WASHINGTON
Ten days after attacking Iran together, the United States and Israel have seen a public divergence, with President Donald Trump facing political pressure and not sharing Israel’s long-term goals.
The two allied countries face a stark divide in how their public views the war, with historically low support by Americans for an offensive enthusiastically backed by most Israelis.
With the price of oil spiking, a warning sign in US politics, Trump told CBS News on Monday that the war was “pretty much” over, despite his earlier vows with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to pursue weeks if not months of attacks.
US officials voiced unease after Tehran residents woke up Sunday to apocalyptic scenes of black smoke blocking out the sun and choking them, following Israeli attacks on fuel depots around the city of ten million people.
Even Senator Lindsey Graham, a hawkish Republican ally of Trump who has urged war on Iran for years, called on Israel to “please be cautious about what targets you select.”
“Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life when this regime collapses,” Graham wrote on X.
Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that US and Israeli goals were mostly similar, but not identical.
He said that Israel wants Iran, whose cleric-run government has championed Hamas, to be “permanently weakened”, a strategy Israel has pursued across the region, notably in repeatedly bombing historic adversary Syria despite a change in government.
“The US may not have as much of an appetite for a long conflict, especially because we have priorities in other theatres that Israel obviously doesn’t have, and we can pack up and go home whereas Israel can’t,” said Singh, who served as the top White House advisor on the Middle East under former president George W Bush.
Both Netanyahu and Trump have spoken favourably of Iranians overthrowing the Islamic republic, which faces widespread opposition and ruthlessly suppressed protests in January, but neither has made it an explicit goal.
Trump, who for years denounced US interventionism in the Middle East as wasteful and misguided, has offered different explanations for attacking the country of 90 million people, mostly focusing on degrading its military.
But US Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised eyebrows when he told reporters that the “imminent threat” faced by the United States, a key legal threshold as Congress constitutionally has power to declare war, was that Israel had already decided to attack Iran, which would have then retaliated against US forces.
Israel retains strong support within Trump’s Republican Party but the rival Democratic Party, and a few prominent voices on the right, have accused Trump of blindly following Israel into a regional war.
A Quinnipiac poll released Monday found that a narrow majority of Americans was against military action in Iran, 53 percent, a striking level of opposition just days into a war, and that 44 percent believed the United States was too supportive of Israel.
A recent Gallup poll found that for the first time more Americans sympathised with the Palestinians than the Israelis in their conflict, after Israel reduced Gaza to rubble in relentless bombardment following the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, considered a likely Democratic candidate for president in 2028, recently questioned US aid to Israel and agreed that its treatment of Palestinians showed it to be an “apartheid state”, a characterisation strongly resented by Israelis and once unthinkable for a leading American political contender.
Aaron David Miller, a veteran US negotiator on the Middle East who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Netanyahu has become even more dependent on Trump as Israel this year holds elections, in which the veteran prime minister will want to show he has the US president’s support.
“When Donald Trump says stop, this is going to stop, no matter whether the Israelis feel it’s mission accomplished or not, because the degree of leverage that Trump has over Netanyahu is unprecedented in the history of a presidents’ relations with Israeli prime ministers,” Miller said.
One of Trump concerns is the forthcoming midterm election in November. Republican lawmakers held an annual strategy session with US Trump on Monday in Florida, with one urgent issue topping the agenda: how to prevent the Iran war from becoming a midterm election liability.
As crude prices soar to multi-year highs, with a corresponding spike in US fuel prices, Republicans face potential blowback just eight months before the November vote.
Losing their narrow control of Congress could also derail the final two years of Trump’s term in office.
In the halls of Congress, only a few Republican lawmakers have expressed concern over the conflict, but they could become more vocal over time if already negative public sentiment sours further.
“Usually, foreign policy doesn’t play a big role in midterm elections … unless there is a direct connection to how it is making people’s lives worse,” said Todd Belt, a political management professor at George Washington University.
He warned that economic impact from the soaring price of oil, which could linger until election day and add to the usual headwinds that the president’s party faces in midterm elections.
Trump’s administration has downplayed the economic impact of the war, insisting any price hikes would be temporary.
However, the message is unlikely to resonate with many in the United States, where gas-guzzling vehicles remain popular.
“Maybe it’s just me … but seems not super smart to win an election on inflation and then start a war that causes oil prices to spike by 50 percent within like four days,” data expert Nate Silver quipped on X.
According to Belt, the best way for Trump and the Republicans to limit the electoral consequences would be to find an off-ramp to the war “real soon.”