The Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement largely continues to back President Donald Trump despite the US-Israeli war on Iran that began on 28 February.
However, cracks are beginning to show, with signs of dissent within Trump’s base threatening to fracture the movement.
Much now depends on how the upcoming talks in Islamabad go, and whether the Pakistani-brokered two-week ceasefire evolves into something more durable or falls apart and gives way to resumed warfare.
MAGA loyalty amid the Iran war
Some right-wing influencers who helped return Trump to the White House have strongly denounced Operation Epic Fury as a betrayal of his “America First” pledge.
After all, Trump vowed to be a “peacemaker” and proclaimed in his January 2025 inaugural address that his second administration would “measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into”.
As polling data demonstrates, individuals who identify with MAGA still overwhelmingly support Trump and his policy decisions, including those concerning Iran. Put simply, the first six weeks of this war did not greatly weaken MAGA loyalty to Trump.
“The cracks are not so much within MAGA – those who no longer support Trump may not identify as MAGA anymore, making the pool of those who continue to self-identify as MAGA more cohesive – but within the broader coalition that supported Trump and voted for him,” explained Jasmine El-Gamal, founder and CEO of Averos Strategies and a former Pentagon Middle East advisor, in an interview with The New Arab.
“Support for the war is lower amongst non-MAGA Republicans, young people, and Hispanics, all of whom helped him win the presidency in 2024,” she added.
According to John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, the MAGA base can be divided into three distinct subgroups.
The first group follows Trump with blind loyalty, supporting him regardless of his actions. The second group aligns with him for ideological reasons, drawn to his stances on issues such as immigration, opposition to globalisation, and rolling back his predecessor’s “woke” policies.
The third group is more pragmatic, having voted for Trump based on tangible benefits like lower taxes, affordable prices, and a strong stock market.
“The war in Iran will not alienate those in the first group. It is dividing those in the second group because some see the war as a way of furthering his ideological agenda, because it weakens non-Christian forces or challenges the UN or supports the millenarian aspirations of right-wing Jews,” Feffer told TNA.
“Others in this group see the war as, at best, a distraction from achieving his domestic agenda or, at worst, a violation of his pledge not to start any more ‘forever wars.’”
The third group, he noted, is “peeling away from Trump because of the war and its negative impact on gas prices and the stock market”.
Trump’s hold over all three MAGA factions will hinge on the war’s economic fallout and the ideological rifts emerging within his base.
“Trump thought that he could retain support from all of these groups if he could achieve a quick victory. And, to a certain extent, he has, since about 92 percent of MAGA support the war so far. But Trump obviously didn’t anticipate the semi-closure of the Strait of Hormuz. He didn’t expect a rapid surge in oil prices,” explained Feffer, several days before the announcement on 7 April of a two-week ceasefire.
Even if MAGA loyalty remains high, the fallout from Trump’s war on Iran had already hit the average American during its first six weeks. Rising costs and market instability have, to some degree, tested support beyond ideological lines. Some analysts think that these pressures may prompt some Trump supporters to rethink their allegiance.
“Perhaps 10 percent of Trump’s MAGA base will desert him over his Iran misadventure. Trump’s choice of guns over butter contradicts his campaign promise to focus on American concerns and improving the well-being of Americans,” explained Dr Joshua Landis, the Sandra Mackey Chair and Professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, in an interview with TNA.
“There is little doubt that the cost of Trump’s Iran adventure is angering Americans. Rising inflation and gas costs, the correction of the stock market, and the rise in mortgage rates are all angering Americans who increasingly fear that the president does not have their best interests at heart and has badly miscalculated,” he added.
Generational divides and rifts over Israel
Younger Republicans are particularly central to the question of growing divisions among Trump’s supporters over the war.
Perhaps there is much to say about how many of those who came of age after the start of the “War on Terror” in 2001 are particularly wary of military interventions overseas, especially in the Middle East, fearing they could become no-win quagmires that are costly in terms of American blood and treasure.
“Trump’s war has opened a real divide within the MAGA coalition, especially between young men, who largely oppose the war, and an older generation of Republicans who are more likely to support it. Those who voted for Trump in 2024 because they believed that he wouldn’t start new wars feel especially betrayed,” said Dr Annelle Sheline, a research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, in a TNA interview.
Support for Israel is increasingly fractured within the MAGA movement. While evangelicals and hawkish conservatives continue to offer strong support, certain far-right factions have long harboured scepticism. As Pat Buchanan, a conservative American politician and commentator, bluntly put it in 1990, “Capitol Hill is Israeli-occupied territory.”
