Iran crisis tests Trump standing with young men who helped power 2024 win

By Nathan Layne and Aleksandra Michalska

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire, March 4 (Reuters) – When Michael Leary learned the United States had struck Iran, he questioned whether the move honored the “America First” pledge that earned his vote for President Donald Trump and feared it could pull the country into another Middle East quagmire.

Yet the 19-year-old student said he welcomed news of the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and was not ready to condemn Trump’s decision, expressing hope the joint operation with Israel would be swift and spare American lives.

“One of my things with Trump was it was going to be ‘America First.’ That was the rhetoric he was running on,” said Leary, who cast his first presidential ballot for Trump in 2024.

“It’s not that I disagree with the war or the strikes … We need to learn more and see what’s going to happen. But it felt like a step back from what he was saying.”

That mix of approval and unease — support for killing Khamenei while worrying that Trump’s push for “regime change” could pull the U.S. into a prolonged conflict — was echoed by five other Trump voters on a student panel that Reuters interviewed this week at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.

Young male voters were one of the biggest surprises of the 2024 election, swinging toward Trump after years of Democrats dominating the youth vote. But recent public opinion polls show that support slipping amid frustration over persistent inflation and hard-line immigration enforcement, tactics that some view as overly harsh.

Only one in four Americans support the U.S. strikes, Reuters/Ipsos polling at the weekend found.

The student panel, while a small sample, offers an early snapshot of how some young men are processing the Iran strikes, suggesting Trump may have a limited window to deliver clear gains for the United States and stabilize a conflict that has spread to Lebanon, rattled global markets and sent oil prices sharply higher.

A swift end to the Iran war could help Trump project an image as a decisive commander in chief, but a drawn-out conflict risks alienating the young men who helped power his 2024 resurgence.

John Fitzpatrick, a 20-year-old politics major, said he supported “decapitating” an Iranian regime he viewed as a longstanding threat to Americans and dismissed Iran’s retaliatory strikes as “scrambling for one last gasp of air.”

“It would be nice to see regime change — not that we should have boots on the ground or be as deeply entrenched as we were in Iraq,” said Fitzpatrick, who chairs the Saint Anselm College Republicans. “I think it’s overall positive.”

Artemius Gehring, 20, agreed, saying Trump’s objective was to bring closure to a longstanding conflict stretching back to the 1979 hostage crisis, when Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held dozens of Americans for 444 days.

“I think what he’s trying to do is just end it,” Gehring said. “It’s the right move.”

LACK OF AN END-GAME A WORRY

Tyler Witzgall, a 20-year-old sophomore, said that while he supported the killing of Khamenei he was worried about the apparent lack of a concrete plan by the Trump administration to replace him, a vacuum he feared could fuel instability or even civil war.

“He’s telling the people of Iran to rise up and take over the government, and that’s easier said than done,” Witzgall said. “Why are we taking these actions when there’s no specific plan right now or none that we know of?”

Witzgall said the Iran strikes, along with the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January, reflected what he saw as an overemphasis on foreign policy. He said he voted for Trump to boost the economy and deliver on domestic priorities and would like to see him focus more of his attention there.

Trump’s promises to rein in inflation, boost growth and toughen immigration enforcement helped attract young men to his campaign. Exit polling analyzed by the Pew Research Center shows he won 46% of men ages 18 to 29 in the 2024 election, compared with 51% for the Democratic nominee, former Vice President Kamala Harris. That marks a big shift from 2020, when Trump lost young men to President Joe Biden by 14 points, 53% to 39%.

Yet recent polling shows those gains have evaporated. In February, some 33% of men aged 18-29 approved of Trump’s performance in the White House, down from 43% in the same month of 2025, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling during those periods.

How the Iran crisis is resolved could determine whether Trump’s approval rating rises or falls, with potential consequences for Republicans in November’s midterms. A CNN poll of 1,004 Americans found that voters ages 18 to 34 registered the strongest opposition to the strikes, with 71% saying they disapproved.

Leary said it was too soon to say whether the Iran attacks were the correct course of action.

“It could absolutely turn into the right move, or we could stay in Iran for 30-plus years, spend a ton of money – money that could have been spent at home.”

(Reporting by Nathan Layne and Aleksandra Michalska, editing by Ross Colvin and Michael Perry)