By Henry Srebrnik, [Sydney, N.S.] Cape Breton Post
Since Israel began its war with Iran, President Donald Trump and his White House have sent mixed messages, giving the warring factions of his political coalition reason to hope they may prevail in shaping his policy toward the new war in the Middle East.
The so-called “restrainers” inside the MAGA movement want a foreign policy that pares down America’s global military footprint. On the other side, a mix of pro-Israel advocates and Republican “hawks” have sought to keep Washington more engaged.
For the restrainers, war between Israel and Iran is another Middle East quagmire. For their opponents, it is a fight to eliminate the threat of a nuclear Iran that has menaced the Middle East for many decades.
Many commentators and politicians who support President Trump’s “America First MAGA” policies feel he has abandoned the doctrine by talking tough about Iran and giving support to Israel in its current war with that country. This has become a “civil war” in the Republican Party. The most prominent of these voices is former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
They point to his promise not to engage in “forever” wars, which led to disaster in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11. They have predicted that Iran would strike U.S. bases in Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, also in the restrainer camp, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” June 15 that he expected “hundreds of thousands of people” would “die on both sides.”
In the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky co-sponsored a war powers resolution with a Democrat, Ro Khanna of California, that would stop Trump from going to war without congressional approval. “This is not our war. Even if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution,” Massie wrote, posting a copy of the resolution.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a right-wing Georgia House Republican who has spoken out against U.S. involvement in Israel’s air campaign against Iran, on June 17 told the London-based Guardian: “While I’m opposed to America’s involvement in foreign wars and regime change, I do not see a need to sign on to Rep. Massie’s war powers resolution yet as we are not attacking Iran.”
Greene, posting on X two days earlier, lambasted “fake” America First leaders, arguing that they have “exposed themselves quickly. Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA.”
But what Trump meant when he promised not to mire the United States in such conflicts was based on his rejection of the dubious prospects of “nation-building” aimed at transforming countries with far different political cultures into Western-style democracies. But he also meant what he said about never allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. He declared he’d prefer to do it through diplomacy. But he told the Iranians that if they didn’t agree to his deal, he’d have no choice but to do things the hard way.
The proponents of intervention insist that sceptics have “overlearned” the lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the United States mustn’t be paralysed by a fear of instability. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told CBS’s “Face the Nation,” also on June 15, that the “worst possible outcome of the world is for the Iranian nuclear program to survive after all of this.” He went on to say that he was pressing President Trump to “go all in” to make sure none of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was left standing.
Vice-president J.D. Vance has repeatedly lashed out at American interventionists but now finds himself straddling the fine line separating his ideological and partisan commitments. In a long message posted to X, he backed up Trump: “I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue,” he wrote. “And having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people’s goals.”
Trump has indicated quite unambiguously that the United States is tired of playing the role of hegemon in global affairs and will thus base its future decisions on its own priorities. In an interview with the “Atlantic” June 14 he said that he alone defined what America First meant. Trump may be many things politically, but being a reflexive isolationist is not one of them.
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