Netanyahu’s Attack on Tehran and the Rift in Trump’s Base
Netanyahu’s Attack on Tehran and the Rift in Trump’s Base
Donald Trump, the President of the United States, is caught between the America First isolationists and the rest of his Republican Party who support Israel’s attacks against Iran.
On one side are the isolationists who worry that Israel could drag the United States into another war in the Middle East.
On the other side are the hawks and Israel supporters who have long called for some form of military action against Iran.
Trump seems to be caught between the two sides and keeps changing his stance. The U.S. President is trying to keep the United States out of Israel’s attacks, yet he celebrates the success of Israel’s attacks and warns Iran that more attacks are on the way.
Trump has dissuaded Israel from attacking Iran several times, saying he wants to reach an agreement with Iran through negotiation.
Shortly after the attack began, the White House released a statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasizing that the United States had not participated in the initial military operations and that America’s priority is to protect the lives of American forces in the Middle East.
However, in later conversations, the U.S. President said he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, was aware of the planning of these attacks, and called them excellent.
During his presidential candidacy, Trump promised to end wars around the world and said in his inaugural speech that he wanted to be remembered as a peace-seeking president.
So far, Trump’s diplomatic efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war, which he promised would happen within 24 hours, or the war between Israel and Hamas have failed.
In recent months, the Trump administration has been trying to broker a new nuclear deal with Iran and encouraged Netanyahu to refrain from any military action. After the start of Israel’s missile attacks, Trump blamed Iran, saying that if they had accepted the uranium enrichment proposal, these attacks wouldn’t have happened. Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that Trump has changed his stance on Israel’s attack on Iran, but he says Israel has made a calculated gamble that Trump agrees with.
According to the New York Times, for many Republicans, amid growing concerns over Iran nearing full nuclear capability, Israel’s military attacks have been long overdue. Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina and a close ally of the U.S. President, says the number of Republicans who don’t see a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to Israel and the world is very small.
The vast majority of Republicans support Israel’s military actions to neutralize Iran’s nuclear threat. Another segment of Trump’s staunch supporters holds a different view.
They argue that Israel’s attacks and U.S. involvement in this conflict contradict Trump’s America First foreign policy agenda.
Some MAGA supporters argue that Israel’s targeted attacks on both nuclear sites and senior Iranian military commanders are part of an effort to start a larger conflict and draw the U.S. into it.
U.S. officials announced on Friday that the Pentagon has deployed warships and other military equipment in the Middle East to help protect Israel and American soldiers in the region from further Iranian attacks.
Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor who is close to the U.S. President, said on his War Room podcast on Friday that the main point is that we cannot decisively enter a war in Eurasia, in the Middle East, or Eastern Europe. Bannon says about Israel, ‘You did this. You prioritize your country. Defending your country is a priority.’
That’s fine, but we also need to prioritize our own defense. However, Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says that the Trump administration is just shouting from the sidelines.
Rubin writes in an email that Trump is likely keeping the U.S. out of the conflict and offering to mediate, but at this point, he has essentially made no progress. The main issue will show itself in Congress when negotiating to aid Israel and replenish its military supplies.
The Republican President who promised to make America great again by ending unfinished wars has now put the U.S. on the brink of a potential new war.
Trump’s next move is unclear, but some prominent figures in the MAGA movement urge the U.S. President not to drag America into another war in the Middle East. Tucker Carlson, a well-known TV host and a figure close to Trump, says Trump has colluded with Israel in these attacks and insists that this is not America’s war. On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump and Republicans in Washington cheered for Israel’s attacks on Iran, but several Democrats accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of deliberately sabotaging nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Despite criminal actions in Gaza, Israel has significant support within the American political establishment, even as Democrats openly condemn these actions. John Thune, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, was among those who supported Israel’s attacks, and Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, also endorsed him, saying Israel concluded that it had to take action to defend itself, which was entirely their right.
No to another war in the Middle East
Democrats’ statements regarding these attacks have been more complex. Many view the solution to Iran’s nuclear issue through negotiation and reaching the 2015 nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA during Barack Obama’s presidency. Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in his first term with Netanyahu’s encouragement, but with the start of his second administration earlier this year, he supported resuming negotiations with Tehran. Democrats accuse Netanyahu of ordering attacks on Iran to permanently end nuclear negotiations, simultaneously putting the lives of Americans stationed in the Middle East at risk.
Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator and member of the Foreign Relations Committee, says Israel’s attack on Iran, openly aimed at destroying the Trump administration’s negotiations with Iran, risks triggering a regional war that could be disastrous for America and is further evidence that global powers, including our allies, hold very little respect for President Trump.
Murphy continues to say this is a catastrophe created by Trump and Netanyahu, and now the region is at risk of a new and deadly conflict.
Murphy emphasizes that while this conflict may be good for Netanyahu’s domestic politics, it is likely to be disastrous for the security of Israel, the United States, and the rest of the region.
Tim Kaine, also a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee like Murphy, says he can’t understand why Israel would launch a preemptive strike at this point when it knows high-level negotiations between the U.S. and Iran are scheduled for Sunday. The Friday morning attacks have sparked a debate that has been ongoing within the Make America Great Again movement for years: Is the special U.S.-Israel relationship compatible with the principles of America’s First foreign policy?
According to Politico, this debate, occurring between two powerful branches of the MAGA movement, is primarily at the ideological level, but its implications go beyond academia, as the United States and Israel are weighing their response to Iran’s attacks. The position the Trump administration ultimately takes in this internal conservative conflict will undoubtedly shape participation in the next stages of the conflict and, consequently, the trajectory of the Middle East.
For now, the broad outlines of the debate are straightforward, even if the policies surrounding it are entirely different.
