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Welcome to April! On today’s show, Bridget Bowman presents the latest polls on the Iran war as President Donald Trump prepares to address the nation tonight. Also, Andrea Mitchell digs into Trump’s recent speech about “regime change” in Iran.
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– Adam Wollner
Polls show a solid majority against military action in Iran after a month of war
Written by Bridget Bowman
When the President Donald Trump offers a “critical update” on the Iran war tonight, he will be speaking to a nation that has been deeply skeptical of the military operation since it began.
A poll conducted last month found that the majority of Americans oppose the US war in Iran, although Republicans largely support Trump’s action. And a large majority still opposes sending US ground troops to the conflict.
As the battle begins, NBC News polls conducted since Feb. 27 to March 3 found 52% of registered voters said the US should not have taken military action against the country, while 41% supported the action and 7% were unsure. That was a big departure from other recent conflicts, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where a majority of NBC News polls expressed support for military action at the outset.
Even as voters overwhelmingly oppose strikes, 77% of Republicans — and 90% of voters who say they support the Make America Great Again movement — support strikes against Iran in an NBC News poll.
Since then, polls have found a persistent majority against military action in Iran, with Republicans remaining steadfast in their support.
A CBS News/YouGov poll conducted March 17-20 found that 60% disapprove of US military action against Iran, while 40% approve, including 84% of Republicans.
A Fox News poll conducted March 20-23 found 58% of registered voters opposed military action and 42% supported it. Meanwhile, 77% of Republicans supported the act and 23% opposed it.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted March 27-29 showed 60% of Americans disapprove of the strike on Iran, while 35% approve. But Republicans were still supportive, with 74% favoring war and 22% disapproving.
A majority of Americans also disapproved of Trump’s handling of Iran, with his approval ratings on the issue ranging from the low 40s to the mid-30s. That’s slightly below his job approval rating, which hovers around 40 percent in recent polls.
Read more →
Trump’s shift to ‘regime change’ in Iran
Analysis by Andrea Mitchell
The president Donald Trump he has been taking credit for what he calls “regime change” in Iran, seemingly suggesting that with the assassination of the Ayatollah. Ali Khamenei and the failure (so far) of his son, Mujtabato be clear, this country is now in its “third regime” since the war began.
Trump calls this alternative group “very reasonable.” To veteran observers of Iran, it sounds reminiscent of the President of the “Iranian moderates” Ronald ReaganThe national security team initially thought it would release American hostages in exchange for Israeli missiles in 1984. Later known as the Iran-Contra scandal, history recorded how well that went.
With Trump and his negotiators citing progress in the talks while the Tehran government issues the usual denials, it’s hard to know what to believe. The president appears to be referring to the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf as a more “rational” leader, although he joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at the age of 18 and spent most of his career in that government military unit. In an interview with the Financial Times, Trump praised Ghalibaf for approving a generous offer from him to allow 10 Pakistani tanks to pass through the Strait of Hormuz last week. Iranian media have denied that claim.
If the talks are proceeding as the administration says, do they involve indirect or direct messages with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff? Are they trading proposals? With mixed messages from both capitals, it’s a safe bet that neither is completely accurate.
What seems more likely is that Iran’s remaining political leaders are tough-minded, opinionated, exasperated by the war and more determined than ever to rearm in the face of future attacks. They are also less likely to trust the American envoys after the planes were blocked twice by the US in the middle of the negotiations. And since Khamenei is dead, so is the fatwah, or religious edict, he issued decades ago against taking the final steps to build a nuclear weapon from its enriched uranium. Whether it was seen or not in recent years, it is no longer binding on his heirs.
The most important question is why Trump and the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu they thought they could destroy the Iranian regime by killing the country’s elderly supreme leader, the head of the National Security Council, Ali Larijanithe commander of the Revolutionary Guards, and the leader of the Iranian navy.
Those who will take their positions are considered to be more powerful than the men they replaced. Encouraged by Israel’s sought-after intelligence and success in targeted assassinations, Iran has also been known to create layers of leaders to step up and fill gaps suddenly. The least powerful in their theocratic and military system are those most accessible to the West: the country’s political leaders, in particular, the president and the foreign minister.
Another miscalculation was Israel’s reported assurance to the White House that the assassination of Tehran’s top leaders on the first day of the war would spark an Iranian uprising to overthrow their government. That hasn’t happened since the brutal Revolutionary Guard Corps has been empowered more than ever, and the internal Basij militia killed an estimated 32,000 Iranian protesters in January, according to outside human rights groups, while arresting thousands of others. At the time, Trump promised that “help is on the way.” No one came.
Although regime change was not Trump’s original goal in the war, he now calls it a metric of the war’s success. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio he told ABC News that he doubts that anything has changed in Iran.
“The people they lead, this clerical regime, that’s the problem,” Rubio said. Although he said it would be a good thing if they were more reasonable, he concluded by saying, “We have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the possibility, that it is not.”
Follow Iran war updates live →
🗞️ Some of today’s top stories
- ⚖️ SCOTUS watch: Members of the Supreme Court have expressed doubts about the legality of Trump’s proposal to limit the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship to anyone born on American soil. Trump attended the oral argument in person, a first for a sitting president, but left before it ended.
- 🏛️ Close the show: House and Senate Republican leaders have announced a plan they say will end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown that has caused major airport delays. Read more →
- 🗳️ Vote for the watch: Trump signed an executive order seeking to create federal lists of eligible voters in each state and restrict voting by mail, a move that election experts have called unconstitutional. Read more →
- 📝 In the states: The government Ron DeSantis he signed Florida’s version of the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship to register to vote and imposes stricter voter ID rules. Read more →
- 🩺 In limbo: The White House is asking the Senate to confirm Dr. Casey Said as America’s surgeon general “without delay,” as Trump expressed uncertainty about his path forward. Read more →
- 🚁 On second thought: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth he said there will be no punishment and no investigation after the flight of two military planes Kid Rockthe house of Read more →
That’s all from the Politburo for now. Today’s newsletter is compiled by Adam Wollner.
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