First Venezuela, now Iran: Americans befuddled by Trump’s power moves
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As protests raged in Iran against the clerical rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Donald Trump said the US is exploring military options.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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AUSTIN – US President Donald Trump’s proclivity for a more interventionist foreign policy appears to be growing, but domestic support for it is far from certain.
As protests raged in Iran against the clerical rule of Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, costing more than 1,000 lives so far by one count, Mr Trump said the US is exploring military options
“We’re looking at it very seriously, the military’s looking at it. And there are a couple of options,” he told reporters on Jan 11 after a weekend trip to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
Asked to elaborate, he gave a rhetorical reply. “Are you asking me to say what will I do, where will I attack, when and what angle we will attack from?” he asked.
“I’m getting an hourly report, and we are going to make a determination,” he said, while adding that a meeting with Iranian leaders may also be on the cards.
These were his strongest remarks since his Jan 3 social media post, where he vowed that the US would step in to “rescue” the protesters
The turn of events is startling to most Americans, who believed they had elected an isolationist leader with a strong distaste for foreign adventures.
The possibility of a second bout of military action in Iran, after the attack on alleged nuclear facilities
What the polls say
The action against Maduro
Paradoxically, Mr Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) voters, who are defined by their distrust of US involvement in “forever wars”, are sticking with him.
Some 72 per cent of them support American activism in Venezuela in pursuit of national interest, said Mr Matthew Continetti, director of domestic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, in a Jan 9 column for The Wall Street Journal.
He cited numbers from an as-yet-unpublished poll by the Republican-leaning Vandenberg Coalition, which conducts monthly surveys of 2024 Trump voters on global issues.
The polls found that 70 per cent of these voters said the US should help the Venezuelan people and their elected leaders restore democracy. “Mr Trump and his voters want secure borders, tough defences and deterred enemies. And they are willing to spend money and use power to achieve their goals,” said Mr Continetti.
Among the wider public, there is concern over the Jan 3 military raid that plucked then sitting President Maduro from his fortified compound in the capital Caracas.
A Washington Post/SSRS poll of 1,000 Americans found that a slight proportion of Americans, at 42 per cent, disapproved, while 40 per cent of Americans approved of Maduro’s extraction, described by the White House as a law enforcement action.
The poll conducted from Jan 3 to 4 also displayed a stark partisan divide – 74 per cent of Republicans approved, while 76 per cent of Democrats disapproved.
Another poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos of 1,248 adults from Jan 4 to 5 found scant support: Only one in three favoured the action. But again, there was a partisan divide: About 65 per cent of all Republicans in the poll endorsed the operation.
The polls also revealed that most Americans thought the action should first have been approved by Congress. They also expressed apprehension towards a wider US role following Mr Trump’s remarks that the US would “run the country” until a “proper and judicious transition” takes place.
Some 45 per cent were against the idea of the US taking control of Venezuela, while an overwhelming majority (94 per cent) believed that choosing a new government should be a matter for Venezuelans.
“If you want oil reserves – do a fair trade agreement. If you don’t like how a country is being led – encourage free and fair elections,” said a reader with the username MaryAliceD on the Post website. “The bullies don’t have the right to go into someone else’s home, kidnap the parents and determine how the house will be run.”
Said another reader posting under the name of Markbreyfogle: “My wife is from Venezuela. While she’s really glad that Maduro is gone, she also realises that nothing has changed. The same government is in charge and the US didn’t do anything for the Venezuelan people. Trump did it for oil.”
Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, who have since been indicted in a Manhattan court, are accused of “transporting thousands of tons of cocaine to the US”, and conspiring with drug traffickers to enrich themselves. They pleaded not guilty
The best public rating for military actions typically comes soon after the operation, said Dr Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center.
The lack of resounding support for the Venezuela action was telling, she said.
“The administration has been very unclear about why they did it, the messaging ranged from it being about drugs to being about migration to being about oil. The White House is also not clear what the next steps are. So the American public is reflecting their confusion.”
What are the real reasons?
Americans are still searching for the “real” aim of the operation: Was it the culmination of months of military strikes on alleged narcotics traffickers in the Caribbean? Was it the pursuit of oil, given the world’s largest proven reserves are in Venezuela? What were the broader foreign policy goals of the action? And were they met?
If it was regime change, which Mr Trump had repeatedly criticised as an overreach of American policy during his presidential campaign, it was a strange decision to let Maduro’s Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez and the rest of the administration stay in charge. There was no visible effort to pave the way for opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, a 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Aside from Iran, Mr Trump has also spoken of action in Greenland, a territory of NATO ally Denmark. He has described the large Arctic island as crucial for US national security interests. In the same breath, Mr Trump has mentioned Cuba, Colombia and Mexico as potential targets
Over the past year, the Trump administration conducted more than 620 air strikes in seven countries, including Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Nigeria, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project. By comparison, former president Joe Biden ordered around 70 in his entire term.
Public support for more military action remains tentative, said Professor Benjamin Radd, a political scientist and senior fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“I don’t think Trump will get anywhere near the public support – or indifference – that he received for the Venezuela operation,” he said.
“Trump sees these actions as consistent with his MAGA agenda. Whether he can make that case to the broader electorate and his supporters in Congress remains to be seen. But there is no question that it is consistent with his world view and that of his closest advisers.”