Since Israel’s formation in 1948, the United States has placed the Israeli regime at the forefront among its global allies, providing extensive military, diplomatic, and economic support. In 1962, then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy Jr. used the term ‘special relationship’ to describe the unusual and close relationship between the two countries, emphasizing that the U.S.’s extensive relations with Israel on a wide range of global matters are comparable only to those with Britain.
Since then, the unique status of this relationship has garnered bipartisan support, and even recently, former U.S. President Joe Biden, in response to the October 7 attacks, demonstrated his unwavering and steadfast support for Israel. However, the re-emergence of America First foreign policy poses a significant challenge to the ideological foundations of this special relationship.
In the eyes of America First foreign policy hardliners, the U.S. should reduce its involvement in foreign conflicts that have no direct connection to American interests, especially the interests of the forgotten Americans that Trump has called his base since 2016. The reshaping of debates over foreign policy has inevitably raised questions among right-wingers about the U.S.-Israel alliance: If the U.S.-Israel relationship is special, which implies an unchangeable transnational bond, is it really based on effortless calculations of personal interests? Are Israel’s interests always aligned with those of the United States?
Questions like these have been slowly circulating within the MAGA coalition since Trump’s rise to power in 2016, and the widespread perception that a public break from Israel, especially after the October 7 attacks, remains politically suicidal within the mainstream Republican Party.
From a Special Relationship to Equal Strategic Partnership
However, signs of a soft reevaluation of this relationship have begun among MAGA movement supporters. In May 2024, J.D. Vance, who was then a senator and a leading advocate of foreign policy restraint within the Republican Party, defended the U.S.’s relationship with Israel within the framework of the America First idea in one of his speeches, implicitly acknowledging that abstract calls for the U.S.-Israel special relationship no longer have support within the new populist right-wing foreign policy model.
Then, earlier this year, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, widely regarded as a marker of conservative intellectual trends of the kind that focus more on interests and perspectives within Washington than on public opinion, called on the United States to change its relationship with Israel from a special relationship to an equal strategic partnership based on shared interests.
However, this debate has gained new urgency with the escalation of Israel’s attacks on Iran. Several weeks before the attacks began, several prominent figures from the nationalist populist right, including Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jack Posobiec, and Kurt Mills, editor of the conservative American magazine, which has long supported traditional forms of conservative worldview, launched a campaign to persuade Trump to keep America out of the conflict with Iran.
As a result of these attacks, some of these individuals have more explicitly pointed out the contradiction between the America First idea and the U.S.-Israel special relationship. On Thursday’s live show, Charlie Kirk, while assuring his audience that he remains a staunch supporter of Israel, loudly said, ‘I think the fundamental question is how the America First foreign policy doctrine and the foreign policy agenda currently align with this situation.’ Tucker Carlson, in a post, made this argument even more emphatically, saying, ‘Regardless of what our special ally says, a war with Iranians brings no benefit to the United States.’ He continued, ‘Let Israel be, let them fight their own wars.’
Notably, this schism has taken on a generational character. Overall, younger conservatives like Charlie Kirk and Kurt Mills argue that America First foreign policy necessitates a reevaluation of the special relationship with Israel, while older conservatives tend to defend the status quo. Nick Solheim, 28, and former CEO of the conservative youth talent network known as American Moment, says there is no appetite for war with Iran among Gen Z MAGA supporters. There is certainly a fear among young MAGA in Washington, D.C., that Israel’s attacks have the potential to drag us into ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, and America First foreign policy acts as a shield against it.
In the eyes of the younger generation, maintaining more distance from Israel’s recent attacks on Iran is simply an extension of Trump’s broader foreign policy view. Solheim, referring to Trump’s recent statements about this conflict, says the talent network knows from what has been clear in the past 10 years since he made clear statements about the Iraq war during the Republican primary debate. He goes on to emphasize that Trump is a president who does not start new wars. This stance has angered conservative Israeli supporters who argue that maintaining the special relationship is a correct and complete part of Trump’s foreign policy.
Mark Levin, a conservative radio host who lobbies for the White House’s support of Israel’s attacks on Iran, wrote on social media on Thursday that the call for Trump to let Israel go is not a MAGA slogan; it’s isolationism that Trump never was. He continues to write, ‘Please don’t accuse Trump of abandoning MAGA by imposing your isolationist ideas on him. He has kept one of the most important promises of his campaign.’
Two other factors complicate the politics around this debate. The first is that anti-Israel sentiment among right-wingers has long reached conservatives who openly embrace anti-Semitism, meaning that populist conservatives who strongly criticize the special relationship risk aligning themselves with toxic political figures.
Today, the loudest critic of Israel among right-wingers is Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist commentator who has openly called for the execution of cunning Jews and other non-Christian groups. Despite Fuentes having dinner with Trump in 2022, he remains an unpopular figure among mainstream right-wingers and one of the unattractive allies of populist conservatives trying to reevaluate the special relationship.
The second factor is certainly Trump himself. Despite claims from both sides that they are following Trump’s real foreign policy view, the U.S. President himself has had a rather ambiguous view of the special relationship. Today, Trump openly supports Israel and tells CNN, ‘Of course, we support Israel, and clearly, our support is of a kind that no one has shown before.’ But in the past, Trump has made criticisms of Israel’s leadership that indicate he sees the limits of the special relationship.
The trajectory of this debate largely depends on the actions that occur in the coming days. If the United States avoids deeper involvement in the conflict, even as Iran carries out retaliatory attacks against Israel, populists can claim a limited victory. Meanwhile, this debate is a familiar scene among right-wing MAGA supporters, with both sides of the MAGA movement competing in an ideological battle that Trump shows no desire to engage in.