June 24, 2025, 5:08 p.m.
When serious discussions began about the U.S. getting directly involved in Israel’s war with Iran, the comparison with the ill-fated decision to invade Iraq in 2003 seemed obvious, right down to the debatable assertions about weapons of mass destruction. Public opinion supported the action in Iraq, but to compare that to the current situation, we have to consider the ways in which public opinion is fundamentally different than it was 22 years ago.
For starters, the politics of the run-up to the Iraq invasion bear little resemblance to what is happening now in the Middle East. It was only a year after 9/11, and President George W. Bush's approval ratings were still quite high. There was a significant campaign to win public support, Congress approved military action, and other countries joined the effort, with the result that a month before the war started, two-thirds of Americans favored military action to “end Saddam Hussein’s rule,” according to Pew.
By 2019, however, 62 percent of Americans said the war was not worth fighting, including 59 percent of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s no mystery why. The engagement lasted nearly a decade after Bush stood in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier. Soldiers who fought in the war faced horrific brutality. The weapons of mass destruction that provided the justification for the war were never found.
This year, Americans have been inclined to oppose action in Iran. In a Washington Post poll conducted before President Trump took action, only 25 percent supported striking Iran and 45 percent opposed it. A YouGov poll showed support for getting involved at a paltry 16 percent. Yet in a Fox News poll 73 percent of voters said Iran poses a real threat to the U.S. and 61 percent said preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon matters a great deal for U.S. security.
Americans generally see Iran as a threat and the idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon as untenable, but they also don’t want to get involved. The fact that we didn’t find any evidence of WMDs in Iraq would logically lead to some doubt. Furthermore, Iran has been “about to get a nuclear weapon” for a couple of decades now, so it’s a bit of “the boy who cried nuke” to the American public.
But public opinion about strikes on Iran in 2025 was never going to look like public opinion about invading Iraq in early 2003.
While we saw support for Bush’s plans spike up to nearly 70 percent in 2003, that simply doesn’t happen anymore. Our politics have become so polarized over the last 20 years that opinion on most issues has Democrats on one side, Republicans on the other, and independents splitting roughly 60-40 one way or the other. That split inherently caps support for many of Trump’s actions well below Bush’s numbers for Iraq.
A CNN-SSRS poll that managed to run in the two days between the strikes on Iran and the announcement of a ceasefire deal follows this pattern: 44 percent approve of the strikes, and 56 percent disapprove, with 88 percent of Democrats disapproving, 82 percent of Republicans approving, and 60 percent of independents disapproving.
Two other polls, from YouGov and Reuters-Ipsos, had lower numbers, with around 35 percent approving and 45 percent disapproving of the strikes. As always, the devil is in how the question is asked: These polls included “don’t know” options for the respondents, whereas CNN-SSRS did not. The result is similar, though: Disapproval is about 10-12 points higher than approval.
Interestingly, two of the polls note an age divide among Republicans. I asked about this on X, with the hunch that younger Republicans—those who were attracted by or came of age in the MAGA era—are more isolationist than older Republicans who knew the more hawkish version of the party. YouGov ran the numbers, and my suspicion was confirmed: Young Republicans are 23 points less likely to support the strikes than older Republicans. CNN also noted an age gap among Republicans in its write-up but did not give specific numbers.
It turns out this was a different situation in just about every way—including the fact that the conflict appears to have abruptly ended with a ceasefire. Ceasefires in the Middle East are always shaky, this one included, but it is remarkable that the Iranians conducted a flaccid counterstrike that they telegraphed in advance, and then everyone agreed to stop shooting.
Contributing editor Natalie Jackson is a vice president at GQR Research.
