What’s Driving Trump on War with Iran?

Trump ran as the “America First” candidate who would keep us out of foreign conflicts. What happened?

Our office is closed for the Juneteenth holiday, but given the dire situation in the Middle East, as we find ourselves on the brink of yet another war, I wanted to address questions many readers now have as Trump decides whether to join Israel in attacking Iran directly.

(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

“I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” said Trump to reporters on Wednesday.

By “it” he meant attack Iran, specifically its facility at Fordo, where that country has been enriching uranium. Fordo lies deep underground, and Israeli armaments can’t get to it. Only U.S. bombers carrying 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs have any chance of destroying it.

Joining Israel in its attack upon Iran would be quite the departure for Trump from his prior campaign promises to keep America out of conflicts around the world. Indeed, Trump’s consistent schtick has been to cast himself as the “peace candidate” who would put American First and not embroil us in new wars.

As Tyler Austin Harper of The Atlantic put it:

Trump has repeatedly pitched himself as a peace candidate during his political career. In 2016, he ran to Hillary Clinton’s left on foreign policy, arguing that she was “trigger happy” and that foreign adventurism “has produced only turmoil and suffering and death.” Trump returned to this message in his most recent race. He came out of the gate at his first campaign stops in 2023 by promising to restore peace after, he claimed, then-President Joe Biden had brought the world “to the brink of World War III.” When Kamala Harris took up the mantle for the Democrats, Trump warned his rallygoers that, if she was elected, their “sons and daughters will end up getting drafted to go fight for a war in a country that you’ve never heard of.”

But if Trump is supposedly the America First / no foreign wars president, how could he be reviewing and approving military plans as recently as Tuesday evening to strike Iran? That’s the question currently splitting the right, with figures such as Tucker Carlson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-GA), Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) staunchly opposed, while hawks such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) beat the war drum.

Those who hope to demonstrate both fealty to their president and support for the America First agenda have been struggling to articulate a cohesive vision.

And some of his most ardent supporters online have begun to turn on him.

Things could come to a head quickly in the coming days. A strike on the Fordo facility by the U.S. would put U.S. bases in the area at risk from a counterstrike and render U.S. interests everywhere fair targets. Air power alone is unlikely to win the day.

From there, the future gets murky. Wars aren’t generally won with one side hitting hard and the other letting it go, no hard feelings. Instead, the situation typically devolves into a protracted conflict that requires long term operational planning, boots on the ground, and trillions of dollars in supplemental military expenditures, just as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Given that we and presumably the White House understand all this, why are we once again on the brink of war? Why would the “peace candidate” become the “war president” so quickly? Let’s consider a few theories.

Trump was never for peace to begin with

For all his talk about wanting to keep us out of foreign conflicts, Trump’s first presidency was actually marked by increasing military escalations and involvement. As Michael Galant noted four years ago, Trump has always lied about being “anti-war.” Galant reminded us, with his hands full of receipts:

Despite repeated PR stunts, Trump did not “bring the troops home” or “end endless wars.” In fact, Trump consistently added fuel to the fire, increasing troop levels, deepening reliance on private contractors, and dramatically scaling up aerial warfare. Where an end to endless war requires repealing the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force, Trump expanded conflicts under both. His term saw four consecutive years of growth of an already out-of-control Pentagon budget. And loosening even the minimal restrictions that were already in place, he expanded the United States’ deadly and unaccountable drone wars.

Not only did Trump not end the wars he promised to, he worsened them, dropping more bombs, stoking further conflict, undermining the prospects of peace, and massively increasing the rate of civilian deaths.

So far in his second term, Trump has authorized an expensive and ultimately unsuccessful attack upon Houthis in Yemen, called for a massive increase in defense spending, threatened the use of military force to seize the Panama Canal and Greenland, and on Tuesday night approved plans to attack Iran alongside Israel.

He has demanded “unconditional surrender” from Iran, warned the people of Tehran to evacuate, and threatened to assassinate its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, writing that “we are not going to take him out (kill!), at least for now.”

Given his record, both past and recent, we need to put to bed the notion that Trump was ever truly anti-war. We should accept that, as with everything else, he has been straight out lying to the American public for years. No one should feel surprised by this.

The Fox News presidency

There’s another big driving factor behind Trump’s push toward open war with Iran: his obsession with Fox.

