Voters Disagree With Trump - Say The Iran War Was NOT Worth It

 The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between October 10th and 12th of a nationwide sample of 1,403 registered voters, with a 3.5 point margin of error.

Opposition To Trump's War With Iran Remains Strong

 

The charts above are from the Navigator Poll -- done between October 1st and 5th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

Most Voters Say The Last Three Wars Were Not Worth Fighting

The chart above is from the Change Research Poll -- done between August 8th and 13th of a nationwide sample of 2,045 registered voters, with a 2.3 point margin of error.

The U.S. And Iran Are Fighting A War - And China Is Winning

 

The following insightful post is by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman:

Make America Great Again? Hah. Donald Trump has weakened us with astonishing speed. Under his “leadership” America’s influence, reputation and credibility have peeled away like the liner in the Reflecting Pool.

The disintegration of U.S. power was well underway before Trump started his war on Iran, but the pace of decline has accelerated sharply since the magnitude of our defeat started becoming apparent.

And when future historians write about this tale of self-immolation, they may well do so in Mandarin.

China hasn’t been a direct combatant in the third Gulf war, and its support for Iran has, until recently, been discreet. (China is now reportedly preparing to send Iran advanced munitions — Phillips O’Brien suggests that it is “going in for the kill.”) But China has clearly relished our humiliation. And both the way the war has played out and China’s role have drastically shifted the global balance of power in China’s favor.

China has been a serious geopolitical rival to the United States for some time. China’s manufacturing sector overtook the US in 2010, and the gap has continued to grow (I’ll explain the line labeled “US+EU” shortly):

And China’s role as the workshop of the world inevitably gives it a great deal of geopolitical influence.

However, there were a number of factors that, two years ago, arguably still gave an America a power advantage despite China’s economic weight and manufacturing prowess. These factors included:

· America still led the world in science and cutting-edge technology.

· The U.S. military appeared to have vastly better weapons and leadership than any other nation’s.

· The dollar’s dominant role in international transactions gave the United States enormous financial clout, including the ability to cut other nations out of the global payments system.

· Above all, the U.S. wasn’t alone. We were the leader of history’s most successful alliance system, nations bound together not just by mutual interests but by shared democratic values.

Yet Trump and his lackeys have quickly squandered all of these advantages.

A great deal has been written about the Trump administration’s attack on science, which is a topic largely separate from the Iran war. As one recent discussion put it, Trump officials

have orchestrated a series of attacks on scientists and their laboratories, implemented through funding cuts, grant interruptions, and immigration restrictions. Scientists are gravitating to Canada, Europe, and China, and we are rapidly losing the depth of our innovative and essential scientific community.

The undermining of other U.S. sources of strength was also underway before the Iran war, but the war has accelerated the downward spiral.

Even before the bombing of Iran began, some observers worried about the state of the U.S. military. Had U.S. military leaders adapted to the new world — revealed by the war in Ukraine — of cheap, ubiquitous drones? How much damage had the pro-testosterone, anti-intellectual leadership of Pete Hegseth already done? Now we know the answers to these questions, and America’s military reputation has nose-dived.

Oh, and as a December 2025 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies points out, a Chinese supply chain underpins “the architecture of modern drone warfare.”

America’s dollar-linked financial power has also sharply declined. True, as I wrote a month ago, “The dollar’s role as the dominant currency for ordinary business is not under threat.” However, the war has demonstrated that, thanks in large part to China’s underlying economic power, America’s ability to weaponize the dollar has been greatly reduced:

Iran was able to continue selling oil (until the U.S. temporarily imposed a military blockade) and buying essential imports, despite U.S. financial sanctions, by taking payment in yuan and using those yuan to buy Chinese goods. Ships that paid Iran for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz also paid in yuan (or in cryptocurrency, whose only real use case remains criminal activity.) The details are complicated, but using yuan essentially allows those designated by the U.S. government as rogue actors to fly under our financial radar.

Finally, the war has really put the nail in the coffin of the U.S.-centered alliance system.

