At a Florida rally October 23, Trump suggested that US warships make "a little stopover" in Cuba after Iran.Alex Wong/Getty
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The US and Israel’s war on Iran, ongoing since February, has never been particularly popular. But two new polls show that as voters prepare for the November 3 midterm elections, they’re thinking about it—and Americans say it’s priority for it to be over.
An AP-NORC poll released earlier this week shows about seven in ten voters believe the government should prioritize ending the war. Their other primary concern is costs: eight in ten say lowering the cost of living should be one of the highest priorities for the next session of Congress coming up. Those concerns are intertwined: surging fuel prices, airfares, and mortgage rates have cost each American household an average of $2,000, Moody’s estimated this week. The AP-NORC result follows a Fox News poll released in September that found six in ten Americans oppose military action against Iran.
Trump doesn’t seem to care. At a recent campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, the president claimed that “our gas prices are lower than under Obama, and they’re lower than Sleepy Joe Biden.” The average price of a gallon of gas was $2.95 during Obama’s second term. It was $3.47 under Biden. Right now, that same gallon costs about $4.30.
“Iran’s killed many, many Americans, many, many people throughout the world for a long time, they were the bully of the Middle East. They were one of the bullies of the world. They’re not a bully anymore,” Trump went on to say. The death toll in Iran has reached at least 3,400, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; 33,000 people have been injured.
Iran, Trump asserted, is “the worst country in the world—and our gas prices, it’s a small thing to pay.” More than 70 percent of Americans, the Fox News poll found, don’t think Trump has a plan to end the war. But Trump’s already fantasizing about his next war: this time, he wants to attack Cuba.
“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of Cuba on our way back from Iran,” Trump said at an October 23 rally in Fort Myers, Florida. The ongoing US embargo on Cuba—which intensified in January of 2026—has caused the electrical grid to collapse, made basic medications inaccessible, and imposed starvation on the Cuban people. That embargo has been described as an act of siege warfare, but Trump’s threats yesterday to bring warships to Cuba constitute a new level of aggression.
We’ll do a little stopover,” he said. “We’re going to come back from Iran, those beautiful ships. We’ll pass Cuba. We’ll have one of them stop about 50 yards off the coast. They’ll raise up their hands, and then we’re going to send Marco Rubio in to finish up the job.”