America has been at war with Iran for more than six months — but it was far from a top issue at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas this week.
The war wasn’t entirely absent: Administration officials defended it. President Donald Trump talked about the war in his speeches Wednesday and Thursday nights. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also referred to it in a video shown Wednesday.
Vice President JD Vance didn’t explicitly mention Iran in his address Thursday night, but he paid tribute to slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, saying he “hated war” and acknowledging that there are “people who love what we’ve done and people who don’t” while urging conservatives to stick together in the midterms.
Aside from that, essentially none of the other speakers discussed the war, which is a point of major concern for Americans ahead of the midterm elections. The recent NBC News Decision Desk Poll found just 31% of adults approving of Trump’s handling of the war, with 69% disapproving.
Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, told the crowd Thursday night that “we are in a war” — but he clarified that he was talking about a “cosmic” battle between good and evil, not the war with Iran.
The decision by other top Republican officials and candidates fighting for re-election to ignore the war reflected its growing unpopularity and a recognition that it’s not an issue the party is eager to run on in November. Trump was willing to defend it — saying it will end “shortly” after Election Day — but few others outside the administration seemed to want to own it.
As Vance alluded to, parts of Trump’s base have been uneasy with the war since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes in late February. Trump, after all, had long positioned himself in opposition to the traditionally hawkish tendencies of the Republican establishment, running on an “America First” platform that eschewed foreign entanglements and “forever wars.”
That dissatisfaction has grown.
Trump’s approval rating on the war has hardly shifted since the spring, according to the NBC News Decision Desk Poll. But there has been a noticeable change in intensity, particularly among Republicans.
The survey found that the share of self-identified Republicans who say they strongly approve of Trump’s handling of the war has dropped 18 percentage points since the spring, now standing at 30%.
That’s driven primarily by a 21-point decrease in the share of self-identified MAGA Republicans who say they strongly approve of the war, with 43% of that group strongly approving. Few outright disapprove of Trump’s moves on Iran, but more have shifted to saying they “somewhat” approve.
The Trump administration initially signaled that it expected the war to last just four or five weeks. Since then, Trump and his top officials have repeatedly insisted that the war is almost over — or, at times, said it has already been won. Recently, Vance said he didn’t even really consider it a war at all.
Since the U.S. attacked Iran, 18 U.S. service members have been killed. Roughly 50,000 troops are deployed across the Middle East.
There were few mentions of those troops at the convention, as well, although Jack Graham, the pastor who delivered the opening invocation Wednesday, paid tribute to them: “We pray for our military as they protect our freedom, our faith and our future. Bring our troops home safely and soon.”
