Republicans are increasingly breaking from President Donald Trump over the war in Iran.
A growing number of GOP candidates are calling for an end to the nearly seven-month-long war on the campaign trail, even in traditionally red parts of the U.S. On Capitol Hill, the latest war powers resolution weighed by the House was approved with fresh Republican support. And recent polls show that as the conflict has stretched on and hit Americans’ wallets, approval of Trump’s handling of the war among Republican voters has dropped by double digits.
The defections come as active hostilities in Iran have resumed in the last month after peace talks between Washington and Tehran stalled over the summer. Trump, who initially projected that the war would last a matter of weeks, has in recent days publicly floated the possibility that he could “annihilate the Islamic Republic” and “blow the entire nation up.”
At the same time, however, he has also recently predicted that the conflict will end after the midterms. And not long after levying a fresh threat in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly, he told reporters at the diplomatic gathering that he had a “very good” meeting with “mediators of Iran.”
“It’s to their advantage to make a deal, and we can do that,” he said on Tuesday.
Still, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have voiced concern that Trump has not laid out an exit strategy for the conflict and sounded alarm about the impact the war is having on fuel prices, which have spiked around the U.S. since it began.
With GOP fears over the pivotal November elections growing, more candidates and lawmakers in the party are choosing to distance themselves from the President on the issue—and though the defectors remain in the minority, Republican strategists tell TIME that GOP disapproval for the war in Iran will likely only continue to mount.
Here’s why.
Inflation concerns loom large ahead of the midterms
A handful of Republican candidates have recently pushed for an end to Iran on the campaign trail as the midterms near, including several in tight Senate races.
“It’s all about getting reelected,” Brian Darling, a Republican strategist and former counsel to Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, says about midterm candidates to TIME. “It’s all about making sure that they can signal to their constituents that they have the same concerns about the Iran war.”
Darling asserts that much of the discontent over the war in Iran stems from its inflationary impact within the U.S. A Congressional Budget Office report released last week found that the war has driven up energy prices in the U.S. mainly due to disruptions to shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route through which one fifth of the world’s crude oil flows, adding 2.3 percentage points to the annualized rate of inflation of 5.3% in the second quarter of 2026. The price of regular gasoline is up around 52% from the start of the war at around $4.48 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, with diesel prices up 71% in the same period.
Read More: U.S. Diesel Prices Just Surpassed a Record $6 Per Gallon. Here Are Three Ways That Affects You
For many Americans, these rising prices are among the most important issues when voting in the midterms. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from late August showed that 47% of voters said the cost of living would be the single most important factor for them when deciding who to vote for in November.
On top of that, support for the war is low, with only a quarter of Americans believing that it’s worthwhile, according to the same poll. And though Republicans still back the conflict in greater shares than Democratic and independent voters, surveys show that their sentiments toward it have notably soured in the months since it began. A YouGov poll conducted between Sept. 18 and 21 found that a slim majority of 53% of Republicans say that in hindsight going to war in Iran was the right decision, a drop of 15 percentage points from the 68% that said the same in April. Another recent poll conducted for CNN by SSRS found that Republican approval of the war fell from 73% in March to 60% in the latest survey period of Sept. 16-17. Among Republicans under the age of 45, 53% disapproved of the war.
Republican fears that the party could lose control of Congress in the midterms have meanwhile been on the rise, fueled by election forecasters shifting key battleground states and districts toward Democrats in their ratings and polls indicating that voters favor Democratic congressional candidates on generic ballots.
“The bottom line for most candidates is they want to talk about the Iran war and ending the Iran war as a solution to our high gas prices,” Darling says.
Candidates calling for an end to the Iran war have explicitly pointed to its effect on prices in their remarks.
“Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran,” Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP nominee for Senate in Iowa, posted on X on Monday, saying that “the war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end.”
Former Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, who is also running for Senate in his state, made his own call for ending the war in an ad this week in which was shown standing in a grocery store.
“The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” he said, referencing ballooning gas and food costs. “Michigan families are struggling with the price of everyday life. Groceries cost too much. We have to bring prices down.”
“The war needs to come to an end as quickly as possible so that we can lower gas prices,” Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio, who is facing a tight race to retain his seat this year, similarly told POLITICO in an interview published on Tuesday.
Trump has previously dismissed concerns about the war’s impact on gas prices, which he has called “a very inexpensive price to pay for what we’ve done” and “peanuts.” But on Tuesday, while speaking alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the U.N. General Assembly, he said that his Administration is considering banning diesel exports to quell the increase in fuel prices.
Read More: What a Diesel Export Ban Would Mean for U.S. Consumers
“I’ve called for that, too. I said, ‘Let’s not send out the diesel.’ We make a lot of diesel. I’ve called for it—I’ve called for it with my people,” Trump said.
‘There is seemingly no end in sight’
Although Darling holds that inflation is the main source of voters’ disapproval toward the war in Iran, he contends that many GOP lawmakers and voters are also fed up with U.S. involvement in armed conflict in the Middle East and around the world.
“You have some Republicans who are anti-interventionists, and some who are realists, and look at the situation in Iran and just don’t see an end game,” Darling says, making reference to the U.S.’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he said voters look to with fear as a “very similar circumstance” to Iran.
Trump, who campaigned on vows to put “America first” and not to get the U.S. involved in new foreign wars, has drawn backlash from his base for his military interventions in Iran, and in other parts of the world.
Doug Heye, a long-time Republican strategist who has worked in communications roles across Congress, says that the the opaque timeline and plan of action for the war in Iran has created a strong anti-Trump sentiment amongst Republican lawmakers and voters.
“There is seemingly no end in sight, and so that combined with the increase in prices has presented a real problem for Republicans,” Heye tells TIME. “It’s not a blip anymore.”
Michigan’s Republican nominee for governor, Rep. John James, told reporters on Tuesday that “we need to end this war quickly. Because war is terrible, and no one likes war.”
Earlier this month, Republican Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who both are in the midst of close-fought reelection races in Iowa, cited concerns about the lack of a clear plan to end the conflict after voting for the first time in favor of a resolution to constrict Trump’s ability to continue military action in Iran without congressional approval.
“With the negotiating window closed, sustained combat operations now require congressional authorization,” Nunn, an Air Force combat veteran and colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, said in a statement. “Having deployed multiple times and flown over 700 combat hours in the Middle East, I will not support another open-ended war.”
Miller-Meeks, who served for more than two decades in the U.S. Army, voiced a similar sentiment in a post on X—as well as referencing the conflict’s impact on gas prices. “I said it in March: the mission had to stay focused and limited, because Americans do not want another forever war,” she wrote. “I will not vote to keep our soldiers in an open-ended war, with Iowans paying too much at the pump.”
The other Republicans who voted for the resolution were Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Warren Davidson of Ohio, Tom Barrett of Michigan, and Nancy Mace of South Carolina. It marked the third time the House has voted to restrict Trump’s war powers in Iran.
Read More: The Republicans Who Have Broken With Their Party to Support Limiting Trump’s Iran War Powers
A majority of voters, including a number of Republicans, have recently indicated concerns about how long the war might last in recent polls. A Fox News poll conducted between Sept. 11 and 14 found that 71% of voters believe Trump lacks a clear strategy to end the war, with 43% of Republicans holding that belief. The YouGov poll taken in recent days meanwhile found that 52% of Americans believe the war will last at least another year.
The share of people who hold that belief has slowly increased in recent months, from 50% in August, 46% in July, and 32% in March, shortly after the war began. According to the poll, however, just 28% of Republicans expect the war to continue on for that long.
