WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Americans say the war in Iran has not been worth fighting, and US President Donald Trump’s approval rating on Iran has fallen slightly since last month, according to a new AP-NORC poll.

The results are a stark repudiation of the Republican president’s approach to the conflict, which has dragged on far longer than he originally predicted.

About two-thirds of US adults say the war with Iran, which began Feb. 28, has not been worthwhile, according to the new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That includes the vast majority of Democrats and independents, as well as about 37% of Republicans.

The poll — which surveyed 1,165 adults and had a margin of error of ±3.7 percentage points — was conducted July 23-27, as the US and Iran paused attacks following a nearly two-week escalation in the war.

During the escalation, the US targeted Iranian military and commercial sites while Iran attacked US military facilities in the Middle East, resulting in additional deaths of American service members. Since the war began, 18 US service members have been killed, but the Trump administration has sought to revise those numbers.

The survey reinforces how unpopular the Iran war has become at home, a potential problem for congressional Republicans up for reelection in November who have defended Trump’s military actions. Just 28% of US adults now approve of how Trump is handling Iran, a slight decline from 34% last month.

Even Republicans appear to be increasingly unhappy with the prolonged conflict. Roughly 61% of Republicans approve of how Trump is handling Iran, an apparent decline from 71% in June. The margin of sampling error for Republicans is 6 points, so the decline is considered slight, but it’s still noteworthy given Republicans’ much higher approval of how Trump is handling the presidency overall.

Trump’s overall approval rating is at 33%, slightly below where he stood at this point in his first term and similar to where former president Joe Biden stood about one and a half years into his presidency, when inflation peaked.

Robert McClary, a 52-year-old Republican from Sugar Grove, Ohio, is skeptical the war could be brought to an easy conclusion and disapproves of Trump’s handling of it. McClary voted for the president once, in 2016, but recalls that during the last election, Trump campaigned on not starting new wars in the Middle East.

“I don’t have any trust in this administration at all and to why they brought us into this war, why they’re putting our soldiers at risk again,” he said.

The findings........

© The Times of Israel