12 thoughts on Trump, Iran, and MAGA

Which way is he gonna go?

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Some thoughts on where we’re at:

1. Trump raised my eyebrows when he left the G7 early to go back to Washington because of the situation in the Middle East. True, the president has never liked multilateral international summits, where he is outnumbered and the agenda tends to be a bit too “globalist” for his liking. But there was in theory the opportunity to make some progress on trade deals at the summit, and not much seemed to have changed in the Middle East between when he set off to go and when he decided to leave. So what was going on? Perhaps the administration was worried about the optics of him being abroad if Iran started attacking U.S. bases, but the regime in Tehran seems to be rolling over and showing its belly anyway.

2. What is unfolding, of course, is a fierce struggle within MAGA over what policy Trump should adopt towards Iran. What this really is is a split within Trump’s political coalition, both among the mass public and at the elite level. On the one hand, you have the hardcore MAGA base (represented by figures like Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson) for whom “America First” means staying out of wars and not lifting a finger to help a foreign ally. Opposition to U.S. involvement in regime change and wars in the Middle East, which they view as a futile waste of resources, is central to their identity. On the other hand, you have more “traditional” Republicans and neocons who have spent a long time obsessing over Iran and salivating at the prospect of attacking it.

3. But what this is also really about is what we might called “Israeli exceptionalism” - the exceptionalism of Israel within U.S. foreign policy discourse, that is. I think everyone understands the unique ability of anything related to Israel to cause splits on the American left. But they don’t often pay attention to the split that exists on the right, which manifests itself in a different way.

4. The difference is that on the right, unlike on the left, Israel still enjoys a hallowed reputation across basically the whole coalition. Even MAGA figures who don’t want the Trump regime to attack Iran skirt very carefully around the issue of Israel itself. This leads to absurdities like Carlson earlier this month posting a nearly 1,000 word tweet opposing a U.S. attack on Iran which doesn’t once contain the words “Israel” or “Netanyahu”.

5. MAGA does this because it sees Israel’s wars against its brown Islamic neighbors through the same racial-civilizational lens with which it views every other political issue. In that struggle, it remains on Israel’s side. This isn’t, as it is on the left, ultimately a debate of principles: is Israel an exemplar of liberal democratic values worthy of support or an opponent of them which deserves casting out? On the right, it’s instead a debate over tactics and priorities: does the defense of Western civilization (as they see it) require helping Israel to achieve its maximal security goals, even at the risk of involving the United States in a war?

6. Trump will ultimately decide which part of the coalition wins this debate in the short term. But the very fact that the debate has broken out is a sign not just of the uniquely divisive nature of Israel, but also that Trump’s grip on his movement is weakening. Various actors are positioning themselves for a post-Trump political landscape, and that might not always mean blind obedience to the 79 year old guy who will be gone before too long. Trump’s recent claim that “America First” means whatever he says it means is, sadly for him, no longer true. He has spawned a movement with ideas and interests of its own.

7. (Don’t get your hopes up that this means some sort of imminent reformation of MAGA along more liberal democratic lines. Apart from Israel, the main source of friction between Trump and movement figures right now is the latter’s feeling that he is not pushing anywhere near aggressively enough on deportations).

8. Movement politics aside, what about the policy-making process? It’s no exaggeration to say that this is the most serious international crisis that Trump has faced across either of his two terms. I mean that in the sense that he needs to make very big and very consequential decisions on a short time frame. It requires cool reason, an analytical mind, the ability to process large amounts of information, and a judicious weighing of risks. None of these are Donald Trump’s strong points. He and the world were quite fortunate that there were so few of these moments in his first term, and I’m worried about how he is going to handle this one.

9. His stream-of-consciousness tweeting is not helping. One minute he’s musing about assassinating the Supreme Leader, the next telling everyone in Tehran to evacuate, and the next yearning for peace. You can claim to see some sort of genius communication strategy designed to keep Iran off balance in this if you want, but I claim that it is irresponsible bullshit. The supposed fact that foreign leaders just discount everything Trump says because they know he’s full of shit is not the defense that some imagine it is, and it could easily turn out to be wrong - do we really want to risk the escalation of this conflict because it turns out that Ali Khamenei doesn’t understand the nuances of the president’s social media postings?

10. It does seem that Trump has a genuinely intuitive understanding of the way that wars generate mission creep. A war against Iran could easily lead to regime change which could easily lead to some sort of involvement in stability operations and “nation-building”. He doesn’t want that. But we also have to be on guard against the other side to Trump, which is his deeply-felt belief that he can do everything better than everyone else. Maybe he thinks that by being tough enough or good enough at making deals or whatever else that he can square the circle here. He’s taking more risks as he gets older, and he likes to be seen as a winner. He also swims in a sea of bad information. There just really is no telling how he’s going to come out on this issue.

11. We also don’t know the extent to which a real debate is happening within the administration. The president has surrounded himself with yes men and hollowed out the channels of advice and communication which typically inform policy decisions. His Secretary of State is also moonlighting as his National Security Advisor. He recently told a reporter that “I don’t care” what his Director of National Intelligence says. He’s built a personalistic, cult-like atmosphere around himself and now he’s faced with the consequence of that: the buck indisputably stops with him.

12. About the best thing you can say about this is that the fact that the issue is so divisive and the process so chaotic means we’re likely to benefit from a lot of ass-covering leaks about what ultimately happens. That’ll give us more insight into how Trump makes decisions during a true crisis. I don’t expect it to reveal anything pretty.

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