Would the Public Support a Campaign Against Iranian Nukes?

Regarding the politics of possible direct U.S. involvement in an operation to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Michael Brendan Dougherty writes,

Polling about Middle Eastern issues is all over the place. Majorities of Republicans simultaneously report that they do not trust the Iranians to keep their word and that they hope the United States does reach a diplomatic settlement of the Iranian nuclear question. If you ask the public about whether they favor strikes to keep a nuclear weapon out of the hands of Iranians, they endorse that too. That is, without any context of the sacrifices or risks, Americans are reliably in favor of positive-sum games. At the same time, you’ll find that the majority of Trump voters (and Americans) do not support the U.S. joining in Israel’s war on Iran.

Trump has a nose for public opinion, and his position is roughly where all these seemingly contrary sentiments meet: against an Iranian nuke, supportive of Israel, but wary of any major or costly campaign, conscious of the potential downsides and unanticipated consequences.

I suspect this is exactly right. Setting aside the question of the wisdom of such an operation — or its constitutionality absent explicit authorization by Congress — it’s likely that, whatever the view of a segment of MAGA influencers and politicians, the public would largely support an order by the president of the United States to take military action against the Fordow enrichment site or other Iranian nuclear facilities, if the operation lasts up to a few weeks and if the effects of such an operation are seen as sufficient to neutralize Iran’s nuclear program.

That might seem to some like a tautology. I disagree.

Figures such as Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene say that the people that elected Donald Trump “are sick and tired of foreign wars. All of them.” The Federalist’s Sean Davis asserts that the arguments around taking action against Iran’s nuclear program are merely a neocon attempt to “seamlessly replace a disastrous, unpopular war with a brand new one.” Tucker Carlson says that the “real divide is between those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it — between warmongers and peacemakers.”

But the reason that Americans are wary of a confrontation with Iran — even one that presents a relatively low risk (especially at this stage of the game, after Israel has devastated so many of Iran’s allies and proxies and so much of its air defense network) and a relatively high reward — is that, for 25 years, Americans have grown used to unsatisfactory results from our military operations. Afghanistan ended in a retreat and a debacle. The removal of the Qaddafi regime in Libya engendered chaos. Repeated actions against the Houthis have been inconclusive.

It’s true that the war against ISIS ended in what can only be called victory, and that the war in Iraq achieved most of its aims — the removal of the Saddam Hussein government, the excising of any threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and the establishment of a government more friendly to American interests — but the victory against ISIS came with no celebration or recognition, and the war in Iraq came at too high a cost in blood, treasure, political capital, and national dislocation.

For a generation, Americans have not experienced unambiguous military success. Carlson, Davis, MTG, and their ideological peers think that Americans would therefore view unfavorably any war, even a short and victorious one against Iran, because such a war would be a foreign “war of choice.”

I don’t think so. Americans like to win. They know that the Islamic Republic of Iran, a government with the blood of hundreds of Americans on its hands, has been opposed to the United States for more than four decades. If they see American arms punish such a regime in a quick, decisive bombing campaign, a series of strikes that can be unmistakably judged to have neutralized the Iranian nuclear program, Americans would likely support and approve of it.

If the campaign goes wrong, or becomes costly in terms of American lives and resources, or if it lingers on indefinitely, it would likely prove unpopular, even if it is proved that the Iranian nuke program has been destroyed.

That’s the politics of the thing. Now we ought to ask ourselves, “Should we?” and “Will Congress authorize it?”