Posted on 09/29/2026 9:56:27 AM PDT by Angelino97
No one would claim that the Iran War has been a political godsend for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. But some Israel-First conservatives are willing to say—and lately have been incessantly saying—that the Iran War hasn’t been a political scourge.
Those Israel-First conservatives are wrong, even if the devil is, at least partly, hidden in the details. The Iran War has damaged Trump’s approval ratings, consumed his presidency, and darkened the GOP’s prospects in the upcoming midterm elections.
A chief proponent of the argument that Trump hasn’t suffered all that much from the Iran War is Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire. Shapiro’s political analysis is plainly motivated by the fact that he was a loud and influential proponent of the war who promised—falsely, as it turned out—that Iran couldn’t close the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for the global energy trade.
These days, Shapiro seems to be implicitly acknowledging the war is very unpopular while trying to argue this fact has nothing to do with the declining approval ratings of the president who launched it. We should thank Shapiro, for he has expressed his new argument in such a way as to help us uncover those devilish details that make the Iran War a not-entirely-straightforward story of political calamity.
“There’s an op right now to pretend that the real reason for President Trump’s unpopularity is foreign policy, but that is not true, by the polling data, it is not true,” said Shapiro on a recent episode of his podcast. “The reality is that Americans have affordability concerns, President Trump came into office saying he was going to alleviate the affordability concerns. He has not in fact alleviated the affordability concerns, and therefore, his polling numbers have consistently slid since Liberation Day.”
This is a bit like me saying my wife isn’t mad at me because of the drinking, but because I drunkenly crashed the car.
The Iran War, as everyone now knows, has driven up prices at the pump—prices which, unfortunately for Trump, are prominently displayed on every major street across the country. On the eve of the war, regular gasoline averaged $2.98 per gallon. Today, at the time of writing, the average price is $4.48. Americans are notoriously averse to high gasoline prices and tend to punish presidents over the issue, sometimes even when the president can’t justifiably be blamed.
But make no mistake: Virtually every sentient adult understands that 1) oil comes from the Middle East, 2) Trump started a big war in the region, and 3) gas prices shot up right afterwards. And again, even if Americans didn’t grok the connection between the war and the gas-price spike, the latter would still have hurt Trump politically, and it would still be a knock-on effect of the former.
It’s not just prices at the pump that have gone up because of the war. Groceries and other consumer goods travel across this vast land on tractor-trailers that run on diesel and get a lot fewer miles per gallon than even your Uncle Larry’s F-350. Diesel prices have smashed records and now sit at around $6.50, up from $3.76 before the war.
No wonder truckers are furious, prompting rumors of an imminent strike.
And no wonder the Iran War has contributed to general inflation in America. Anyone who has been reading the official economic reports knows the war is responsible for more than a third of recent inflation.
Before the war, inflation was trending down, only a couple ticks away from the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent. It seems likely that Trump, if he hadn’t started his dumb war in the Middle East, would have garnered praise for presiding over declining inflation and that the Fed would have cut interest rates, juicing economic growth. Instead, inflation now sits at 3.4 percent.
(As an aside, this weekend I traveled to Istanbul, where many Middle Easterners of various nationalities complained to me that Americans only oppose the war because of the gas prices. That’s simply not true. The war has been unpopular since day one, when all that Americans knew was the American-Israeli strikes had killed Iranian leaders including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.)
Shapiro, ever the neoconservative, insinuated in the quote above that the decline in Trump’s approval rating owes more to his tariffs than to his war. The data doesn’t back that up, as the conservative commentator and election analyst Ryan Girdusky noted on X in response to new survey data. “The most eye opening part of this poll is that Trump’s approval rating and the strength of the economy went up right after Liberation Day,” Girdusky said. “Fell slightly afterward and then plummeted at the start of the Iran War.”
Shapiro has unwittingly helped uncover another, subtler, way in which the Iran War has indirectly damaged Trump’s approval ratings and, by extension, the Republican Party brand. Shapiro recently went on Fox News to commiserate with the host Mark Levin—another Israel-Firster and warmonger—over all those dastardly antiwar conservatives blaming the Iran War for everything.
“Iran is a 4-percent issue with the American people,” Levin said, as Shapiro nodded in agreement. Levin was referring to Fox News polling that shows not many Americans name the Iran War as their top issue. “So, whatever happens in the midterms, it doesn’t appear that Iran’s going to drive anything one way or another.”
“I think that’s exactly right,” Shapiro replied.
Part of the problem with Levin’s analysis has already been covered above. In the Fox poll, a plurality of Americans—34 percent—named the cost of living as the most important issue, and the Iran War has made living costlier.
