Just one in three Americans support the war on Iran, the lowest reading in a Reuters/Ipsos poll since the five-month-old conflict’s early days, with most respondents saying that President Donald Trump has failed to explain his goals, Reuters reported.

The poll, conducted Friday through Sunday, also showed the Republican president’s approval rating ticking higher to 37%, up three points from last month when his rating tied the lowest of his presidency.

Trump has offered shifting objectives for the conflict such as aiding Iranians to topple their leaders, taking out Iran’s ballistic-missile capabilities and preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The poll found that 69% of Americans — including four in 10 Republicans – think Trump has not “clearly explained the goals of U.S. military involvement in Iran.”

White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said Trump will not make decisions based on “fluid opinion polls” and reiterated the president’s resolve to prevent Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon. “What matters most to the American people is having a commander in chief who takes bold action to keep them safe,” Wales said.

Approval of the conflict has been below 40% since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes ⁠on February 28 — a stark contrast to the opening months of other recent conflicts.

While each had different context, the Iraq War from 2003 to 2011 had the support of about 70% of Americans in its early months. During the early days of the Afghanistan War, which lasted from 2001 to 2021, about 90% of the country backed the war, to polling, by Gallup.

Public disapproval of the war is weighing on Trump and his Republican Party ahead of the November midterm elections when the president’s allies will defend slim majorities in the U.S. Congress.

“It’s not clear why we started a war with them. I have no idea,” said Alex Womack, a retired turbine repair specialist from Stockbridge, Georgia, who became a Republican in part because he liked how Republican President George H.W. Bush handled the Gulf War in 1991.

Womack, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during that conflict, said his support for Trump has ebbed because of the war. “I don’t think he’s doing very well, personally,” he said.

To date, 18 American soldiers have died in the conflict while thousands have died in Iran and in Lebanon, where Iran-allied fighters have battled Israeli forces.

The war has pushed gasoline prices sharply higher, a blow to the finances of many Americans. ⁠Gasoline prices are averaging just over $4 a gallon nationwide, up from about $3 a gallon just before the war started on February 28, read the report.

“This puts pressure on the party in a myriad of ways, all of them bad,” said Alex Conant, a Republican political strategist and a White House spokesman during the presidency of George W. Bush. “The White House officials have been saying since January that they need to win economic arguments. It’s hard to win the economic arguments when you’re clearly focused on foreign policy.”

Independent registered voters in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll said they were favoring the Democratic congressional candidate over the Republican by 36% to 20%. Independent voters also favored Democrats over Republicans on economic ⁠policy, the poll found

In campaigning for the 2024 presidential election, Trump said he would keep the U.S. out of enduring conflicts. He initially estimated the Iran war would last four to five weeks. He has bristled over comparisons to other wars, including the Vietnam War, which lasted two decades and claimed the lives of more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers.

Rhyan Anderson, an independent from Fairburn, Georgia, who voted for Trump in ⁠2024, said he thinks Trump should focus on domestic problems rather than on helping Israel or other allies.

“My biggest thing is just focus on the people who are actually in the country,” said Anderson, who works two jobs in security and data collection and said he voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. “I know we have allies and things like that, but there’s a lot of people here ⁠that really need help.”

Since mid-March, the Reuters/Ipsos survey has asked respondents whether they support or oppose military strikes on Iran. At that time, 37% said they supported the war.

That compared to 27% approval on the day the war began, when the Reuters/Ipsos survey also gave respondents the option to choose unsure, which 29% did.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos survey, which was conducted online and nationwide, gathered responses from 1,246 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points in either direction.

President Donald Trump said ​on Friday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‌Netanyahu will visit the U.S. next week.

Trump’s comments came in his speech at the White House ​Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Friday, while he was ​falsely casting U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer as ⁠Palestinian, Reuters reported.

“I am going to send him (Schumer) a ​beautiful Palestinian outfit tomorrow, so he can ​greet Bibi Netanyahu when he comes to town next week,” Trump said.

“He turned Palestinian,” Trump said of Schumer, ​who is Jewish, while also joking that ​sharia law was Schumer’s “new founding.”

U.S. Muslim and Jewish advocacy ‌groups ⁠have previously criticized Trump for calling Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, a Palestinian, with the rights groups saying Trump uses the term disrepectfully as ​a slur and ​as an ⁠insult.

Netanyahu’s office said earlier that he will travel to Washington on ​Monday and will meet with Trump ​on ⁠Tuesday. Netanyahu will also attend deceased U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral, his office said.

The Trump-Netanyahu meeting ⁠will ​come as the U.S.-Israeli ​war on Iran completes five months.

U.S. President Donald Trump promised “major military punishment” for Iran and its Houthi allies on Thursday after the Yemeni fighters struck two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, ​extending the Middle East war to a second major shipping chokepoint.

