Juan Cole
Informed Comment / August 7, 2026
Ann Arbor – Opinion polling shows deep unhappiness in the American public about the ongoing US war on Iran and its impact on their lives.
A Marquette Law School opinion poll conducted in late July shows that 88% of Americans do not believe the US has achieved its goals in Iran.
That seems clear, though it is also mysterious what in the world Trump thought his goal in Iran was.
Further, 75% of respondents feel that the Iran War has not been worth the cost.
I’m not sure what the other 25% believe has been the advantage to the U.S. of this quagmire. But then, 41% of Trump voters told pollsters some years ago that they favoured bombing Agraba, the fictional city in which Disney’s Aladdin films are set. So maybe the 25% are just happy that America bombed someone somewhere, out of a free-floating and goal-free belligerence.
Asked if Iran has more control over the Strait of Hormuz now than it had last January before the Netanyahu-Trump attack, 41% agreed that it does. On the other hand, 30% think Tehran now has less control, and 29% think it has the same amount. The 41% are, of course, correct. But that nearly a third of Americans believe Iran has lost some of its control over the Gulf is bizarre, and that over a fourth think nothing has changed is alarming. But then they are being lied to by David Ellison’s / Bari Weiss’s CBS News, by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox, by Robert Herring’s OAN, etc. I don’t watch US cable news anymore, so I don’t know what CNN and MSNBC are telling them.
The objective fact is, of course, that Iran had almost no influence in over the Strait of Hormuz last January and shipping through it was free, with about 140 vessels transiting it daily. Nowadays it is more like 8 and the safest thing for captains is to get Iran’s permission and pay a toll, as Qatari LNG tankers and others have done.
Iran’s seizure of control over the Strait of Hormuz is a world-historical event, comparable to Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956. That a solid majority of Americans don’t even know about it is a sad commentary on how broken our information system is.
Asked if they thought Trump’s return to bombing Iran in July would be conducive to achieving peace, 72% said they did not think so. Ding ding ding: right answer.
In further evidence of the sea change in US public opinion on Israel, 52% of Americans think we give it too much money.
The US has given Israel on the order of $21 billion in military aid and arms transfers since October 2023, during which time the Netanyahu government committed a genocide in Gaza, carried out ethnic cleansing in the Palestinian West Bank, invaded and occupied part of Lebanon, invaded and occupied part of Syria, bombed Iraq, bombed Yemen, bombed Qatar, and bombed Iran several thousand times.
And 61% of respondents blame Trump policies for increased inflation, which I think is a pretty bad sign for Republicans in the midterms.
A similar University of Maryland opinion poll, directed by Shibley Telhami and also carried out in late July, found that only 16% thought that the US has won or is winning the war on Iran. On the other hand, 40% thought that neither side has won.
59% said that the impact of the Iran War on America is more negative than positive, and 57% want the war over this instant.
31% think that the US should turn the Middle East into a nuclear free zone, including Israel. It is astonishing that nearly a third of Americans want to take away from Tel Aviv its nuclear arsenal.
As for the legality of the Israeli-US attack on Iran beginning February 28, 42% of Americans believe it was illegal in US law and 27% say they don’t know. That indicates that less than a third of Americans believe they went to war legally.
The percentages are similar when you ask them whether the war was valid in international law.
36% of Americans even believe the US owes Iran reparations for attacking it, and another 23% don’t know, which I take to indicate that they are at least open to the idea.
That finding is astonishing.
I mean, it would be like Americans in 1968 thinking the US should pay reparations to Vietnam, which I guarantee you never entered their heads.
People are so disgusted with Trump that they even seem to take pity on Iran, which polls show they have hated since 1979.
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment; he is Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor in the History Department at the University of Michigan
