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It was on 18 October 2024, just weeks before presidential election day that candidate Trump announced at a rally in Hamtramck, a small, diverse city inside Detroit with a large Muslim population, that once in office he would “get peace in the Middle East”.
For the many in attendance and who have family in the region, it was music to their ears.
Time and again on the campaign trail two years ago, Trump has said he would get America out of “endless wars” and put “America first”.
It was this messaging that, in part, persuaded some crucial voters in the upper midwest swing states to back him, voters who ultimately helped get him back in the White House.
Despite Trump’s promises, in a little over a year in office the US military has opened up a host of international interventions. It killed more than 100 people during the overthrow and imprisonment in January of president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and has launched airstrikes and other attacks in Nigeria, Somalia and Syria since Trump became president.
But following Israel into a conflict with Iran, one that has jolted the global economy in a way not seen for decades, has set a new precedent.
A few streets north of Hamtramck is Macomb county, a community on the northern fringes of Detroit that mixes urban and suburban communities and farmland, and which voted for Barack Obama in presidential elections in 2008 and 2012, before swinging to Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
Home to a large number of so-called “Reagan Democrats”, Macomb county’s demographics makes it a key swing county in Michigan, an important battleground state.
“We represent hard-working, middle-class Americans who were the ‘forgotten class’ especially when we lost so many manufacturing jobs to other countries,” said Barbara VanSyckel, vice-chair of the Macomb county Republican party.
But the effect the conflict is having on energy prices is something Macomb county residents are readily aware of, she said.
“I am hoping to see the gas prices go back to a lower level as yes, the electorate votes by what is affecting them at the time they cast their ballots,” she said.
“The November elections are still months away, but if the gas prices stay high, it will likely affect voting for Republicans, which would affect the midterms and thus Trump’s agenda.”
Breaking down and winning over the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania was a keystone achievement by Trump en route to his stunning 2024 election win. Capturing the political mood among voters in these states’ politically divided counties has been a priority for Republican and Democratic parties alike for years.
Encompassing a peninsula on the western shores of Lake Michigan, Wisconsin’s Door county had been a swing county in a battleground state, voting for the eventual president in every election from 2000 until 2024, when Kamala Harris won the county by just 466 votes.
For Stephanie Soucek, chair of the local Republican party, voters’ takes on the Iran war in Door county have largely fallen along party lines.
For her, the attacks on Iran serve American interests for a number of reasons.
“Iran has been a problem for several decades and they’ve been considered the number one state sponsor of terror, working through their proxies and undermining American interests,” she says.
“I’m not sure anything else has really worked.”
Soucek says Door county residents say their support for the conflict is conditional, however.
“I don’t know anyone who wants this to be like Iraq, a long, drawn-out war. They want it to be as quick as possible. We don’t want troops on the ground,” she says. More than 140 American service members have been injured in the conflict and seven have been killed.
Surveys of Americans show that while most people oppose the attacks on Iran, Republicans are still steadfast in their support for Trump’s actions.
A national poll of registered voters by Quinnipiac University and released on 9 March found that 85% of Republicans support the war on Iran, with 88% believing the killing of Iran’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was justified.
But an important cohort of voters – independents – have come down clearly on one side, with 60% of them polled in the Quinnipiac sample saying they oppose US military action against Iran.
With 28% of voters in Michigan and 32% in Wisconsin identifying as independents, Trump failing to keep his word on involving the US in foreign conflicts could be important ahead of primaries and midterm elections in the coming months.
Costing an estimated $890m a day, the war on Iran has angered many independents.
“We definitely have seen in public polling that more and more voters are identifying as independents as they grow frustrated with politicians from both major parties failing to deliver for voters,” says Christy McGillivray of Voters Not Politicians, a Michigan-based advocacy organization.
“American voters have made it clear for years: they do not want any new wars. The administration’s attacks on Iran are unpopular, and the administration has provided contradictory and incoherent justifications for this war.”
Nearly two weeks into the conflict, Iran’s resiliency and successful leveraging of the strait of Hormuz to cripple the international economy has surprised many observers.
Moreover on 9 March, thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran for a rally marking Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader, despite bombing campaigns that have killed over 1,300 people, including about 175 elementary school-age girls in Minab.
But some conservatives have questioned the categorization of the attacks on Iran as an actual war.
“I do not see the Iran situation as a war yet,” says VanSyckel.
“We have accomplished a lot in a short period of time, but the threat to Israel and the US had to have serious consequences in order for both countries to be safe from the Iranian regime.”
