The foreign policy of President Donald Trump, as captured in the simplistic slogan “peace through strength,” has always been fraught with contradictions. So it was only a matter of time before those would explode, detonating his MAGA base and leaving it and distant parts of the world in ashes. Five months into the president’s second term, that moment may have arrived.
Will he or won’t he join Israel in attacking Iran, perhaps by dropping bunker-busting bombs on a mountain where the Iranians have hidden parts of their nuclear program? Will he or won’t he line up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go even further and topple Iran’s regime?
If Trump does give the order to attack, he will lose a large and especially zealous part of his America First crowd. Those are the fans to whom he promised that he would be a “peacemaker”; that he, unlike previous Republican and Democratic presidents, would keep the United States out of “forever wars” and ill-fated regime-change missions such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, which he has used to excoriate his predecessors. His MAGA vow was that he would act in the interests of America only, and no other country, allied or not.
To sense how Iran plays in this demographic, look to the media influencers with an outsized role in Trump’s movement. Tucker Carlson, the often-buffoonish television pundit who’s prone to rebroadcasting Russian propaganda and other conspiracy theories, is usually all-in for Trumpism. Once Carlson heard war drums in the White House, however, he wrote in his newsletter that getting involved “is not in our national interest” and that Trump should “drop Israel. Let them fight their own wars.”
Talking on the radio to Steve Bannon, another MAGA die-hard and a member of Trump’s first administration, Carlson raged that “the point of this is regime change,” and argued that Netanyahu was maneuvering Trump into what could become a “world war.” Bannon agreed. The U.S. must not be “inexorably dragged into a war on the Eurasian land mass,” Bannon said in his podcast.
This view is especially pronounced among youngish MAGA types. Charlie Kirk, an influencer who claims to speak for that demographic, says that 99% of his audience opposes U.S. participation in the war against Iran, and warns that this “very same zeal got us involved in a pile of garbage in Iraq.”
Opposing that faction is a MAGA grouping that emphasizes the “strength” in Trump’s slogan (against Tehran, that is, not so much vis-à-vis Moscow). These voices are pro-Israel and want to bomb not only the nukes out of Iran but also the ayatollah. One especially prominent pundit is Mark Levin, who apparently met Trump in the White House this month and made a big impression.
Others include conservative hawks who predate Trumpism, such as Sen. Ted Cruz (“I don’t think there’s any redeeming the ayatollah”), Sen. Lindsey Graham (who would “love for the regime to fall”) and Newt Gingrich (who thinks that “replacement of the theocratic dictatorship” is the “only outcome” that “would be a success”).
Two things are telling about this passionate and increasingly snippy debate tearing apart the MAGA movement. The first is that Trump’s own national-security team is not audibly participating in it, because Trump has in effect turned them into toadies rather than independently thinking experts.
When Israel began its campaign, Marco Rubio, who currently has a dual role as secretary of state and national security adviser, put out a statement that “we are not involved.” This reflected Rubio’s perception of Trump’s state of mind at the time, when the president was still betting on negotiation. Less than a week later, that seems like ancient history. But Rubio seems not to challenge Trump’s whims even when they’re in uncontrolled flux.
That also describes Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, who seems out of his depth in running the Pentagon and clings to power as a yes man to the president. John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, gives Trump intelligence briefings (including the recent insight that Netanyahu was going ahead with an attack with or without American approval) but apparently offers no analysis or opinion of his own. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence (known to be an opponent of forever wars) recently testified to Congress that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” But when Trump blurted out this week that “I don’t care what she said,” she meekly intoned that she’s “on the same page.” The only member of the inner circle who dares to engage is Vice President JD Vance. He’s against regime change, but won’t make the decision.
Equally telling, and concerning, is that Trump himself appears to be on both sides of the fault line, as though hoping that he can straddle it indefinitely. For months he has been clear (by his standards) that he preferred diplomacy. And he talked Netanyahu out of an attack in the spring. But once he understood that Israel would strike even over his veto, he had to decide how to play the new situation and avoid looking weak. And as Israel keeps impressing with its military prowess (which Trump has been watching on Fox News), he yearns to take more of the credit.
The tone of his posts on Truth Social has changed. Where he recently demanded that Tehran make a deal, he is now calling for “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”
And so America is readying its war machine, the most fearsome in the world. The U.S. already had about 40,000 service members in the Middle East and one aircraft-carrier strike group. A second is on the way, as are dozens of refueling airplanes. At Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, meanwhile, the B-2 stealth bombers are waiting for orders to fly Massive Ordnance Penetrators all the way to that Iranian mountain in Fordow. Never before used, MOPs are better known as “bunker busters”: They’re so heavy that only B-2s can drop them, and so powerful that, when stacked one upon another, they can hollow out an alp.
The power in Trump’s hands at this moment in history is hard to fathom. So are the consequences of his decision. Trump “really does want to see a more peaceful world,” a veteran of his first administration tells me.
And yet Trump, a president who thinks of governing as starring in the world’s grandest reality-television franchise, must be tempted to seize this opportunity to project the ultimate semblance of strength. For the first and probably only time in my life, I must agree with Tucker Carlson: “What happens next will define Donald Trump’s presidency.”
