US-Iran War Sparks Widespread Criticism and Economic Hardship Across America

Five months after the United States and Israel started a historically unpopular war against Iran that was going to supposedly last weeks, the fighting has refused to resolve in victory, defeat or peace. Iran’s supreme leader had been killed in the opening strikes, ceasefires broke down, and the strait of Hormuz has been closed and reopened. For voters interviewed across the country, while the damage may be distant, the residual effects have shown up at the pump, on the grocery bill and in a phone call telling a spouse they have a day to report for deployment. And for a country still absorbing the aftermath of Israel’s war on Gaza – funded to the tune of billions of dollars by the United States – the war in Iran lands on top of an already raw argument about what American power is for. [...] Whether a ceasefire holds, and whether Tehran and Washington ever sit down for something more than a pause, is still an open question. What is not in doubt, from Wisconsin lake towns to the Georgia suburbs, is that voters of nearly every political persuasion are doing the same math: adding up gas receipts, deployment orders and casualty counts, and asking what, precisely, the war is for.