America’s alliances have been a fundamental source of global strength since World War II. The line labeled “US+EU” in the chart on manufacturing value added is an indication of how much these alliances used to strengthen us: It shows that even now the US and the democracies of the European Union combined produce more manufactured goods than China, a lead that would be larger if I included the UK, Japan, Canada, etc.

But Trump began torpedoing our alliances on day one. Discussions of the Trump tariffs, even critical ones, don’t emphasize enough the fact that every one of these tariffs broke international agreements made by the United States in the past. So Trumpian tariff policy, by itself, was an announcement to the world that agreements with the U.S. government are worthless. Add to this the demands that Canada become the 51^st state, that Denmark hand over Greenland, and so on, and America had thoroughly lost the trust of its former friends even before the Iran war.

Then came the war. And in the past five months the U.S. has shown itself both erratic and ineffectual. Trump launched a war that, in addition to creating death and destruction, cut off much of the world’s oil supply without so much as consulting other nations. Once the war began, America proved both incapable of imposing its will on Iran and unable either to open the Strait of Hormuz or to protect regional allies.

So now the world neither trusts nor fears us. The chart at the top of this post, drawn from the Pew survey of global attitudes, shows views of the US and China in multiple countries. Even many of our oldest allies, the nations that helped us win World War II and the Cold War, now have a more favorable opinion of China than they do of us.

Let’s be clear: The end of U.S. leadership and China’s growing geopolitical ascendancy are bad things. China is a corrupt autocracy, with little respect for human rights and none at all for democratic values.

But people around the world have concluded that the Chinese are serious people, and that we are not. So America lost the war — and China won.

Most Voters Oppose Trump's War With Iran (Except Republicans)

 

The chart above reflects the results of the Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between July 23rd and 27th of a nationwide sample of 963 registered voters, with a 4.1 point margin of error.

CBS Poll Shows Public Is Very Unhappy With Trump's War In Iran

 

The charts above are from the CBS News / YouGov Poll -- done between July 22nd and 24th of a nationwide sample of 2,193 adults, with a 2.7 point margin of error.

Trump Did A Stupid Thing Because He Refused To Learn From History

Donald Trump started a war without clear goals and without an exit strategy. It was stupid, because the history of such U.S. actions was clear that it was a losing effort - one that could not be won.

The lesson should have been learned from Vietnam. That was also a war in which the United States was clearly the superior military force. The U.S. had the military advantage in training troop levels, and the machines of war. And that was clear in their winning nearly every battle of the war. But winning battles doesn't necessarily translate into winning a war - and the United States lost that war.

They lost because their military superiority did not actually give them the advantage. Vietnam actually had the long-term advantage. That was because for the U.S. to win they had to completely defeat the Viet Congress, the North Vietnamese army and subjugate the Vietnamese people (an almost impossible task). While Vietnam just had to survive and keep costing the U.S. in men and money. Eventually, the war became too expensive to continue with no end in sight.

The lesson was again taught by history in Afghanistan. The United States (and its allies) clearly had the superior force - and once again won all (or nearly all) of the battles fought in the war. But, like in Vietnam, having the superior force did not give the U.S. the advantage. The Taliban had the long-term advantage because all they had to do was survive and keep costing their opponent in men and money. Eventually, with no end in sight, the U.S had to withdraw and the Taliban won the war.

While Donald Trump is quick to try and rewrite history, he doesn't learn from it. The result is a third "forever" war that the United States cannot win. The Iranians did learn from this history. They knew that to win they just had to survive and keep costing the United States in men and money (and economic pain). This gives them the long-term advantage. And with the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranians have an advantage the Vietnamese and Afghans did not have.

The war continues, but I see no way for the United States to win it - no matter how long it goes on. It is likely though, like in the two previous examples, Iran will survive and emerge victorious.

That will happen because Trump did a very stupid thing in starting the war.

Voters Are Very Unhappy With Trump's War On Iran

 

The charts above reflect the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between July 10th and 13th of a nationwide sample of 1,450 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

Trump Now Has The Forever War He Promised Not To Start

 

The following is from Robert Reich:

Two weeks ago, Trump declared: “For the first time in 3,000 years, we are going to have peace in the Middle East.”