Now, in 2026, the US-Israeli war on Iran has intensified these divisions, prompting some conservatives and MAGA figures to openly question Israel’s influence over Washington’s foreign policy.
Many younger MAGA supporters, in particular, see Operation Epic Fury as being driven by Israel’s interests rather than America’s, challenging the long-standing “America First” rationale.
Prominent conservative voices – including Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Matt Walsh – have openly criticised both Israel’s role and the administration’s decisions in the war, highlighting the growing rift on the right.
Although Charlie Kirk was assassinated before the conflict began, his warnings from last year about the dangers of a war with Iran have circulated widely on social media since Trump launched Operation Epic Fury, with many who revered the Turning Point USA co-founder arguing that he would likely have opposed the war had he still been alive.
Joe Kent has been a prominent pro-Trump figure on the far right of the American political spectrum. He served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center under the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, until resigning last month in protest of the war on Iran.
In his resignation letter, Kent wrote that “we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
The way his resignation played out in political discourse “reflects a broad sense that Israel is to blame for convincing Trump to launch this unnecessary and increasingly costly war,” observed Dr Sheline.
In the immediate aftermath of the two-week ceasefire announcement, Kent offered his assessment, emphasising the need to prevent Tel Aviv from sabotaging diplomatic efforts while also pointing to a misalignment between US and Israeli national interests.
Caroline Rose, a non-resident fellow at the New Lines Institute, made a similar observation about right-wing perceptions of the American-Israeli alliance.
“There have been more critical voices within the Republican Party and MAGA movement of Israel and its role in US foreign and defence policy, with some officials and figures questioning the degree of influence that Tel Aviv has on Washington,” she told TNA.
“Many ultra-right conservatives who voted for Trump’s retrenched, isolationist approach to foreign affairs oppose Trump’s sudden shift in his approach, exploring regime change in a region that the movement largely wishes to disengage from,” Rose added.
“In their eyes, this has prompted an unpopular, expensive war.”
Implications for the 2026 midterms
Such dynamics risk negative consequences for Republican electoral prospects in the 2026 midterms, which will be held in less than seven months.
“Rising prices associated with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, continued instability, and troop casualties from the war will further add strain for the Trump administration and the Republican Party’s outlook for midterms,” Rose told TNA.
Feffer similarly holds that this war of choice launched by Trump and Netanyahu can spell bad news for Republicans by the time of the vote in November.
“The Republicans were already facing some serious challenges leading up to the midterms: inflation, health-care cuts, the ripple effects of tariffs, Epstein, the brutality of ICE, and Trump’s assaults on the Constitution. The Iran War has aggravated all the economic risk factors for the Republicans,” he said in a TNA interview.
Although Trump seems to have embraced a diplomatic offramp set up by Islamabad, managing to pull the US back from the brink of committing to a ground war, it is important to realise that, even if the ceasefire holds, the global economy will need time to recover.
“Even if the global economy does indeed recover in time for the midterms, the Republicans still face all of their pre-existing conditions. So, this combination of risk factors and pre-existing conditions suggests that the Republicans will suffer a major cardiac event come November,” asserted Feffer.
Fragmentation or resilience?
The US-Israel-Iran war has placed the MAGA movement at a critical crossroads. Growing fissures within it could shape the pro-Trump coalition’s future.
Despite initial polling highlighting how Trump currently retains the vast majority of MAGA supporters’ loyalty, it is difficult to imagine divisions within the movement not deepening, especially if the ceasefire fails to extend beyond two weeks or falls apart sooner.
Like many political movements around the world, MAGA is far from monolithic. It encompasses sub‑groups with different priorities and perspectives, which helps explain why the coalition could fracture over a protracted war in Iran.
Prominent conservative voices becoming increasingly loud in their opposition to this war will likely deepen rifts within the movement, especially considering the economic costs from rising gas prices, inflationary pressures, and market instability.
Whether Trump can navigate all these pressures and maintain relative unity among the different groups within MAGA is unclear.
Perhaps more than any other issue, the US-Israeli war on Iran will test the cohesion and durability of Trump’s MAGA movement, underscoring the delicate balance of cult-like loyalty, ideology, and pragmatic support that secured Trump his electoral victories in 2016 and 2024.
Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics
Follow him on X: @GiorgioCafiero
Edited by Charlie Hoyle
