Not All Hardening Is Equal: Evidence from the 2025 Iran-Israel War

How does war exposure reshape public support for foreign security policy, and why does it harden preferences in some domains but not others? We address this question by advancing a framework of selective policy mapping, arguing that exposure reallocates support across distinct foreign policy instruments rather than uniformly shifting attitudes toward coercion. Using an original survey of Israeli adults fielded immediately after the June 2025 Israel Iran war, we model support for militant policy, diplomatic policy, and offensive cyber operations against Iran. Results show that higher levels of exposure are associated with stronger support for coercive external tools, particularly offensive cyber operations and militant policies, alongside lower support for diplomatic approaches. Political ideology emerges as a dominant baseline predictor across outcomes. Importantly, emotional distress, especially anxiety and secondarily post stress symptoms (PSS), and institutional trust condition exposure related patterns primarily for diplomatic and militant orientations, whereas perceived threat does not. These findings advance a mechanism based account of wartime public opinion by demonstrating that exposure reorganizes support across foreign policy tools, and that emotional distress and institutional trust, rather than threat perceptions, govern when citizens endorse coercion versus restraint. Wartime exposure thus differentiates, rather than simply intensifies, foreign security preferences.