Today, he declared that the ceasefire is “over.”

Weeks ago we had a ceasefire and a “memorandum of understanding” with Iran that, according to Trump, gave us everything we wanted, including an end to Iran’s nuclear program. 

But the so-called “memo of understanding” left almost everything to be negotiated, including Iran’s nuclear program, its missile program, its support for terrorist groups, and its repression of its own people.

 

Before that — at the end of February — we had the promise of a quick “four-to-six-weeks” intervention.

The cold, hard fact is that America is far worse off today than we were before Trump started this conflict — without consulting with Congress or our allies. The Strait of Hormuz is once again effectively closed. Oil prices are moving upward. 

Iran’s nuclear stockpile remains hidden. The regime in Tehran is more extreme and resolute about gaining a nuclear bomb than ever before. 

Meanwhile, 13 Americans have been killed and some 425 have been wounded in action.

Over 3,400 Iranians have been killed, including 120 schoolchildren, and 26,000 Iranians have been injured. The Pentagon has already asked Congress for about $70 billion to cover the early operations around Iran, and the cost rises every week.

Trump never gave the American people a good reason for attacking Iran in the first place. He had no objective and no exit strategy.

 

The likeliest future is a low-level continuation of this conflict as far as the eye can see — coupled with sporadic announcements from Trump that it’s over and America has won, which are then contradicted by another set of attacks by Iran’s missiles and drones, followed by another round of American aggression and Iranian retaliation. 

This is the “forever war” that Trump criticized when he ran for office in 2024. 

The question is whether he and the spineless Republican Congress that have supported this debacle will be held to account.

Public Says Going To War With Iran Was The Wrong Decision

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between June 19th and 22nd of a nationwide sample of 1,679 adults (including 1,517 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.3 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters. 

Most Don't Like How Trump Handled The Iran War And Want It Stopped

 

The charts above are from the CBS News / YouGov Poll -- done between June 17th and 19th of a nationwide sample of 2,519 adults, with a 2,4 point margin of error.

Trump Wants A Quick Final Agreement And A Rebounding Economy - He Will Get Neither

It looks like a bit of realty finally sunk into Trump's tiny brain. He finally realized that his ridiculous and unnecessary war with Iran has just made an already bad economy even worse - and that was likely to be devastating to Republicans in the November elections - leaving him an even weaker lame duck president.

He made a bad temporary agreement with Iran, and has quickly arranged for negotiations to reach a final agreement to actually end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz for good. He hopes a quick final agreement will result in a rebounding economy and save the GOP in the coming elections.

There are two problems with that. First, even if a quick agreement is reached, it is extremely unlikely to fix the economy before the elections. Second, Trump is a terrible negotiator. He is just a bully who tries to force the other side to give in to what he wants - and he is already threatening Iran with more devastation if they don't bend to his will.

Bombing the hell out of Iran didn't work the first time, and it won't work if he resumes it. He would have to put American troops on the ground to really change the current situation - and the American people aren't going to like that. It would make his situation worse - not better.

Complicating things further is the fact that the Iranians are good negotiators.  They stretched out the negotiations with President Obama for two years to get the best deal possible.

They know that Trump is in serious political trouble, and they aren't going to agree to a quick agreement unless he gives them everything they want - including the kitchen sink! They know he is going to be in an even weaker position after the November elections, and they won't agree to anything before then.

Through his own incompetent actions Trump has put himself between a rock and a hard place, and Iran is not going to let him extricate himself.

There will be no final agreement before the elections.

Trump Hates Renewable Energy - But His War Has Pushed Much Of The World Toward It

The following is part of a post by economist Paul Krugman:

On Wednesday the Interior Department announced that it would pay the energy developer Invenergy $765 million not to develop three offshore wind farms. This is the third such payment by the Trump administration to undo offshore wind projects that have been years in the planning. Trump has so far committed $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars to killing renewable energy projects. The administration has also tried to stop offshore wind farms already under development — moves that have been blocked by the courts — while the Pentagon has been refusing to grant routine permits for onshore wind projects.

