'Betrayal.' MAGA lashes out on Iran, prompting White House pushback. - USA Today

Hanging over the debate is the memory of previous Middle Eastern conflicts, which stretched for years and claimed the lives of thousands of U.S. soldiers.

Trump's presidential campaigns tapped into the American public’s disenchantment with the long and costly conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He described the Iraq war as a "disaster" and "one of the worst decisions ever made in the history of our country."

The president has launched a series of dramatic military operations in his second term, though. The first two in Iran and Venezuela were quick, and no U.S. soldiers died, limiting the blowback from his political base.

But Trump’s second attack on Iran has already resulted in the deaths of six American service members, and the president is warning that more lives could be lost in a conflict with an uncertain timeline.

“Right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks but we have capability to go far longer than that,” Trump said March 2, when discussing how long the military operation would last and pushing back on the idea that he would “get bored” and move on quickly.

“I don’t get bored. There’s nothing boring about this,” Trump said.

Trump allies discussed the U.S. deaths in Iran and the possibility of an extended operation on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast over the weekend. Bannon is a leading MAGA figure who served as White House chief strategist during Trump’s first term, and his show is a hub for an "America First" movement that rallied behind the president’s message of extracting the nation from “endless wars.”

When one of Bannon’s guests predicted a “hard slog” in Iran, the host cautioned it could be costly for Trump politically.

“If it’s going to be a hard slog, I mean that was not pitched in the 2024 campaign, it just wasn’t,” Bannon said March 1. “We are going to bleed support.”

Bannon’s guests repeatedly returned to the U.S. soldiers who have been killed, describing the “blood price” and questioning how it will be perceived by the American public.

“I’m not entirely clear, or not entirely sure, the appetite of the American people to absorb fatalities,” said Curt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative magazine.

Mills said Trump is in dicey political territory.

“I do think it matters politically that he was the 'no more endless wars' candidate in 2016 and 2024, particularly, and this looks like an open betrayal of the base,” Mills said.

As criticism mounts, the Trump administration has been pushing back and rejecting any comparison to previous Middle East conflicts.

“This is not Iraq, this is not endless,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a March 2 news conference. “Our generation knows better, and so does this president. He called the last 20 years of nation-building wars dumb, and he’s right.”

Hegseth said the Iran operation is “the opposite” of what Trump has criticized, adding it has “a clear, devastating, decisive mission.”

Some conservatives are questioning whether the administration has presented a clear and consistent rationale for the Iran operation, though.

“Is the goal to eliminate the Iranian regime or free the Iranian people or degrade their nuclear capability or degrade the conventional weapons capability or eliminate their regional hegemony or to cut off their oil supply to China or to help Israel or what?” Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of The Federalist, a conservative web magazine, wrote in a March 2 social media post. “The lack of any coherent message seems to suggest the lack of any coherent objective.”

After conservative commentator Matt Walsh also described the administration’s Iran messaging as “confused,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to Walsh with a lengthy March 2 social media post asserting Trump has laid out “clear objectives to the American people.”

The debate is dividing the GOP coalition ahead of the critical midterm election, potentially impacting Trump's ability to keep his base motivated as Republicans try to maintain control of Congress amid signs that Democrats have momentum.

Mills told Bannon he is happy Trump is president but believes he has received “very poor counsel” as he pursues a “new war in the Middle East that looks a lot like the Iraq war.”