There is not a single demographic in the United States whose majority is not opposed to American involvement in Israel’s war of aggression against Iran, according to a new poll published by YouGov and the Economist. Perhaps most crucially, this includes voters who backed Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection. The abject lack of grassroots support spells deep trouble for an administration committed—at a minimum—to maintaining its unconditional military, financial, diplomatic, and intelligence support for Israel’s illegal bombing raids.
Matters could soon be made even worse for the White House, as the president appears poised to order US forces to directly intervene in the potentially catastrophic conflict. This is a course which many top MAGA figures vehemently oppose.
Respondents in the YouGov poll were asked, “Do you think the U.S. military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran?” In total, 60% replied “no,” while only 16% answered in the affirmative, and less than a quarter of the population is unsure.
Majorities across every demographic category opposed U.S. involvement, with the poll showing similar results whether the data is broken down by sex, race, income, or age.
Regardless of what income bracket was polled, Americans are decidedly against joining Tel Aviv’s unprovoked war. For example, 54% of Americans making less than $50,000 per year oppose U.S. intervention. 61% of the $50–100k bracket are against Washington’s long-awaited war with Iran. And Americans making $100,000 per year or more oppose the war most, with nearly 70% emphatically answering “no.”
Trump’s voter base which won him the presidency last year is split, with a 53% majority opposing U.S. intervention. Meanwhile, 71% of voters who backed former Vice President Kamala Harris oppose Trump’s war plans. Breaking down the results by political ideology, the data shows 51% of conservatives, 63% of moderates, and 70% of liberals oppose potential war with the Islamic Republic. When party affiliation is taken into account, 53% of Republicans, 61% of independents, and 65% of Democrats want absolutely nothing to do with Israel’s war.
Underscoring those results, even some of Trump’s most vocal allies in the conservative media have come out strongly against American military involvement in Iran, among them Federalist co-founder Sean Davis, the Blaze’s Auron MacIntyre, and Daryl Cooper of the Martyr Made podcast.
Former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson has perhaps been the loudest critic on the mainstream right, even going as far as to condemn former colleagues Sean Hannity and Mark Levin as “warmongers” over their calls for regime change in Tehran.
The real divide isn’t between people who support Israel and people who support Iran or the Palestinians. The real divide is between those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it — between warmongers and peacemakers. Who are the warmongers? They would…
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 13, 2025
Carlson insists, “The United States should not at any level participate in a war with Iran. No funding, no American weapons, no troops on the ground. Regardless of what our ‘special ally’ says, a fight with the Iranians has nothing to offer the United States. It is not in our national interest.” The immensely influential talk show host has gone further by suggesting that we simply “drop Israel” and “let them fight their own wars.” This has provoked attacks against him by Trump and an assortment of neoconservatives who have sold every American war this century.
Trump’s former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon—who’s now a major figure among “America First” conservatives—has echoed similar views. In an appearance on Carlson’s show earlier this week, the two compared the drive to war with Iran to the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“The next 200 days are some of the most perilous times for the American republic in its history, because if we don’t get this sorted, we’re gonna be drawn totally into a conflict as a combatant. Not a supplier of logistics or intelligence, as an actual combatant,” Bannon warned.
Even the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh has taken aim at those calling for war, arguing “The US has been at war with one random Middle East country after another for my entire adult life. It’s baffling that there are people who want this to continue. Can we focus on [our] own problems for a change? Is that such a radical suggestion?”
He has also called out the rhetorical trickery some hawks supporting escalations have deployed when selling the war to the public, namely substituting Tehran’s non-existent nuclear weapons threat as the excuse for direct intervention instead of the long-since discredited “regime change” arguments.
There’s a lot of intentional obtuseness going on. Some of us are warning that we don’t want a regime change war in the Middle East. Then we get throngs of [people] yelling at us that Trump isn’t doing a regime change war so we should just shut up. Yes, we know. He’s not yet. We’re speaking up loudly now because we want to make sure it doesn’t happen. We’ve been alive for the past few decades and we know how these things often go. We also hear highly influential warhawks like Lindsey Graham openly and explicitly calling for regime change. It is perfectly reasonable for us to worry about such a possibility. And it behooves us to speak up now, rather than waiting until the thing happens. If you agree that a regime change war is bad, why are you screeching at us? Aren’t we on the same side in that case?
