Iraq and Vietnam are often cited as classic modern examples of unpopular U.S. wars.

However, a growing body of data suggests that the war with Iran has become nearly as unpopular as those conflicts — and it happened in a much shorter time frame, CNN reports.

That said, there is one important caveat to this rapid unpopularity: Americans themselves do not seem particularly focused on the issue.

Here’s what the numbers show.

The “Not Worth Fighting” Measure

A Washington Post–Ipsos poll published last week became the latest survey to offer a rather grim historical comparison for this military operation, which President Donald Trump launched of his own choosing in late February.

The poll showed that 68% of Americans believe the war with Iran is “not worth fighting,” while only 28% hold the opposite view.

This negative gap of 40 percentage points was even worse than the comparable peak figures for the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan in past Washington Post–ABC News polls.

  • For comparison, the worst figures for the war in Afghanistan were recorded in 2013 (nearly 12 years after it began) and showed a similar gap — 67% to 28%.

  • As for the war in Iraq, about two-thirds of respondents (66%) called it “not worth it” at the peak of dissatisfaction in 2007. However, the share of those who considered it justified never fell below 33%.

In other words, even the war in Iraq did not lose support as sharply as the current conflict.

It is also worth emphasizing that in previous cases, it took Americans a long time to conclude that military action was futile. In Afghanistan, it took the majority nearly eight years; in Iraq, nearly a year, and it took four years for the share of dissatisfied Americans to reach two-thirds.

The “Mistake” Measure

A Post-ABC poll conducted in late April showed that it took less than two months for 61% of Americans to call the war with Iran a “mistake.”

Although that percentage did not break the absolute records of past wars, Americans reached that verdict far more quickly than they did during the wars in Iraq or Vietnam.

  • In Iraq, it took nearly four years for the same share of Americans to say the war was a mistake (64% said so in January 2007).

  • In Vietnam, it took more than six years: this figure reached 61% only in May 1971.

The “Stronger or Weaker?” Question

Although Trump presents the war with Iran as a demonstration of U.S. strength, Americans themselves do not see it that way.

According to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted last month, registered voters by a margin of 45% to 33% said that this war has made the United States weaker rather than stronger on the world stage.

Again, this is very similar to perceptions of the war in Iraq: two years after it began, a Post-ABC poll found that 41% to 28% of Americans believed Iraq had weakened the U.S. position. (After 2005, pollsters reworked the questions as the Iraq campaign became even more unpopular.)

The War’s Overall Unpopularity

It is also worth noting the direct level of support for or opposition to the war.

An analysis by The New York Times conducted in the first days of the conflict showed that the initial level of support for strikes on Iran at 41% (according to a CNN poll) was the lowest ever recorded for the opening stage of U.S. international military actions. (No statistical data from the start of the Vietnam War has been preserved, but other indirect polling from that time indicated that it was not initially unpopular.)

The Gallup Institute, having studied a broad array of data not only on major wars but also on limited strikes (including the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in 2020), found that a case in which a U.S. military action fails to draw at least 50% support at the outset is an absolute exception.

Out of more than a dozen examples, the only caveat before Iran was the Obama administration’s strikes on Libya in 2011 (47%). But virtually all polling on Iran showed even lower figures.

Gallup data show that support for some campaigns fell sharply after months had passed (for example, Libya — 39%, Haiti in 1994 — 36%). But no conflict fell so low and so quickly as the war with Iran — to just 34% support three months after it began.

The Caveat: Iran Does Not Seem to Be a Top Priority

There are strong arguments that the war with Iran is one of the most unpopular modern U.S. wars, and that it became so faster than any of the others.

However, there is a significant difference between its unpopularity and the rejection of previous wars: the extent to which people actually care about it.

Gallup polls in 1967 showed that up to 55% of Americans named the Vietnam War as “the most important problem” facing the country. In 2007, during the Iraq War, that figure reached 36%.

However, the perceived importance of the war with Iran is nowhere near those figures. In most polls, the percentage of people who consider this war (or foreign conflicts in general) the most important problem facing the United States remains in the single digits (less than 10%).

This is probably because no U.S. ground troops have been deployed in the war so far, and it has not led to the same number of casualties among American service members as previous wars (although in recent days there have been reports of the first deaths in many months).

What Does This Mean in Practice?

Trump is probably not under such intense pressure to change course, and the issue may not become a defining factor in the November midterm congressional elections.

At the same time, Americans are deeply worried about the state of the economy, and the war with Iran is worsening that problem because of rising gasoline prices. Thus, even if the war itself does not directly affect ballots in November, it may indirectly hit Trump at his most vulnerable point — the economy — although that problem arose even before the military action began.

And so far, there are virtually no signs that this conflict will end anytime soon.