Author: Nandita Bose, Gram Slattery and Bo Erickson
WASHINGTON, March 2 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump is continuing military strikes against Iran despite private warnings from top aides that an escalation could be difficult to contain and pose political risks to Republicans, according to two senior White House officials and a Republican close to the administration.
The massive attack was met with almost unanimous praise from Washington’s foreign policy hawks, who have long dreamed of overthrowing Tehran’s authoritarian regime. But some White House officials worry the foreign policy gamble could undermine Republicans’ chances of taking control of Congress at a time when war-wary voters are more concerned about the cost of living than conflicts abroad.
Senior White House officials said Trump sought repeated briefings before the attack on how military action would allow him to project power domestically. Senior aides warned that U.S. intelligence had no clear guarantees that an escalation could be avoided once an attack began, and that the administration risked tying its political fate to unpredictable consequences.
Officials said Trump ultimately sided with those who believed decisive action would show he was a strong leader, even if it carried long-term risks.
None of these officials expected the immediate political fallout. Instead, they expect a so-called “slow-burn effect” driven by the duration of the conflict, the scope of retaliation, the number of American casualties and the impact on natural gas prices.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Sunday showed that only a quarter of Americans support a U.S. attack on Iran’s leader. About half of those surveyed, including a quarter of Republicans, said they believed Trump was too willing to use military force. The polls closed before the U.S. military announced the first American casualties in the operation.
“Presidents from both parties have considered it for more than fifty years, but no one has had the courage to carry out the president’s decision to launch Operation Epic Fury,” White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said in a statement. “Right now, the White House’s top priority is working with the Pentagon and across agencies to ensure the operation is sustained and ultimately successful.”
Challenging the economic focus again
Given the public mood ahead of the midterm elections, White House officials and Trump advisers have been urging the president to focus on topics that matter most to Americans, such as health care and affordability, as he did in his State of the Union address four days before the attacks.
The weekend strikes highlighted how quickly this strategy can fail, at least for now. The president said in an interview on Sunday that the Iranian operation is expected to last four to five weeks, as he continued to prepare the country for more American deaths after the U.S. military announced that three service members had been killed.
“The combination of a successful State of the Union address focused on affordability and the economic issues voters care about, and then a war in the Middle East just days later, is not just heart-wrenching, it’s dizzying,” said Republican strategist Rob Godfrey.
“Getting midterm voters to accept this juxtaposition will be one of the most important things the White House needs to do in the coming weeks.”
An informal Trump adviser who has been to the White House in recent days believes the main electoral danger lies not with centrist or independent voters but with members of Trump’s MAGA movement, for whom non-interventionism is a key part of the president’s pitch during the 2024 campaign.
The consultant said many of those voters are likely to stay home during the midterm elections, during which voter turnout is already low.
With 58% of Americans disapproving of Trump’s performance in office, Republicans will need massive votes from their core supporters to fend off a Democratic victory that could topple control of the U.S. House of Representatives and even jeopardize the Republican stronghold in the Senate, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed in February.
Tightly contested House races more fragile
White House aides are modeling how prolonged military engagement with Iran, casualties and higher fuel costs could erode public support in hotly contested congressional districts, White House officials said.
Sources said the White House believes the closely contested House, where Republicans hold a slim majority, is at far greater risk of Iranian influence than the Senate map.
White House political modeling shows that in dozens of swing districts, even modest voter skepticism could be decisive, or at least force vulnerable Republican representatives — such as Gabe Evans of Colorado, Derek Van Orden of Wisconsin and Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania — to vote on thorny war powers resolutions when they want to focus on domestic issues like the cost of living and answer questions about widening conflicts abroad.
A senior Republican official working to preserve the party’s congressional majority said foreign interference poses more political risks than benefits for Trump. Foreign policy triumphs often go unnoticed by voters, although foreign policy quagmires often do.
“Unless this operation fails, voters, especially in the midterm elections, are not going to care about foreign policy,” the agent said.
Trump captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a raid last month that sparked little political backlash and resulted in no American deaths. However, since that move in early January, Trump’s approval rating has dropped from 42% to 39%, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Analysts say a brief war that leads to Iran abandoning its nuclear program and installing a new leader would be more popular than a drawn-out conflagration that would kill many Americans.
Interviews with Trump supporters suggest that while a sizable minority is wary of his growing leanings toward foreign intervention, many are willing to support his transformation from a self-proclaimed “peacemaker” to a militant military tactician.
“It caught me completely off guard, I didn’t even know anyone was thinking about this,” B.J. Moore, an 83-year-old Trump voter from Atlanta, Georgia, said of the Iranian action. “Nobody wants to get into a war, but Iran just killed thousands of its own people, so I’m fine with what Trump did.”
(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Mullen, Switzerland, Bo Erickson in West Palm Beach, Florida and Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Stephen Coates)
