Donald Trump Was Always Right on Iran
After Israel launched a preemptive assault on Iran's nuclear capabilities, the woke right lost its mind. This would be, they declared, a bizarre combination of the Iraq War and their favorite dystopian zombie movie that will throw the world into chaos any ... minute ... now. Even worse, Benjamin Netanyahu was supposedly whispering into the ear of Donald Trump to manipulate him into sending your children to die for Israel. This absurd propaganda — which, yes, is antisemitic to its core — was then pushed into a frenzied overdrive after Donald Trump came out and confirmed that Iran must never be allowed to achieve the ability to launch nuclear weapons at its enemies.
Except, this outrage among the strange collection of online MAGA-adjacent grifters is not just overblown. It's utterly dishonest, living entirely in their own imagination.
Trump is being attacked for flip-flopping, despite the fact that he's been consistent on Iran for years, warning about the threat posed by radical Islam, the fanatical regime in Tehran and the fantasy that peace magically appears if we just whisper nice things into the ayatollah's ear. But now, after Israel attacked Iran in response to a very real threat to its own existence — let alone the multiple fronts of war fomented by Iran's proxies — Trump is a warmongering neocon?
I know there are those who have found their latest home in MAGA and America First who are proud isolationists, but Trump has never been one of them. When it comes to foreign policy, he's a realist. Yes, he's been a powerful voice pushing the idea that the United States shouldn't be dragged into endless wars with no clear objective, no exit strategy and no benefit to American interests. For anyone who has paid attention to modern military history, that's common sense. But it's also common sense to understand the threat posed by Iran to the United States, Israel and the world.
Under all of this, though, the real problem here isn't Trump's position. It's that his critics are either shockingly naive or have spent the last decade projecting their own foreign policy fantasies onto him.
Let's take the first group — the naive. These are the people who still think we can sing "Kumbaya" with the Iranian regime if we just try hard enough. Some of them watched former President Barack Obama send pallets of cash to the mullahs before being shocked that money was funneled into terror operations across the Middle East. Then there were others who criticized Obama's disastrous deal and yet maintain the belief that there is a way of talking radical Islamists off the jihadi ledge. In their heart, they foolishly believe that peace is the default setting of the world, and war only happens when someone in the West is a bit too mean. These are the same people who argue that "Death to America" is just angry rhetoric ... for which American policy is to blame. After all, everything is our fault, you see. When we start a war, it's aggression, but when they start a war, it's because of our aggression. Get it?
Then there's the second group — those who don't understand MAGA, American First or Donald Trump, and simply see him as an avatar of projection. To them, Trump is not an individual with his own beliefs or principles or instincts. No, he's just a vehicle for their views, whether he holds those views or not, with isolationists being just as convinced that Trump is an isolationist as anti-Israel lunatics who somehow think Trump shares their hatred of Israel.
Remember: Donald Trump built a Middle East policy on results. He crushed ISIS, he evaporated Soleimani, he delivered the Abraham Accords, and now he is working to suppress Iran's genocidal obsessions. No matter how surprised, confused or angry Trump's critics are, it's their fault. Trump saw this coming. They didn't.