Yes, $2.5 billion to destroy already-approved, cost-effective clean energy projects while Americans are suffering from soaring electricity prices thanks to data centers and high gasoline prices.

Yet here’s the irony: Donald Trump’s disastrous Iran war has delivered a huge boost for renewable energy around the world — except in the U.S.. Trump has so far done more to shift the global economy away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy than any other single individual in history.

Why do Trump and his gang hate green energy so much? The roots of their hatred range from the power of fossil fuel interests, to Trump’s petulant whine that wind turbines ruined the view from his Scottish golf course, to a general sense among right-wingers that clean energy threatens their masculinity.

What’s best for Americans has nothing to do with it. Thus, Trump lackeys justifying their hostility to renewables consistently make arguments even they must know are stupid. Consider, for example, an exchange last month between Doug Burgum, secretary of the interior, and Rep. Jared Huffman of Nevada:

Burgum: All of these projects you’re describing in Nevada have one thing in common—when the sun goes down, they produce zero electricity.

Huffman: Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent to enter in the record this amazing new technology that apparently the secretary is unaware of: It’s a battery.

California — which would be the world’s 4^th largest economy if it were a country — gets more than half of its electricity from renewables. It is rapidly becoming a state largely powered by the sun during daylight hours and powered by batteries during the night.

Burgum’s suggestion that solar is an unproven or unreliable technology is completely at odds with reality.

Nor is California the only economy that now makes substantial use of renewable energy. Burgum’s home state of North Dakota gets more than a third of its electricity from wind power (don’t tell Trump). In South Dakota wind supplies 57 percent of the electricity. And renewables generate a large share of electricity in many countries, including most big European economies. (France is the outlier, not because it relies on fossil fuels, but because it has large nuclear capacity.) Spain, for example, now relies heavily on a solar-plus-batteries system similar to that in California.

And when Trump went to war with Iran, nations that had already shifted toward renewable energy were very glad they had made the move.

To the extent that there’s a competition for the future of electricity generation, it’s between renewable energy and natural gas. Whatever Trump may want to believe, burning coal — even ignoring the environmental damage — is a costly, obsolete technology, which nobody wants to invest in. But new gas-turbine power facilities are still being built (although many places are, like California, rapidly shifting away from natural gas). Trump officials envision a world largely powered by US liquefied natural gas (LNG).

However, countries that relied heavily on natural gas were hit hard by Trump’s gratuitous war with Iran. LNG supplies from the Persian Gulf were blocked and couldn’t be fully replaced by U.S. exports because shipping capacity was limited. Countries that had invested heavily in renewables, like Spain, were largely unscathed. A report from the think tank Ember found that since the war began Spanish electricity prices — unlike prices in some other European countries — were essentially decoupled from the soaring price of natural gas.

Assuming that the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened after Trump’s abject surrender to the Iranian regime, natural gas prices should subside. Yet the world has learned a hard lesson about the riskiness of relying on fossil fuels for electricity generation.

And let’s be clear about the nature of that lesson. It’s not the fact that much of the world’s supply of hydrocarbons comes from a politically volatile region: We’ve known that all too well since the 1970s. What’s new is the recognition of American weakness and unreliability.

In this new era of drone warfare America cannot guarantee reliable access to imported fossil fuels through critical sea lanes. And is America itself a reliable supplier? Can nations that allow themselves to be dependent on U.S. gas and oil be sure that Trump or a future Trump-like president won’t weaponize that dependence, cutting off or threatening to cut off supplies in some future dispute? The obvious answer is no.

The whole world now knows that relying on imported fossil fuels is a major economic and security risk. By contrast, the sun will shine and the wind blow whatever may be happening overseas. Renewables were already rapidly becoming cheaper than fossil fuels. Now it’s clear that they are also far safer.

Thus Donald Trump has in practice become the world’s green energy champion.