But the subtler problem is perhaps even more illuminating. Simply put, Americans believe Trump is too focused on foreign policy at the expense of the problem they really care about, which, in fact, his Iran War has exacerbated. This is a PR disaster for the Trump administration and the GOP. Americans don’t prioritize the war that has dominated the headlines and distracted the White House, even as Trump claims to have boldly prevented Iran from unleashing nuclear apocalypse.
It may be grotesque to find silver linings in this dumb and deadly war, but here’s one: Americans no longer buy the war narratives. That is certainly not, however, a silver lining for Republican candidates in this year’s election, no matter how cynically they try to distance themselves from the war. In fact, it’s a good bet they’ll do much worse than if Trump hadn’t launched this unnecessary war, despite what Shapiro and his ilk may tell you.
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Still much lower than under Biden.
It’s not even a war
Do people want to pretend Iran is in charge of how much we pay at the pump?
I fart in This General Direction.
Wait till the sleeper cells carry out an Oct 7th Gaza style op here.
Diesel is at the highest price it has ever been. Saying something does not make it true nor distract from the reality.
Previous highest average price was $5.819. We are far past that now. It’s ok to admit it.
Bush ‘43 should have attacked Iran after 911 instead of Iraq. Knock the Ayatollas on their asses and let Saddam finish the job. For all we know they’d still be fighting thereby doing us a bit of good if not a whole lot.
You know someone is full of sh*t when they bring up Israel.
It means they have Israel derangement syndrome, and can't think straight.
Sadly the conclusion is correct. When Trump, fearing casualties and the Turks, backed off and did not depose the mullah regime,(which he was close to achieving), its been a disaster for his Administration, America and the world.
We’ve just taken away Iran’s ability to use Hormuz as a terrorist tool, thereby bringing long-term energy security we’ve never had before.... and all the American ingrates can do is whine.
I’m to a point where the American public is on trial. If we fail the test of being worthy of surviving, then may our downfall be swift as we deserve. This election will tell us the condition of our country’s people.
This is crap.
It seems to me that the current economy is better than what we had under Biden. Sure, cheaper diesel would be nice — but this isn’t the end of the world. Iran, however, is a 47-year nightmare that needs to be ended. The far side of this gambit is going to be extremely good for the US and for the world.
Starting a war without thinking through the end game has destroyed Trump’s presidency. Trump did this on the assumption that shock and awe would do the trick. When Iran refused to conform to Trump’s wishful thinking, Trump has been flailing and hoping that someone else will bail him out. He changes course faster than we can keep track of. The only consistency is that he has made it clear that he will not to what is necessary to effect regime change.
And without regime change, Iran will revive and accelaerate its nuclear program.
“2) Trump started a big war in the region...”
Nope. October 7th is all on Hamas. The US helped our ALLY, Israel, finish the job.
Why not blame the other 11-odd countries supporting Israel, too?
https://brusselsmorning.com/which-countries-are-supporting-israel/81898/
Of course nothing is going to stop the Trump Hate posts around here, but whatever...
As Gen Schwartzkopf said: “Bovine Scatology!”
As Gen Schwartzkopf said: “Bovine Scatology!”
Heck — the guy built his political identity on his open and unapologetic opposition to the globalist foreign policy agenda these duplicitous @ssholes were promoting.
2025, the Dems were down, their polling was in the mid-teens, everyone was sick of them, Republican registration was booming.
To keep this going all Trump had to do was marginally improve the economy, keep gas prices low and not start another pointless war, then with the 2030 Census and our birthrates vs theirs, the Democrats would have gone the way of the Whigs.
But nope, that's all gone, Trump threw that all away for Israel and he has revived the Democrats from the dead.
If the Dems retake power, they will destroy America and Trump's attacking Iran will go down as biggest political blunder in American History.
How do you ever post sh!t like that without even mentioning the role of SAUDI ARABIA in 9/11?
Researchers at Providence, RI’s Brown University’s “Costs of War Project” calculated that the post-9/11 wars, which heavily centered on Afghanistan, cost US taxpayers an estimated $8 trillion overall, with the specific operations in Afghanistan accounting for over $2 trillion of direct and related spending over the 20-year engagement (2001–2021).
Key findings from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University include:
<><>Financial Cost: The total estimated $8 trillion price tag for the broader post-9/11 “war on terror” includes direct military spending, war-related appropriations in the base Pentagon budget, veteran care, homeland security, and interest on borrowed war debt.
<><>Human Death Toll: The project estimated that over 900,000 people were killed directly by violence across the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and other operational zones, with tens of thousands of those being Afghan military, police, and civilians.
<><>Broader Toll: Indirect deaths from disease, displacement, and loss of infrastructure pushed total fatalities into the millions.
You can read more details and reports directly through
the “Costs of War Project Portal” at Brown University.
Brown University——Costs of the 20-year war on terror:
$8 trillion and 900,000 deaths By Jill Kimball
A report from the “Costs of War project” at Brown
University reveals the 20 years of post-9/11 war.
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