By admin 
Iraq and Vietnam are often thought of as the prototypical modern examples of unpopular US wars.
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But an increasing volume of data suggests the Iran war has become about as unpopular as those wars ever were — and it became so much more quickly.
At the same time, the war’s unpopularity comes with a major caveat. And that’s that Americans don’t seem as focused on it.
Here’s what the numbers show.
The ‘not worth fighting’ number
A new Washington Post-Ipsos poll last week was the latest to provide a pretty dismal historical comparison for President Donald Trump’s war of choice, which he launched in late February.
The survey showed 68% of Americans said the Iran war was not “worth fighting,” while just 28% said it was.
That negative 40-point split is worse than for either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars in Washington Post-ABC News polling.
The worst numbers for the Afghanistan war were a similar 67%-28% split in 2013, nearly 12 years into it.
The Iraq war also saw about two-thirds (66%) saying it wasn’t worth fighting in its worst poll in 2007. But the percentage who said it was worth fighting never dipped below 33%.
In other words, even the Iraq war never lost as much support as this war has.
It’s also worth emphasizing that it took Americans a long time to conclude that these other wars weren’t worth it. In Afghanistan, it took nearly eight years for a majority to say that. In Iraq, it took nearly a year. And it wasn’t until four years later that two-thirds said it wasn’t worth it.
The ‘mistake’ number
A Post-ABC poll in late April showed it took less than two months for 61% of Americans to declare the Iran war to be a “mistake.”
While that wasn’t higher than all previous wars, Americans did reach that verdict much more quickly than they did with the Iraq or Vietnam wars.
In Iraq, it took nearly four years for that many Americans to decide the war had been a mistake; 64% said so in January 2017.
In Vietnam, it took more than six years for the number to reach that high, with 61% labeling the war a mistake in May 1971.
The stronger vs. weaker question
While Trump has touted the Iran war as a sign of US strength, Americans don’t see it that way.
A Quinnipiac University poll last month, in fact, showed registered voters said 45%-33% that the war has made the United States weaker in the world rather than stronger.
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That’s, again, pretty similar to the Iraq war. After two years, a showed Americans said 41%-28% that it had made the United States weaker instead of stronger.
The pollster didn’t test the question after 2005, when the Iraq war became more unpopular.
The war’s overall unpopularity
And then there is just the straight-up unpopularity of the Iran war — i.e. whether Americans say they support it or oppose it.
A New York Times analysis in the war’s earliest days found that that the 41% initial support for striking Iran in a CNN poll was the lowest on record for starting international military action. (Data for Vietnam didn’t exist, but other polling early in that war suggests it was not initially unpopular.)
Gallup looked at a wider universe of not just wars but also military strikes (like the 2020 US strike that killed Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani), and found it was virtually unheard of for US military action to not have at least 50% support.
Out of more than a dozen examples, the only exception before the Iran war was the Obama administration’s strikes against Libya in 2011 (47%). Virtually every poll showed strikes against Iran considerably more unpopular than that.
The Gallup data did show support for some military actions quickly falling pretty low months later, including Libya (39%) and Haiti in 1994 (36%). But neither fell as low, as fast as the 34% support for the Iran war just three months into the conflict.
The caveat: Iran doesn’t seem as big a priority
There’s a compelling case to be made that the Iran war is one of the United States’ most unpopular modern wars. And it certainly became that unpopular more quickly than others did.
But there is a significant difference between its unpopularity and the unpopularity of these other wars. And that’s how much people seem to care.
Gallup polling showed as many as 55% of Americans said the Vietnam war was the “most important problem” facing the country in 1967. That number reached as high as 36% for the Iraq war in 2007.
But the Iran war’s salience hasn’t reached nearly as high. In fact, most polls show the percentage who think it or foreign wars in general are the most important issue in the United States is in the single digits.
That’s likely because the war hasn’t involved US ground troops and hasn’t produced nearly as many service member deaths as previous wars. (We have seen our first troop deaths in months in recent days.)
What that means in practice is that there’s probably not as much pressure on Trump to change course and it might not be as big a voting issue in the November midterm elections.
At the same time, Americans are quite concerned about the economy, and the Iran war is certainly exacerbating that problem by increasing gas prices. So in that way, even if the war itself isn’t heavily factoring into their votes come November, it could be contributing to Trump’s biggest liability — albeit one that predated the war.
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And there are few signs the war is going away any time soon.