We already know that Trump has staffed his regime with Fox talking heads without any deep or relevant experience. One of those Fox hosts, Pete Hegseth, is now rather terrifyingly in charge of our military. Another Fox regular, Tulsi Gabbard, is our Director of National Intelligence. Trump doesn’t care about their incompetence and personal or political baggage, so long as they are loyal and look good on TV.

That same thinking has him lapping up everything Fox has been serving lately over Iran. As Media Matters noted,

Trump reportedly became more interested in U.S. military action because he saw favorable Fox coverage of Israel’s initial attacks on Iran, while more recent segments have stressed the importance of U.S. involvement.

CNN’s Brian Stelter similarly reported,

Trump’s favorite TV network has staked out the pro-war position — and it isn’t making as much room for debate. Guest after guest on Fox has played to Trump’s ego — simultaneously praising the president and pushing for US intervention through his television screen. On [Sean] Hannity’s show last night, Mark Levin literally screamed as he depicted a battle of “good versus evil” and doubted the patriotism of the isolationist camp.

The New York Times laid this out in its coverage, too.

When he woke on Friday morning, his favorite TV channel, Fox News, was broadcasting wall-to-wall imagery of what it was portraying as Israel’s military genius. And Mr. Trump could not resist claiming some credit for himself.

In other words, Trump can’t stop watching Fox, and he can’t help putting himself at the center of big unfolding events. He may not be on the right side. He may not even be on his own stated side. But at least he is on television and in the headlines. He is the one calling the shots.

Notably absent from the Fox Network these days is former host Tucker Carlson, who was one of its most anti-U.S. involvement talking heads. On Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Carlson took a contrary position, saying, “I am really afraid that my country is going to be further weakened by this.” He added, “I think we are going to see the end of American empire.”

Trump didn’t like that. “I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying,” he snapped at reporters at the G7 summit on Monday. Then, tellingly, Trump added, “Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.”

Trump was saying aloud what we all suspect about his worldview. “People”—meaning Trump—only listen if it’s on TV. Nothing else really matters to him.

The notion that Fox News so completely controls Trump’s thought processes and emotional reactions is nothing new. That it could so easily cause him to up-end his recent anti-war campaign promises and actually lead him to attack another country should worry us all.

Look over there!

Things aren’t going well for Trump at home. His poll numbers are still falling, even over signature issues such as mass deportations. The Fed is forecasting a drop in economic growth to just 1.4 percent with inflation as high as 3 percent this year. Tariffs remain highly unpopular, and his decision to deploy federal troops in Los Angeles is drawing intense public backlash. His regime lost 96 percent of all rulings in cases it was defending in federal district court in May. And the largest anti-government protest ever recorded in U.S. history—the No Kings rallies across all 50 states—just occurred on his watch.

But Trump knows that wars have a way of rallying voters around the flag, even under the most unpopular presidents, as we saw with George W. Bush in 2001. Trump doesn’t have book smarts in any sense, to be sure, but he does possess keen political instincts. If missiles are flying and bombs are falling, he knows the nation will be riveted by the violence and distracted from his many failures.

This may work in the moment. Yet protracted wars have a corrosive, burdening effect upon presidencies. Iran may lose what nuclear capabilities remain to it from a U.S. assault upon Fordo, but it’s unlikely it will let that be the last word. If the regime does not fall quickly, retaliation and escalation by Iran could destabilize an already unstable region, spiking oil prices higher and further endangering international shipping. As our military begins to assemble its vessels and order supplies and troops to the region, the costs will mount. They could soon dwarf even our expenditures in the defense of Ukraine, which were the target of so much MAGA ire.

Trump is unlikely to listen to Democratic critics of his war plans. And so far, the White House is more interested in convincing right wing influencers to tone down their attacks on Trump’s about-face on military intervention than in drawing back from the brink of open hostilities with Iran.

But if Trump decides to pursue a war, and the U.S. becomes mired in yet another conflict without apparent end in the Middle East, those voices on the far right will grow louder and more insistent. Trump believes, and perhaps correctly, that most MAGA will ultimately fall in line and support him, come what may. But it remains a large political risk for Trump, and over time he could lose a core segment of his supporters as right wing influencers double down and use the war to polish their America First credentials.

If past is prologue, Trump ultimately will chicken out and find a way to not deploy U.S. bunker busters on Fordo. Perhaps he will manufacture yet another crisis that demands his, and therefore the nation’s, attention.

Much may depend on how much Fox News Trump absorbs in the coming days.