Fears that disruption could widen further to block another sea route sent global oil prices surging in one of the steepest rises of the ‌war. Brent crude rose more than 6%, breaking through $100 a barrel for the first time since May, Reuters reported.

Two weeks since the effective collapse of an interim truce meant to end the war, the U.S. military launched air strikes on Iran overnight into Thursday, prompting Iran to fire at neighbouring Arab countries that host U.S. bases. The U.S. military fired another round of missiles at Iran late Thursday and early Friday in the 13th consecutive night of attacks.

Iranian state media said on both nights that missiles struck Qeshm Island on the Strait of Hormuz, the virtually closed ​waterway that has become the focal point in a war well into its fifth month that has already killed thousands and raised fears of a global economic downturn.

TRUMP: IRAN HASN’T ‘RECEIVED ENOUGH PAIN YET’

After the Houthis ​said they had struck the two tankers on Thursday, Trump said he would hold Iran accountable for any further attacks by the fighters.

The Houthis, who control northern and western Yemen, said this ⁠week they were imposing a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, which has diverted millions of barrels of oil per day by pipeline to the Red Sea to get around Iran’s blockade of Gulf oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

“If ​they do this again, the U.S. will hold Iran responsible, in that the Houthis are a Surrogate and/or Proxy of Iran, and major military punishment will be inflicted upon Iran and, of course, the Houthis, themselves,” Trump wrote on social media.

​He told news outlet Axios he was considering relaunching major combat operations in Iran and was close to a decision. “They haven’t received enough pain yet,” Axios quoted Trump as saying.

On Thursday evening, Trump said on social media that “any and all damages done” to cargo ships would be paid for with “Iranian Money,” referring to frozen Iranian assets held by the U.S., but he did not say how this would work.

Sources in Iran and Yemen told Reuters that Iran had flown Revolutionary Guard commanders, military advisers and missile- and drone-related equipment into Yemen days ​before the Houthis announced their blockade. The Houthis dismissed the report.

The Houthis said their forces had carried out missile and drone strikes on Saudi oil tankers, the Encelia and the Layla.

A maritime security source said the Encelia had transmitted a distress ​call reporting it had been struck by a missile near the Saudi port of Jizan in the Red Sea just north of Yemen late on Wednesday. Saudi state news agency SPA said the strike had caused a fire at the bow.

Reuters could not ‌immediately confirm the ⁠attack on the Layla, or other battlefield accounts, but Trump mentioned two attacks on Saudi tankers.

The insurance cost of shipping goods through the southern Red Sea doubled for some companies on Thursday, after the reported attacks, sources said.

Houthi attacks could close the strait known as the Bab el-Mandeb or “Gate of Tears” which controls access from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, the second most important route for energy shipments after the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf.

In the days since they announced their blockade in the Red Sea, several tankers have changed course to avoid the Bab el-Mandeb, heading north instead through the Suez Canal, potentially using a much longer and more expensive route to reach Asian customers by sailing ​around Africa.

IRAN REPORTS STRIKES ON JORDAN, KUWAIT

Iran said it attacked ​U.S. missile systems, weapons and fuel storage sites in ⁠Jordan, as well as U.S. military posts in Kuwait.

Jordan’s army said it engaged four Iranian missiles and six drones in the past day, intercepting all but one missile, which fell in an uninhabited area.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it struck a U.S. electronic warfare unit at Al-Adiri base in Kuwait, causing unspecified casualties, in response to an overnight strike on Iran’s ​Shalamcheh border crossing with Iraq.

Neither the U.S. nor Kuwait has reported casualties at the base.

Iranian military spokesperson Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia said Iran would keep retaliating as long ​as the U.S. continued to attack ⁠its infrastructure and coastal areas, Iranian state TV reported.

Since the U.S. and Israel began the war in February, Iran has demonstrated that it can hit U.S. targets in the region, despite Trump having said early on that the U.S. had wiped out Iranian military capabilities.

Four people familiar with U.S. intelligence said Iranian strikes on CIA targets in the Gulf earlier in the war had prompted U.S. intelligence to investigate whether Russia was assisting Iran with targeting information or drone technology.

CONGRESS

High oil prices are stoking inflation globally, and ⁠have put Trump’s ​Republican allies under pressure ahead of congressional elections in November.

The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives backed legislation on Thursday directing Trump to halt U.S. ​military action against Iran, the latest rebuke of the Republican president from Congress, which the U.S. Constitution grants the exclusive power to “declare War.”

Lawmakers have passed similar resolutions repeatedly in recent months, but they have not led to cessation of the war. The Senate voted hours later to block a ​separate, similar measure.