"The war was unpopular with Americans before Trump started bombing Iran"

...The Trump administration has been able to articulate neither a clear reason for what Trump calls a “war” against Iran nor a goal to be accomplished by the war that is costing $1 billion a day. On February 19, less than ten days before Trump started bombing Iran, Trump told his “Board of Peace” that “[w]e’ve done the biggest thing of all. We have peace in the Middle East right now.” Today Trump told reporters that if he hadn’t struck Iran, it would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks, a conclusion U.S. intelligence agencies reject.

Trump told reporters today that “we’re doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly,” rating it 15 on a scale of 1 to 10. But Americans stranded in Middle Eastern countries are desperate to get out, and the government has not been able to help them. When asked today why not, Trump answered:

“Well, because it happened all very quickly, we thought, and I thought maybe more so than most, I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel. They were getting ready to attack others. You’re seeing that right now. And a lot of those missiles that are hitting in those are stationary. Those were aimed there for a long period of time at these other countries. So I think I was right about that. We attacked first, and if we didn’t, it could have been, you know, look, we’re really decimating them. They’re being decimated. And if we didn’t. If we didn’t, and by the way, we have massive amounts of ammunition. We have the high end. A lot of it was given away stupidly by Biden, very stupidly, for free. And I’m all for Ukraine, but they gave away a lot. As you know, when I give away ammunition, everybody pays for it. The European Union is paying for it, then they can do what they want with it, but they are giving it, let’s say, to Ukraine, and it’s okay, but we gave away a lot of high end but we have plenty. But we have unlimited middle and upper ammunition, which is really what we’re using in this war. And we have an, really an unlimited supply. We also have a lot of the very high end stored in different countries throughout the world. With this, we’re literally storing it there, which is actually something that I insisted on in my first term. I rebuilt the military. In my first term, the military is great. A lot of, not unbelievable, amount of of ammunition, or munitions, as they say, were given away to you know, the Wall Street Journal incorrectly covered the story when they said that it was given away to the Middle East, not to the Middle East was given away to Ukraine. Very little was given to the Middle East. Middle East would buy a lot. And some of the nations, because they’re rich, they have a lot, but it was given away to Ukraine, and it just should have been done. Look, it’s a war that should have never happened. If I were president, that war would have never happened. But we have a tremendous amount of munitions, ammunition at the upper upper level, middle and upper level, all of which is really powerful stuff.”

Notably, Trump had no answer for why there was no plan to evacuate Americans. Instead, he made it clear he is worried about experts’ assessment that the U.S. is low on high-end munitions and interceptors. According to Ellen Mitchell of The Hill, the U.S. is low on those weapons not because it has helped to supply Ukraine, but because it “blew through 25 percent of its stockpile over just a few days of operations against Iran in June 2025.” And before that operation, the U.S. military used $200 million worth of munitions in three weeks of attacks on the Houthis in Yemen, a bombing campaign that did little to change the Houthis’ behavior.

Despite the administration's apparent lack of either planning or goals in its attack on Iran, Senate Republicans today refused to rein in Trump’s attack on Iran with a war powers resolution to bring the war to a stop. While some said they were nervous about the apparent lack of a plan for the conflict, others said it was imperative to demonstrate support for the troops by supporting the war, regardless of how we got into it.

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), who is facing a difficult election in the fall, said: “Passing this resolution now would send the wrong message to Iran and to our troops. At this juncture, providing unequivocal support to our service members is critically important, as is ongoing consultation by the Administration with Congress.”

But the American people are not on board. The war was unpopular with Americans before Trump started bombing Iran, and support for it has dropped since it began. According to G. Elliott Morris at Strength in Numbers, only 34% of Americans support the attack on Iran...

-Heather Cox Richardson