How war against Iran is dividing US and why Trump could face problems
Claims by the administration of Donald Trump that the operation against Iran was preventive are being questioned not only by some European allies of the United States but also by American lawmakers, moreover, by representatives of both parties.
Domestic outrage is fueled by the fact that Trump’s actions were very likely a violation of the US Constitution: the president did not have Congress’s approval to initiate hostilities.
All of this is happening against the backdrop of the midterm elections to Congress, which promise to be a challenge for the American president and which have begun with the start of party primaries in several states.
Read more about how the latest operation by the US military has divided the American administration and how these events could affect the course of the midterm elections in the article by Olha Kovalchuk, a European Pravda journalist: Strike without support: How the US reacted to the war with Iran and why this is a problem for Trump.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, a member of the Gang of Eight (a group of eight US lawmakers, mostly members of intelligence committees, who receive classified information about US operations and whom the Trump administration informed about the planned operation in Iran), questioned the constitutionality of the strikes on Iran.
Instead, on 2 March, already after the war had begun, the American president sent lawmakers a classified letter justifying the operation as necessary to eliminate Iran as a global threat. Notably, the letter did not mention Tehran’s nuclear programme or the need to overthrow the bloody regime of the ayatollahs.
Even now, however, American society has not received answers to the main questions.
First and foremost, it is unclear how long this war will last and what the United States aims to achieve.
As a result, polls show that only 27% of Americans approved of Trump’s actions in Iran. By comparison, more than twice as many (65%) supported the operation to abduct Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
The restrained reaction of US Vice President JD Vance, whom Trump almost certainly sees as his successor, is also telling.
Vance broke his media silence only in a short interview with Fox News on 2 March. In the statement, he supported the strikes on Iran, repeating the argument about Tehran obtaining nuclear weapons.
At the same time, Vance tried to reassure the general public (and perhaps himself) that Trump would not drag America into a "new Iraq or Afghanistan."
Experts emphasise that support for actions against Iran in Congress will depend largely on how long the operation lasts.
A prolonged war that destabilises the region and causes losses for the US military could turn the president’s allies and fellow party members against him.
Moreover, some of them have expressed concern about this, for example, MAGA Republican Markwayne Mullin.
One should not forget the human losses the United States has suffered during several days of operations in the Middle East. Six soldiers killed in the current war is too great a loss for a president who was elected on slogans of peace and "America First".
And a war in a strategically important region without clear meaning or goals, as the history of Iraq shows, leads not only to a weakening of a country’s image on the global stage but also to the loss of electoral support.
These political consequences have already begun to appear. The first American strikes on Iran took place on a Saturday, three days before the official start of the first stage of the midterm elections to Congress, the party primaries.
On Tuesday, only three states (Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas) were choosing their party candidates.
Even the preliminary results in these states turned out to be quite telling.