While there are serious doubts about the accuracy of President Donald Trump’s claims about the effectiveness of his attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, the U.S./Israeli war on Iran has provided fresh and abundant evidence of widespread opposition to war in the United States.
With a tenuous ceasefire currently holding, several nationwide surveys suggest Trump’s attack, which plunged the country into yet another offensive war in the Middle East, has been broadly unpopular across the country.
Trump’s 2024 election victory, itself, provided evidence of broad anti-war sentiment across the political spectrum given the apparent resonance of Trump portraying himself as the “candidate of peace” amid a backlash against the Biden/Harris administration’s support for Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. In this context, Trump’s attack on Iran represented a major reversal on his campaign promises and an election night pledge not “to start wars” but “to stop wars.”
Previously unreported polling, which I helped conduct, confirms that the “pro-peace” Trump of the campaign and election night was in tune with the attitudes of much of the country. Nationwide, people understand that another in a long series of endless wars will primarily benefit weapons makers, Pentagon contractors, and other parts of the Military Industrial Complex while harming Iranians, Israelis, and, potentially, untold Americans.
Broad opposition to war with Iran
Polling both before and immediately after Trump launched attacks on Iran showed broad opposition to U.S. involvement in Israel’s unprovoked war including among Trump’s base. Most strikingly, 85% of people surveyed nationwide said they don’t want the U.S. to be at war with Iran, while only 5% do, according to YouGov polling conducted in the wake of the bombing.
The same survey showed that significantly more people disapproved of Trump’s attacks compared to those who approved. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found the same gap between those opposed to the bombing (45%) and those supporting (36%). A CNN survey revealed an even larger 12% difference between those opposed (56%) and those approving (44%). Nearly 20% more people disapprove of Trump’s handling of relations with Iran compared to those who approve. A similarly broad gap exists between those who think the attacks will make the U.S. less safe compared to those who think they will make the country safer.
Among Republicans, sharp tensions emerged amid debates over attacking Iran. Nearly two-thirds of Trump voters wanted the U.S. government to “engage in negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program.” Just 24% of Republicans surveyed before the U.S. strikes on Iran favored using the military to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, according to a University of Maryland poll. Amid celebratory reporting on Fox News after the actual attacks, Republican support for Trump’s strikes significantly exceeded that of Democrats and the general public.
Americans support ‘anti-war’ Trump
These patterns of anti-war sentiment are unsurprising for many reasons including the popularity of Trump’s anti-war messaging during the 2024 presidential campaign. “We’re going to end these endless wars,” Trump said on the campaign trail. After winning, Trump doubled down: “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars,” he promised in his victory speech.
Candidate Trump went even further to embrace a populist critique of “war profiteering” and the Military Industrial Complex. “I will expel the warmongers from our national security state and carry out a much needed clean-up of the Military Industrial Complex to stop the war profiteering and to always put America first,” he promised during a speech in Wisconsin in September.
“We have these people, they want to go to war all the time,” he said of people embedded in the Military Industrial Complex. “You know why? Missiles are $2 million apiece. That’s why. They love to drop missiles all over the place.”
Before he started firing those very missiles, Trump clearly understood popular anger at the kind of corporate profiteering endemic to the Military Industrial Complex — that powerful system connecting weapons makers, the Pentagon, and Congress, which continually encourages increased spending on endless wars fueling profits for the Complex that President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about in his 1961 farewell address.
Research that I helped design after the election showed that Trump was onto something: An overwhelming majority of the country — 77% — agrees with Trump that “war profiteers” and “war profiteering” are a problem in the U.S., according to a nationally representative online poll conducted by ReThink Media.
Similarly, nearly two-thirds of people nationwide (64%) believe the Military Industrial Complex “profits from the continuous involvement of the US military in wars, combat, and other deployments in foreign countries.” More than half think the Complex “has too much influence on the country’s foreign policy decisions because of its lobbying and campaign contributions.”
Echoing the Trump who vowed to “clean up” the Military Industrial Complex, more than twice as many people (44%) agree “it’s in our best interest as a nation to reduce the power” of the Complex as opposed to those who disagree (19%).
These findings seem to reflect growing awareness that the weapons manufacturers and other Pentagon contractors at the core of the Military Industrial Complex have been the main beneficiaries of the nearly quarter century of continuous wars that the country has fought since the George W. Bush administration invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003. “Who Won in Afghanistan? Private Contractors,” a Wall Street Journal headline said succinctly in 2021.
More than half of the annual Pentagon budget now goes to private contractors. Five companies profit most: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon (RTX), Boeing, and General Dynamics. Within hours of Israel attacking Iran, weapons stocks were on the rise despite a sharp decline in the overall stock market. A day after Israel’s attacks started, stock in Northrup, Lockheed, and Raytheon, which sell weapons to the Israeli and U.S. governments, were up between 3% and 4%. Weapons makers’ stocks were up immediately in early trading after Trump’s attacks.
Trump’s empty promises
Trump’s bombing campaign represents the complete shattering of his promises to stop wars rather than start them and to “clean up” the Military Industrial Complex. Of course, he had already embraced the path of endless war by making the United States a combatant in Israel’s illegal, unprovoked war on Iran: the U.S. government played an active role in defending and arming Israel, sharing intelligence, and coordinating the war.
Whether the ceasefire with Iran will hold or not is a major question, especially given Israel’s attacks on Lebanon on Friday, which broke a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah. No matter what Trump boasts about his bombing campaign and no matter what evidence actually shows about its impact on Iran’s nuclear program, the long-term consequences of the war will be impossible to know: the war could help propel Iran toward acquiring nuclear weapons. It could embolden an already unrestrained Israeli government as well as Trump toward the wider use of illegal acts of war against Iran and other nations. It could generate myriad unforeseen forms of violent blowback against and other unanticipated consequences for the United States and Israel.
While Trump may want to call it a “12-day war,” it’s clear the effects won’t be confined to 12 days. So too, Trump’s embrace of yet another in a series of endless wars has provided fresh new evidence that large numbers of people in the U.S. are opposed to war. People understand all too well that when bombs start dropping, ordinary people suffer while war profiteers get rich.
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