\n<\/p>\n
F<\/span>ive months after the United States and Israel started a historically unpopular war against Iran that was going to supposedly last weeks, the fighting has refused to resolve in victory, defeat or peace. Iran\u2019s supreme leader had been killed in the opening strikes, ceasefires broke down, and the strait of Hormuz has been closed and reopened.<\/p>\n For voters interviewed across the country, while the damage may be distant, the residual effects have shown up at the pump, on the grocery bill and in a phone call telling a spouse they have a day to report for deployment. And for a country still absorbing the aftermath of Israel\u2019s war on Gaza \u2013 funded to the tune of billions of dollars by the United States \u2013 the war in Iran lands on top of an already raw argument about what American power is for.<\/p>\n In North York, Maine, Lydia Stone, 31, works in the logging industry and is raising an 18-month-old daughter. She describes an industry being squeezed from both directions: fuel costs rising while the price customers pay for wood stays flat. \u201cIt\u2019s been a huge jump in prices, and makes life a lot harder,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n That squeeze shows up in the data, with the average price of gasoline pushing above $4 a gallon for the first time in years, according to AAA. Analysts have also noted the pain is not evenly shared: lower- and middle-income households spend a larger share of their budgets on fuel, meaning the same price spike lands harder on them than on wealthier consumers.<\/p>\n Stone\u2019s frustration isn\u2019t only economic. \u201cA huge part of what has been so frustrating … is like the fact my tax dollars are going to fund murdering people, at the same time that it\u2019s cutting social services, it\u2019s cutting Snap benefits for my neighbors,\u201d she said, referring to nutrition benefits for low-income Americans.<\/p>\n She said the line at her local food pantry had grown noticeably longer and her best friend\u2019s husband, she said, was deployed on little notice.<\/p>\n US economic indicators during the war in Iran charted<\/p>\n That sense of a war without justification reverberated among voters who described themselves as independent or progressive. Terrence Dahmen, 73, a retired, independent-leaning voter from Cable, Wisconsin, who said he usually ends up voting Democrat, called American involvement \u201ca huge mistake\u201d. \u201cWe weren\u2019t provoked into that fight, and we weren\u2019t attacked,\u201d he said. \u201cI saw no reason to go there other than possibly controlling oil somehow.\u201d<\/p>\n He argued the country should be investing in solar, wind and geothermal power instead, and said he wished the US had taken a different path on climate policy years ago.<\/p>\n Robert Edelstein, 62, who runs a window-tinting business in Douglas county, Wisconsin, was more blunt. \u201cIn the general election, I would automatically vote for anybody that was against the war,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s the stupidest thing that could ever possibly have happened.\u201d Comparing the decision to strike Iran unfavorably with the Iraq war launched under George W Bush, he added: \u201cIt\u2019s screwed everything up, as we all know … it\u2019s absolutely stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n In Georgia, Jimmy Carter \u2013 a retired teacher not related to the former president \u2013 watched Donald Trump\u2019s motorcade arrive near his old school last week with similar disbelief. \u201cIt\u2019s a dumbass idea,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know who fed him that idea.\u201d He noted that even his own brother, a Trump voter, agreed.<\/p>\n Voters with personal connections to the military comprised a wide range of views.<\/p>\n Nick Marine, a retired sailor at a Trump rally in Marietta, offered full-throated endorsement of the Trump administration\u2019s approach. \u201cI think what President Trump is doing is good,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it took a long time for us to get to this point … I\u2019m glad it\u2019s finally being resolved.\u201d<\/p>\n He argued for gradualism over overwhelming force \u2013 \u201cyou don\u2019t want to behead your neighbor, because in a month or so, you\u2019re going to be doing commerce with them\u201d \u2013 while voicing concern for Iranian civilians cut off from water, sanitation and electricity by the fighting.<\/p>\n Richard Bradley, a retired army major and combat engineer from Mabelton, Georgia, whose son and daughter currently serve, supports the broader rationale for confronting Iran but wants a clear exit. \u201cI\u2019d rather fight bad guys in their land instead of mine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n <\/span>Richard Bradley, a retired army major, supported the Iran war.<\/span> Photograph: George Chidi\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Still, he said: \u201cI kind of take a little bit of an issue with where we\u2019re at now … we need to be figuring out how to finish it up, so it doesn\u2019t turn into another … enduring war.\u201d His own father fought in the Gulf war, he noted, and he didn\u2019t \u201cwant my kids to fight unfinished business that my generation left.\u201d<\/p>\n Not all of the war\u2019s critics oppose the war itself. Salman Majidi, an Iranian immigrant and software developer from Atlanta, stood among anti-Trump protesters holding a \u201cFree Iran\u201d sign \u2013 but for the opposite reason. A supporter of Iran\u2019s exiled former crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, Majidi argued the American campaign was a rescue rather than a war of choice.<\/p>\n \u201cTens of thousands of Iranian civilians have been murdered by the Islamic regime in just two days,\u201d he said, arguing the toll predates and outweighs the American strikes. \u201cWe deserve a better life in Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n But given the proximity and relationship of the conflicts, the Iran war has not displaced the argument over Gaza so much as compounded it, blurring into a single grievance about where American money and moral authority are being spent.<\/p>\n Clay Harvison, a mixed martial artist from Marietta who voted for the president, said the conflict should have ended months ago. \u201cHe should have left it when he had already bombed them,\u201d Harvison said, blaming pressure from Israeli leaders for dragging the US deeper in. He said the war threatens the legacy Trump seems to prize most: \u201cbeing remembered as being great … he\u2019s messing with that really bad right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Younger voters in particular, he said, were asking why a president who campaigned against foreign wars is now presiding over one, arguing that \u201cthe military-industrial complex is laundering our tax dollars instead of going into fixing our streets\u201d.<\/p>\n Whether a ceasefire holds, and whether Tehran and Washington ever sit down for something more than a pause, is still an open question.<\/p>\n What is not in doubt, from Wisconsin lake towns to the Georgia suburbs, is that voters of nearly every political persuasion are doing the same math: adding up gas receipts, deployment orders and casualty counts, and asking what, precisely, the war is for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Five months after the United States and Israel started a historically unpopular war against Iran that was going to supposedly last weeks, the fighting has refused to resolve in victory, defeat or peace. Iran\u2019s supreme leader had been killed in the opening strikes, ceasefires broke down, and the strait of Hormuz has been closed and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[540,8911,335,84,150,13263,18568,261],"class_list":{"0":"post-51493","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-americans","9":"tag-continued","10":"tag-feel","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pinch","14":"tag-screwed","15":"tag-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}