Editor’s Note: This article, which discusses possible consequences of a U.S.–Iran war, was written prior to American bombings of Iran Saturday night.
The Trump administration faces a fateful decision over whether to intervene in an offensive capacity in Iran. The long-term potential consequences of intervention are profound and far-reaching, but one of the clearest, most immediate implications would be the implosion of support among Americans under age thirty.
Exit polls from the 2024 election show that young voters played a key role in President Donald Trump’s political comeback. Tufts polling shows that Trump earned support from 40 percent of voters aged 18–29 in the 2024 election, a 10 percent positive swing from his 2020 margins and a breakthrough for the modern Republican Party. Notably, President Trump garnered 56 percent support from young men.
Economic issues played a key role in consolidating support for Trump among Zoomers and young millennials. The 2024 campaign’s signaling on inflation, housing costs, and jobs was effective. But economic promises were not the sole driver of youth support; Trump’s pledges to seek peaceful resolutions to the world’s ongoing conflicts also played an important role.
Committing U.S. assets to a dangerous, unpredictable conflict between Iran and Israel would likely be received as a betrayal of a core campaign promise and come at a time when there is bipartisan skepticism of the Israeli government among fighting-age citizens. Pew polling from late March found that half of Republicans under 50 have an unfavorable view of Israel. Among Democrats in that age bracket, unfavorable views have risen to 69 percent. Considering that popular support tends to erode during protracted conflict, these dismal numbers could be considered a ceiling among fighting-age Americans, at least after any initial rally-around-the-flag effect abates.
The unfavorable perception of Israel has been driven primarily by the perception that Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud government has been a reckless aggressor following Hamas’ atrocities in October 2023. Despite showing strong support for Israel in the aftermath of the attack, young Americans—and indeed Americans of all demographics—have soured on Israel’s war, and on the country itself, as the humanitarian disaster in Gaza has intensified and morphed into a regional quagmire.
Disturbingly, 48 percent of Americans aged 18–24 have gone further in their animosity toward Israel, espousing the radical view that they favor Hamas over the Jewish state. These numbers are disconcerting but worth dwelling on; they reflect the profound skepticism with which young Americans have come to view the Netanyahu government throughout the escalating regional crisis in the Middle East. Direct U.S. intervention in Iran is likely only to inflame this generational disconnect, much the same way visible and unpatriotic displays of affection for the Viet Cong in the late 1960s shocked older Americans.
Youth skepticism of foreign entanglement springs from a well of alternative media voices, many of whom played a key role in securing victory for Trump in 2024. These include comedians Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Tim Dillon, among others. They also include countless influencers on TikTok, X, and other social media platforms who proliferate video content that displays shocking wartime violence in Gaza. In the same way senior Americans have had their political consciousness shaped by cable news networks, young millennials and Generation Z have been exposed not only to perhaps the most visible conflict in human history but to biting commentary that challenges U.S. government narratives. The downstream effect has been the rise of heterodox views on Mideast conflicts, ranging from radical pro-Hamas sentiment on the left to justified skepticism on the center-left and broader right.
Given the lack of public support for Netanyahu’s offensives among Americans broadly—and particularly among youth—direct American involvement in a conflict with Iran could deliver a blow to the Trump administration and a potential Vance campaign. Trump, who has lambasted George W. Bush’s Iraq war, would become just another Republican president waging a major war in the Middle East—generating an existential credibility crisis for the future of a self-proclaimed peaceful GOP.
President Trump should heed the warnings of good-faith opponents of escalation in the ongoing crisis—including MAGA luminaries Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon—and not get dragged into another Mideast Forever War. Failure to do so represents a roll of the dice on the future of everything Trump and the America First movement have achieved since 2015. For now, there’s still time to avoid the gamble.
Read the full article here
