Anthony ZurcherNorth America correspondent, Waco, Texas
The US strikes on Iran may be the biggest story around the world, but in Texas – where voters head to the polls on Tuesday to select the Democratic and Republican nominees in November’s midterm congressional elections – it appears mostly to be an afterthought. At least for now.
At a banquet hall in the central Texas town of Waco on Monday, Ken Paxton, the Republican state attorney general running for the US Senate, made a pitch to voters that was heavy on domestic red meat for his conservative audience
Immigration, government spending and gun rights were top issues. Iran was mentioned in passing, as Paxton praised Americans for making political change with ballots not bombs.
After the event, Paxton spoke to reporters, who pressed him on his views on the ongoing military conflict. The candidate, who has a firmly established reputation as a Donald Trump loyalist, did not break ranks with the US president.
“I am very glad that he did it,” he said. “Iran is a great threat to our country.”
The Senate primary fights are the marquee matchup in Texas on Tuesday, with contested races for both the Democrats and Republicans. While those on the left have been comfortable criticising Trump and his decision to launch the Iran operation, Republicans have tended, like Paxton, to offer praise of Trump and then move on to other topics.
Senator John Cornyn, the incumbent who is being challenged by Paxton, said Trump took “decisive action”. Congressman Wesley Hunt celebrated Trump accomplishing “peace through American strength” in a Saturday afternoon post on X.
Among many of the Waco rally attendees, that was a common theme. Marcia Michael said she believed Trump was playing “five-dimensional chess” by finally addressing the threat that Iran had posed for decades.
“I think we recognise that we can’t keep playing this game and kicking the can down the road,” she said. “This is the investment we have to make now in blood and tears so that we don’t pay later that same cost in greater numbers.”
If there were any hints of concern at the Paxton event, it was that this operation – and warfare in general – has unintended consequences.
“The Middle East, it’s always in turmoil, and it’s always going to be in turmoil,” said Mark Plough. “We don’t want to end up in a quagmire like we were in Afghanistan or even in Iraq.”
In such comments there may be the seeds of trouble for Trump. He made minimal effort over the recent months to lay the groundwork for an extended military campaign against Iran – having also campaigned both in 2024 and in 2016 as a sharp critic of “forever wars” in the Middle East.
In last week’s State of the Union address, Iran came near the end of the nearly two-hour speech and only merited a few minutes of his attention. While he has released two videos following Saturday’s strikes, he has yet to make an address to the nation.
If this is war, it is one that is being conducted on the down-low.
That could partly explain why the public’s overall response to the Iran strikes has been muted and why, among Trump supporters here in Texas, there is a belief that the president will wrap up the bombing campaign relatively quickly.
While this is just the latest action in a lengthening list of American military operations in Trump’s second term, the other instances have been more limited affairs. Last year’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, for instance, was a one-night affair. Last month’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro likewise began and ended while many Americans were sleeping.
These Iran strikes are different. They have already stretched into multiple days – and Trump has said they could last weeks. But for the moment, the American public may view the campaign as a similarly contained undertaking that will, at some point soon, be concluded with few lingering ill effects.
“What we’ve seen with this president is he is very deliberate and specific in launching targeted strikes against known high-value targets,” said Aaron Reitz, a former Marine and Trump administration official who is running to replace Paxton as attorney general. “I trust that the president is not going to want to get us involved in a never-ending ground war.”
That could end up the case. There is the possibility, as the Trump administration clearly hopes, that the end result will be a safer world, with the current Iranian regime replaced by leaders who are friendly to America and its interests.
But there are other scenarios where the political fallout from this operation is more difficult for Trump to manage.
If oil prices continue to spike, driving up the cost of petrol and hurting the US economy, Americans will take note. Just last week Trump boasted of low prices at the pump in his State of the Union address.
If the Iranian operation triggers a surge of militant attacks against Americans or their interests, either abroad or within the US, that too will exact a toll on the president.
And if the ending of this operation is not clean, if hardliners take over Iran, if the region is further destabilised and there’s no quick resolution in sight, the consequences could be severe.
That could by why Trump administration administration officials have gone to great lengths to emphasis that this is not an open-ended conflict.
“This is not endless,” Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Monday. “Our generation knows better, and so does this president. He called the last 20 years of nation-building wars dumb – and he’s right. This is the opposite.”
The American public may not be fully convinced, however. Already, it is sharply split over the wisdom of these strikes. A Morning Consult survey found 41% of Americans in favour of the attack, versus 42% who wanted more diplomatic efforts. In a Reuters-Ipsos poll, it was 27% in support and 43% opposed.
That was before six American soldiers were killed in action, with Trump warning that there may be more deaths to come.
Outside the banquet hall after the Paxton event had ended, Paul Barbieri and a friend stood by their pickup truck wondering what all the commotion had been about. The two construction workers were looking for lunch, not a political event, but Barbieri said that he had been following news from the Middle East closely.
The attacks were “probably necessary”, he said, but he didn’t like Americans fighting on foreign soil.
“I grew up through the Iraq War for 20-something years,” he said. “I knew people went and died there. I don’t like war at all.”
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