Trump's doubts about an unpopular war in the US.
In 2023, when he was still just a senator, JD Vance wrote an article in Wall Street Journal With a very explicit title: "Trump's best foreign policy? Don't start new wars." Vance justified his support for Trump's candidacy by saying he was convinced that Trump wouldn't send "Americans to fight across the seas." The New York tycoon was the only Republican candidate who criticized the Iraq War in the 2016 primaries, and during the 2014 campaign, he embraced isolationism to the point that at the beginning of his term, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize following the agreement to halt the war. Therefore, the decision to attack Iran has caused a rift within the MAGA movement, and highly influential voices like that of Tucker Carlson have expressed clear opposition.
Polls in the US show majority opposition to the war and that Republicans are deeply divided on the issue, especially since Trump came to the White House promising to lower prices, and what he is finding, first with the trade war and now with the Iran-Contra conflict, is exactly the opposite. Fuel prices have risen 19% in the last week in the United States, and it is only a matter of time before this increase is passed on to consumer goods.
It is in this context that we must frame Trump's constant flip-flops regarding the war, changes of opinion that reached their peak this Monday when, in the same speech, he said seemingly contradictory things, such as that the war was "virtually over" and then that they would not stop "until." The fact is that the markets have wanted to believe in a quick resolution to a conflict that threatens the global economy, but for now there is no clear sign that this will be the case.
It's true that Trump's changes of opinion are nothing new, but now they respond both to the internal division the war is causing within his own cabinet and to the Republican Party's fear that rising prices will ruin its electoral prospects in the November midterm elections. Everything indicates that the American president has been drawn into this war by his Secretary of Defense (a department that is now, ironically, called the Department of War), Peter Hegseth, and by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, against the advice of some prominent army generals, confident in a swift victory, and is now exploring possible alternatives.
Furthermore, there are alarming signs of improvisation in the White House, such as the decision to lift sanctions on Russian oil to halt the price surge—a move that benefits Vladimir Putin in his invasion of Ukraine—and comes just as reports have surfaced that Moscow is aiding Tehran. All of this only serves to project uncertainty over a conflict that, while initiated unilaterally by Trump, will ultimately be paid for by the rest of the world.