WASHINGTON — Every time an American fills their tank this week, the Iran war costs $1.11 more per gallon than it did six months ago. On Monday, a Reuters/Ipsos poll put a different kind of number on that cost: just 31 percent of Americans now support the military campaign, the lowest point since the conflict began in February, and President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 33 percent, matching the lowest level recorded across both his terms in office.
The Reuters/Ipsos survey, published by Al Jazeera on Monday, questioned 1,215 adults over four days and carries a margin of error of three percentage points. It found that backing for military action has slipped in every measurement since the war opened in late February with US and Israeli strikes on Iran. In March, 37 percent of respondents said they supported military action. Earlier this month, that figure stood at 34 percent. It has now fallen to 31 percent.
The erosion is not confined to Democrats or independents. Republican support for the military campaign fell to 69 percent, down from 77 percent in March, a drop of eight percentage points inside what is typically the most reliable constituency for an ongoing war. That number matters more than the overall figure, because it signals something harder for the White House to manage: the president’s own political base is registering displeasure at a rate that outpaces the general public’s.
The approval rating complicates the picture further. At 33 percent, Trump now sits at the floor of his entire political career, a number that matches the worst point in his first term and represents a sustained difficulty rather than a temporary dip. The poll finding arrives the same week the administration announced Operation Economic Outcast, the Treasury-led campaign to cut off Iran’s sources of revenue through secondary sanctions on its trading partners. Secretary Scott Bessent presented the initiative as evidence of a tightening squeeze on Tehran. The timing, announced the same day the poll was published, also reads as a political calculation. NBC News characterized the new measures as, so far, just a threat, noting that the administration has issued similar warnings previously without full implementation.
The gas price figure is the most direct line between the war and the household budget. When US and Israeli forces launched their first strikes on February 28, the average gallon of petrol in the United States cost $2.98. As of Monday, that average stands at $4.09. Iran has maintained a de facto blockade on regional oil exports throughout the conflict, restricting flows through the Strait of Hormuz and contributing to a global price shock that has eaten into discretionary spending for American families.
The energy exposure is structural, not incidental. China absorbs roughly 90 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports, approximately 1.4 million barrels a day, and a significant share of global supply transits the Strait of Hormuz. Any disruption in that corridor ripples outward almost immediately into retail fuel prices. The administration’s announcement of the Operation Economic Outcast sanctions targeting Iran’s global trade networks is designed to increase that pressure, but it also risks deepening the energy market disruptions that are already driving the poll numbers down.
The military dimension is showing its own limits. The United States cancelled joint marine exercises with South Korea last week, citing force constraints linked to Iran war deployments, a clear operational signal that the Iran war military constraints have stretched US posture across the Indo-Pacific, at the same moment North Korea is testing ballistic missiles.
The prospect of a lengthy war is not a fringe reading. Eighty-three percent of poll respondents said they believe the conflict will last for an extended period, up from 80 percent earlier this month. That figure is notable because it includes the same respondents who say they oppose the war, and the combination of low support and high expectations of duration is the structure of sustained political unpopularity, the kind that tends to compound rather than correct.
The midterm elections in November add a ticking clock. Among independent voters, historically decisive in House and Senate contests, 33 percent told the poll they would vote for a Democrat in a congressional election held today, compared with 19 percent who said they would choose a Republican. That 14-point gap among independents is wider than most strategists working on competitive House seats would want to carry into the fall. Republicans currently hold narrow majorities in both chambers.
Peiman Salehi, a Tehran-based geopolitical analyst, observed this week that Iran has considerably less room to work around the current sanctions environment than it did in previous years. But the same observation cuts both ways. A tighter squeeze on Iranian revenue does not automatically lower American gas prices, and the two effects operate on different timelines. The cost at the pump is already in the room.
What the poll cannot resolve is whether the public’s declining tolerance is translating into any actionable pressure on Congress. The war has not faced a formal vote under war powers legislation, and the Trump administration has not articulated what it would consider a successful outcome, let alone an exit condition. Until those definitions exist, the gap between what the American public wants and what the government is doing has no mechanism to close.
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