US President Donald Trump's military campaign against Iran has emerged as one of the most unpopular American wars in modern history, according to an analysis of multiple opinion polls by CNN.
The findings also suggest that public support for the conflict has eroded much more rapidly than it did during the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars.
Despite the widespread opposition, the surveys indicate that many Americans do not yet consider the conflict to be the country's biggest issue, easing immediate political pressure on the White House.
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A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that 68% of Americans believe that the Iran war was not "worth fighting", while only 28% said it was, according to CNN.
That 40-percentage-point gap is larger than the lowest levels of support recorded for either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars in Washington Post-ABC News polling.
To better understand the findings, here's a comparison of the Iran war with previous wars fought by the United States:
- Public opinion on the Afghanistan war reached a similar divide only in 2013, nearly 12 years after the conflict began, with 67% saying it was not worth fighting and 28% believing it was.
- The Iraq war saw its lowest level of public support in 2007, when 66% of Americans said it was not worth fighting. Even then, support for the war did not fall below 33%.
Another Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted in late April confirmed that 61% of Americans viewed the Iran war as a "mistake", less than two months after President Donald Trump launched military operations, according to CNN.
The speed of the shift in public opinion stands out, CNN noted. It took nearly four years for a similar share of Americans to describe the Iraq war as a mistake. While it was more than six years before the Vietnam War reached comparable levels of public disagreement.
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