Trump Leads America into an Unpopular War in the Middle East!

Mar 3

President Donald Trump joined Israel in yet another war of choice in the Middle East last week. Polls conducted in the United States immediately after the start of the Iran war show that the majority of Americans do not support it. A YouGov snap poll fielded Saturday — the day of the strikes — found 34% of Americans approve of the U.S. attacks on Iran, with 44% disapproving and 22% unsure. A CNN poll done soon after found that 59% of Americans disapprove of the war.

59% of Americans Disapprove of the Iran War. Source: CNN

It appears that President Trump has caved in to pressure from the Israelis to go to war against Iran, a fact confirmed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In answer to a question, Rubio essentially admitted that Israel forced the US into war with Iran. 'There absolutely was an imminent threat,' Rubio said. 'And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked (by Israel), and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.'

Majority of Americans Disapprove of Iran War. Source: YouGov

Support for prior US wars in the Middle East such as the Iraq war started in the low-mid 70% range in the beginning. Trump is starting at half of that in his attack on Iran — lower than where the average American was in 2013. It's clear that Americans' support for wars in the Middle East has rapidly declined.

President Trump's MAGA base is particularly incensed by what they see as abandonment of the "America First" promise he made during his presidential campaign in 2024. Many of them now accuse him of pursuing "Israel First" policies at the expense of ordinary Americans.

"Absolutely disgusting and evil," Tucker Carlson said about the joint US-Israel attack in an interview with ABC News. "This is going to shuffle the deck in a profound way."

"The Trump admin actually asked in a poll how many casualties voters were willing to accept in a war with Iran??? How about ZERO you bunch of sick (expletive) liars. We voted for America First and ZERO wars," said former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, as she blasted the administration on US social media company X.

"We said ‘No More Foreign Wars, No More Regime Change!’ … Trump, (Vice President JD) Vance, basically the entire admin campaigned on it and promised to put America FIRST and Make America Great Again (MAGA)," she added.

Other MAGA figures joined the criticism, with podcaster Tim Pool and influencers Keith and Kevin Hodge writing, "President Trump has completely LIED to his voters, backstabbed our country and has disgraced his legacy beyond repair," reported TRT World.

One of the most effects of this war will most likely be on energy prices which have begun to spike already. Energy prices affect all other prices, fueling broader inflation. Rising prices will hurt the entire economy but their negative impact will particularly be felt by middle class households.

The average price for a gallon of regular gas is just shy of $3 right now, according to AAA, as reported by Marketplace. Tom Kloza, chief analyst at Gulf Oil, told Marketplace that “we’re gonna go in relatively short order to about $3.10 to $3.25,” he said. But if the conflict with Iran continues deeper into March and April, Kloza said prices might peak as high as $3.50 a gallon.

AIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby, is starting to lose its political power and influence in the United States. Several Congressional Democrats have recently refused campaign contributions from AIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby, according to media reports. “Democrats who once counted AIPAC among their top donors have in recent weeks refused to take the group’s donations”, says a New York Times story titled "Democrats Pull Away From AIPAC, Reflecting a Broader Shift". “AIPAC is becoming an increasingly toxic brand for some Democrats on Capitol Hill," it says. It cites the example of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the minority leader, who has long been endorsed by the hardline AIPAC, has now chosen to accept the support of J Street, the competing Israel lobby that advocates a two-state solution.

Results of Recent Poll of American Jews. Source: Washington Post

A recent poll conducted by the Washington Post has found that "most (American) Jews (61%) say Israel is committing war crimes — and 39% say genocide — while often distinguishing between the country and its leadership". American Jews are particularly unhappy with the current right-wing government of Israel. 68% give negative marks to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership of Israel, with 48% it “poor” — a 20-percentage-point jump from a Pew Research Center poll five years ago.

Mamdani's resounding win in New York City, a city that has the world's second largest Jewish population after Tel Aviv, is particularly significant. It sends a clear message to American politicians, particularly Democrats, that they don't have to bow to hardline AIPAC to win elections.

Although the rebellion against AIPAC is mainly among Democrats, there's also growing anger among Trump's "America First" base who see the Trump Administration's policies as "Israel First". Prominent among Republican critics of Trump's pro-Israel policies are Republican Representatives Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, talk show host Tucker Carlsen and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of Anti-Defamation League, has blamed the shift in the US public opinion against Israel on popular social app TikTok. “We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem,” he said in a leaked audio recording. “The same brains that gave us Taglit, the same brains that gave us all of these amazing other innovations, need to put our energy towards this, like fast.”

TikTok is particularly popular among young people. It has carried viral short videos of the Gaza Genocide over the last two years. The pressure from the Israel lobby forced the sale of Chinese-owned TikTok to an American Zionist group led by Oracle's billionaire founder Larry Ellison. Ellison has given tens of millions of dollars to pro-Israel groups. He is reported to be among the six American Zionist billionaires supporting Israel's wartime economy.

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Riaz Haq

Pakistan Sends Navy Escort for Its Ships in the Middle East - The New York Times

Pakistan, Iran’s neighbor, has been striving to remain neutral in the conflict. But its government and military have been forced to act to protect its economy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/world/middleeast/pakistan-gulf-c...

Schools closed until the end of March. A four-day workweek for the next two months. Warships escorting commercial vessels.

Pakistan, a South Asian nation of 250 million people and Iran’s neighbor, has been striving to remain neutral in the Middle East conflict. But with its economy, heavily reliant on oil imports, under threat from the choking of tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf, Pakistan’s government and military have been forced to act.

The Pakistani Navy said Monday that its warships would escort the country’s commercial vessels in the Middle East “to ensure the uninterrupted flow of national energy supplies.” It said two vessels from Pakistan’s national shipping company were already under navy escort, posting images on social media of a warship sailing next to a crude oil tanker.

