget about the war for a while — but there’s a reminder every day of what’s happening in the Strait of Hormuz on gas signs across America.
In the CNN poll, 28% approve Trump’s handling of Iran, while 25% approve his handling of inflation and 21% of gas prices.
These issues are related.
Trump wants his presidency to matter.
So, rather than being content with doing whatever he could at the margins to lower prices, he went for big, legacy-defining initiatives — tariffs and the Iran war — that raised prices.
In so doing, he forfeited his signature issue of economic stewardship: In the latest Fox News poll, 33% approve of his handling of the economy and 67% disapprove.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the war in Iran:
- Renewed cease-fire talks between US, Iran see ‘significant’ progress, mediators say
- Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq report drone attacks days after US suspended Iran strikes
- Trump praises ‘great’ Netanyahu, says they’re ‘pretty close’ on next Iran steps as Israeli PM travels to DC
- Iran ramps up threats on Ukraine over Caspian Sea attack: ‘The list of defeated forces is getting longer’
When the memorandum of understanding was signed with Iran, Trump boasted about how, by re-opening the strait, it would avoid greater economic distress; he said he didn’t want to be another Herbert Hoover.
Now, the strait is basically closed again.
Absent another deal, he’s faced with the choice of escalation or an ongoing low-level conflict, neither of which will be palatable to the public.
The CNN poll found that nearly three-quarters of Americans think Trump hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most pressing problems.
The fact is that Iran wasn’t a priority for the public, and there was no attempt by the White House to make it one until after it had already launched the war.
The same way Bush’s success toppling the Taliban created the predicate for the Iraq war, Trump’s stunning capture of Nicolás Maduro made it easier to believe that the Iran war would be a cakewalk.
The idealistic establishment Republicans and the “America First” populists both got lured into overestimating the efficacy of American military power.
We still don’t know how Iran will end: Perhaps Trump will manage a satisfactory conclusion, and he has more room to bounce back up again politically than Bush did after years of the Iraq war.
Still, the next Republican president would be well-served to be more prudent and mindful of worst-case scenarios when launching major military operations than either of his two, otherwise very different GOP predecessors.
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X: @RichLowry