Libertarian podcast host and stand up comedian Dave Smith endorsed Trump during the election last year. Since the White House backed Israel’s attack on Iran last week, Smith has expressed his deep regrets, while excoriating and abandoning Trump over his seemingly endless deference to Israel and refusal to ever put “America First.”
On Monday, Smith appeared on Breaking Points to call for Trump’s impeachment and removal from office, declaring “I apologize for [supporting him]. It was a bad calculation. At the time, it seemed like the right one. He should be impeached and removed.”
The incisive comedian added, “Trump is going to lose his coalition over this…I know I don’t just speak for myself when I say there are a lot of us who simply will not go along with this, so it’s just a devastating mistake.” Smith emphasized that Trump’s supporters must “turn on him.”
Moreover, he lamented how Trump’s decision to slavishly support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assault targeting civilian infrastructure which has slaughtered and maimed hundreds of innocents precludes any hopes for a diplomatic settlement between Tehran and Washington.
“Donald Trump telling [Iran] to come back to the negotiating table now is a joke. I mean, what an impotent leader! To be sitting there talking about coming back to the negotiating table—it’s like sitting there after Pearl Harbor and telling FDR now is the time to go negotiate with the Japanese. Negotiations are over now,” Smith railed.
The figures in the new YouGov survey dovetail with recent polling on the global perception of Israel amidst its genocidal assault against the Palestinians trapped within the besieged Gaza Strip, as well as its illegal wars and occupations in Lebanon, Syria, and its bombing campaign targeting Yemen, the region’s poorest country.
As the Libertarian Institute’s Kyle Anzalone reported earlier this month:
[A new survey from Pew Research found that in] the US, 53 percent of Americans have a very unfavorable or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel, against 45 percent who had a positive view…
…[The largest split is] between adults who identified themselves as on the right or left. Only 30 percent of Americans on the right said they had a negative view of Israel, compared to 77 percent of respondents on the left. The margin was the widest of any country polled.
A Pew poll released in April had a slightly tighter margin, finding that 69 percent of Democrats viewed Israel unfavorably, while only 37 percent of Republicans said the same. That survey found a wide split in the Republican party, with 50 percent of right-wing American adults under 50 expressing a negative opinion of Tel Aviv.
Launched on June 13, Israel’s latest bombing campaign has rapidly escalated beyond its previous operations against Tehran, prompting several rounds of Iranian missile and drone strikes in retaliation. So far, the IDF raids have left at least 224 people dead, including some of Iran’s top military and civilian leadership, while Israeli officials report 24 deaths as of Tuesday night. Hundreds more have been injured in both countries.
Though Washington has yet to intervene directly in the war, the White House has vowed to defend Israel from Iranian reprisals and has already helped to shoot down incoming Iranian missiles targeting the Jewish State. Moreover, the Pentagon has reportedly shifted at least thirty-one refueling aircraft to Europe and deployed an aircraft carrier to the Middle East to provide Trump with “options” should he decide to join the war.
Most critically, the administration’s threats and arguments on behalf of direct US intervention in Israel’s war belie Washington’s own intelligence community’s assessments that make clear there is no evidence whatsoever that Tehran—a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—is pursuing nuclear weapons, nor has Tehran abrogated its policy prohibiting weapons of mass destruction.
In March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard confirmed Washington’s position to the Senate Intelligence Committee, saying “the IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” This has been the consistent view of the United States since 2007, and likewise the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—the UN nuclear watchdog—has repeatedly confirmed Iran is not diverting nuclear material from its safeguarded energy program toward military purposes.
CNN reported this week that not only are the Iranians not seeking a nuke but that it would take up to three years for Tehran to make one and deliver it to a target of its choosing, citing people familiar with the intelligence. When Trump was asked about DNI Gabbard’s assessment, he told reporters “I don’t care what Tulsi said. I think they’re very close to having [a nuclear weapon].”
There is only one power in the Middle East armed with nuclear weapons, Tel Aviv. Incidentally, this makes Washington’s continued military aid to Israel illegal per U.S. law. Iran has acknowledged this supreme hypocrisy inherent in Trump’s war propaganda. As Antiwar.com news editor Dave DeCamp has written, “Amid increasing US and Israeli threats about its nuclear program, Iran has recently pointed out that Israel has a secret nuclear weapons stockpile, and its nuclear program is not subject to IAEA inspections since Israel is not a signatory to the NPT.”