The navy did not say which route the tankers were sailing, and did not say which countries posed the “multidimensional threats” to shipping.

Pakistan imports most of its natural gas from Qatar and crude oil from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. All of this is brought over sea, but shipping companies have stopped energy transports from those countries because of security risks, especially along the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which around a fifth of the world’s oil transits.

President Trump and President Emmanuel Macron of France have both floated the possibility of naval escorts for commercial vessels, as the conflict roils global energy markets and threatens economies around the world. Mr. Trump on Monday threatened even more intense strikes if Iran disrupted the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

India was also considering sending its warships in response to requests from Indian shipowners for naval escorts, according to Capt. P.C. Meena, a senior official at India’s main maritime authority.

It was unclear if the deployment of Pakistani warships would be enough to prevent an oil supply crunch. Pakistan has less than two weeks left of crude oil reserves, and enough liquefied natural gas to last until the end of the month, according to the oil ministry.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan said Monday that he had to make “difficult decisions” to protect the economy as he announced sweeping fuel-saving measures, including trimming the workweek to four days for the next two months and a two-week school break.

Half the staff in both the public and private sectors, except for essential services, would work from home to save fuel, Mr. Sharif said.

Pakistan has been trying to carefully balance its relationships in the Middle East during the conflict. The billions of dollars Pakistani workers remit every year from Arab countries in the Gulf region are crucial for Pakistan’s economy. Pakistani officials have also indicated that they want to avoid a confrontation with Iran.

Mar 10
Riaz Haq

Chris Murphy 🟧

@ChrisMurphyCT
I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public.

I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.

1/ Here's what I can share:

https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/2031531835453309125?s=20

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2/ Maybe the lead is that the war goals DO NOT involve destroying Iran's nuclear weapons program. This is, uh...surprising...since Trump says over and over this is a key goal.

But then of course we already know air strikes can't wipe out their nuclear material.

https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/2031531836816359851?s=20

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Chris Murphy 🟧

@ChrisMurphyCT
3/ Second, they confirmed "regime change" is also NOT on the list. So, they are going to spend hundreds of billions of your taxpayer dollars, get a whole bunch of Americans killed, and a hardline regime - probably a MORE anti-American hardline regime - will still be in charge.

https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/2031531838234128525?s=20

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Chris Murphy 🟧

@ChrisMurphyCT
4/ Ok, so what ARE the goals? It seems, primarily, destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories.

But the question that stumped them: what happens when you stop bombing and they restart production?

They hinted at more bombing. Which is, of course, endless war.

https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/2031531839685267787?s=20

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Chris Murphy 🟧

@ChrisMurphyCT
5/ And on the Strait of Hormuz, they had NO PLAN. I can't go into more detail about how Iran gums up the Strait, but suffice it say, right now, they don't know how to get it safely back open.

Which is unforgiveable, because this part of the disaster was 100% foreseeable.

https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/2031531841048432911?s=20

Mar 11
Riaz Haq

The Petrodollar Loop Supporting the Treasury Market Is Broken - Bloomberg

By Aaron Brown

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-04-06/the-petrodoll...

Takeaways by Bloomberg AI

The virtuous loop that has seen America underwrite stability in the Middle East in exchange for Gulf states recycling their dollar revenues into US Treasuries has been broken.
Foreign central banks have been net sellers of Treasuries for consecutive weeks, with holdings at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York dropping by roughly $82 billion to $2.7 trillion.
The US-Israeli war with Iran has fractured the petrodollar loop at both ends, with oil-importing nations selling Treasuries to limit depreciation and Gulf producers unable to export oil due to the Strait of Hormuz closure.

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This time, Gulf producers can’t get their oil out. The Strait of Hormuz closure has stranded their barrels along with everyone else’s.

Gulf states including Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the UAE collectively cut production by at least 10 million barrels per day in March. Saudi Arabia and the UAE can export reduced volumes through alternative pipelines. But those routes handle only about a quarter of normal Strait throughput at full capacity, and they are under active Iranian drone and missile threat. Qatar declared force majeure on exports of liquified natural gas after strikes on its Ras Laffan facility. The Gulf Cooperation Council’s economic model — export hydrocarbons, recycle into global assets — has effectively seized up.

The petrodollar loop requires two moving parts: dollars earned and dollars invested. Both have stopped.

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There is a longer structural story that the war is accelerating rather than creating. The share of Treasuries held by foreign investors had already fallen to around 32%, down from half in the early 2010s. Central banks became net sellers in early 2025. For the first time since 1996, global central banks now hold more gold in aggregatethan US government bonds. These were slow-moving trends, easy to dismiss as noise. The Iran war is making them look like signal.

The standard reassurance is that there is no alternative to Treasuries — no other market offers the depth, liquidity and legal infrastructure that central banks require. This remains true. Foreign central banks will not abandon Treasuries wholesale. But “no realistic alternative” and “unquestioned safe haven” are not the same thing, and the Iran war is clarifying the difference.

The flight-to-quality trade has always rested on a political premise: That in a global crisis, the United States is a stabilizer or bystander, not a combatant. But the calculus changes when the US itself is the belligerent; when the conflict is partly America’s war, driving the oil shock, straining Gulf relationships, and generating the fiscal pressure that has bond investors worried about US budget deficits. Not completely. Not permanently. But enough.

Kissinger’s 1974 deal held through the Cold War, the Gulf Wars, the financial crisis and a pandemic. It has not survived this. The petrodollar loop was always a political arrangement dressed in financial clothing. Now that the politics have changed, the finance is following.

Apr 6

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Trump Leads America into an Unpopular War in the Middle East!

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