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The prospect of the US joining Israel’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear program risks splitting Donald Trump’s support base asunder, amid sharp divisions on military intervention between the president’s most avid America-first acolytes and traditional Republican foreign policy hawks.
Some leading figures in Trump’s “make America great again” (Maga) movement have warned that such a move would amount to a betrayal of past promises to avoid US involvement in long-running overseas wars and could even destroy his presidency.
Among the most vocal critics are the broadcaster and interviewer Tucker Carlson – who hosts a show broadcast on Elon Musk’s X platform – and Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser in Trump’s first term and a standard bearer of his economic and anti-immigration nationalism.
Carlson, a former Fox News host, voiced fierce opposition on Bannon’s War Room podcast on Monday.
“I think we’re going to see the end of American empire,” Carlson said. “But it’s also going to end, I believe, Trump’s presidency – effectively end it – and so that’s why I’m saying this.
“You’re not going to convince me that the Iranian people are my enemy. It’s Orwell, man. I’m a free man. You’re not going to tell me who to hate.”
Bannon – a manager of Trump’s 2016 election campaign – said Trump would wreck his domestic agenda of deporting undocumented immigrants if he ordered US forces to strike Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities.
“If we get sucked into this war, which inexorably looks like it’s going to happen on the combat side, it’s going to not just blow up the coalition, it’s also going to thwart the most important thing, which is the deportation of the illegal alien invaders who are here,” he said.
Trump made criticism of US “forever wars” – particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan – a mainstay of his 2016 election message and has maintained that posture ever since, although he has frequently sent out mixed messages on Iran.
On Tuesday, he demanded “unconditional surrender” from the country’s theocratic rulers over their nuclear program – a message conveying the impression that US military action to bomb the facilities could be imminent.
While he has repeatedly said that Iran must be prevented from having a nuclear weapon, he has also expressed a desire to negotiate a deal – despite having withdrawn in 2018 from a previous agreement negotiated during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Maga confusion over Trump’s current stance was embodied in the comments of Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and one of the president’s most loyal activists.
“No issue currently divides the right as much as foreign policy,” he posted on X. “Trump voters, especially young people, supported President Trump because he was the first president in my lifetime to not start a new war.”
In a separate post, he said: “The last thing America needs right now is a new war. Our number one desire must be peace, as quickly as possible.”
Skepticism has also been voiced by rightwing Republicans in Congress, notably Marjorie Taylor Greene, the pro-Trump representative from Georgia, who defended Carlson after Trump called his pronouncements “kooky”.
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“Foreign wars/intervention/regime change put America last, kill innocent people, are making us broke, and will ultimately lead to our destruction,” she wrote on X. “That’s not kooky. That’s what millions of Americans voted for. It’s what we believe is America First.”
The Washington Post quoted an unnamed former Pentagon official as saying the conflict between Israel and Iran had brought the America First movement to an “inflection point”.
“A lot of people in the Maga movement, ones that have really invested a lot in electing Trump and [vice-president] Vance, will be incredibly disappointed if this turns into a larger war, and it will lead to some fractures,” said the official, adding that many Trump supporters were afraid to express a “bubbling frustration with Israel” for fear of being labeled antisemitic.
The ex-official added: “I would argue that Iran is the defining issue on the political right right now. It’s not trade. It’s not spending. It’s not even the culture war stuff. It is foreign policy, and specifically Iran.”
Her sentiments were echoed by Rand Paul, a Republican senator for Kentucky, who said: “Diplomacy comes from restraint. The president has shown restraint in the past … And I’m hoping the president will not get involved in the war.”
Pitted against them are establishment Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, the former leader in the Senate, who has previously warned Trump of the dangers of “isolationism”.
“What’s happening here is some of the isolationist movement led by Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon are distressed we may be helping the Israelis defeat the Iranians,” McConnell told CNN, noting that it had been “kind of a bad week for isolationists” in the GOP.
Two other pro-Trump loyalist in the Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have also been hawkish for action on Iran.
Graham said the administration should “go all in” in destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities. “If that means providing bombs, provide bombs,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation. “If that means flying with Israel, fly with Israel.”
