BBC News
Getty ImagesThe dilemma of whether the US should join Israel in attacking Iran, or stay out of the offensive altogether, has exposed divisions among US President Donald Trump’s supporters.
The Republican president reportedly is considering helping target the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities, following a meeting with his national security advisers in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday.
On the campaign trail, Trump often railed against “stupid endless wars” in the Middle East, but also maintained that Iran “can’t have a nuclear weapon”.
The possibility that he might draw the US into another foreign entanglement has pitted the isolationist and hawkish wings of his party bitterly against one another.
On Tuesday, conservative Republican congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky sided with Democrats to introduce a bill that would block Trump from engaging US forces in “unauthorised hostilities” with Iran without congressional approval.
“This is not our war. Even if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution,” Massie posted on X.
Several proponents of Trump’s “America First” doctrine pointed out that he vowed to keep the US out of “forever wars” such as those that led to the deaths of thousands of US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has called for the US to stay out of the conflict with Iran.
On his podcast, he lambasted Republican “warmongers”, provoking a rebuke from Trump, who called Carlson “kooky”.
Georgia congresswoman and Trump loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene leapt to Carlson’s defence in a highly unusual break with the president.
She said anyone who supported such an intervention was not “America First”.
The tensions exploded into a shouting match on Tuesday during an interview between Carlson and hawkish Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Cruz became defensive when asked if he knew the population and ethnic mix of Iran.
Carlson said: “You’re a senator who’s calling for the overthrow of the government and you don’t know anything about the country!”
Cruz retorted: “No, you don’t know anything about the country!”
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former political strategist, said on Carlson’s podcast on Monday that he supported congressman Massie’s effort to block the president from intervening militarily.
Bannon argued that allowing the “deep state” to drive the US into a war with Iran would “blow up” the coalition of Trump supporters.
“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.
Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell said it had “been kind of a bad week for the isolationists” in the party.
“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.
Other warhawks in the party are egging on Trump to target Iran.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said it was in the national security interests of the US to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb. Tehran maintains its nuclear programme is for peaceful, civilian purposes such as energy.
“President Trump understands the threat the ayatollah [Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei] presents to us, not just Israel, and that he will, at the end of the day, help Israel finish the job,” Graham told Fox News.
Vice-President JD Vance, seeking to bridge the divide, said in a social media post that Trump “may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment”.
“That decision ultimately belongs to the president,” he added. “And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy.”
An opinion poll in recent days indicates Trump voters would broadly support the US helping to Israel to attack Iran.
The survey by Gray House found that 79% of respondents would back the US providing offensive weapons for Israel to strike Iranian military targets. Some 89% were concerned about Iran obtaining atomic bombs.
While campaigning for the White House in September, Trump said: “We will quickly restore stability in the Middle East. And we will return the world to peace.”
With the Iran-Israel conflict on a knife-edge, the question of whether the US president is an isolationist or an interventionist may be answered sooner rather than later.
