Summer is just around the corner, and it’s already heating up in the Middle East. Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed Iran had hidden evidence of some tests related to building nuclear weapons and had enriched enough uranium to make nine nuclear bombs on short notice. Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei then rejected the most recent American proposal in the nuclear negotiations and denounced “the rude, insolent U.S. leaders.” Donald Trump fired back: “Time is running out on Iran’s decision pertaining to nuclear weapons, which must be made quickly!”
The back-and-forth has perplexed and disoriented much of Washington. Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan recently said that Trump is “negotiating something that, in its broad elements, is going to look and feel pretty similar” to the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran. “I seem to be on the same page as Donald Trump,” he continued. The strain has been too much for many of the Israel haters who claim to speak for Trump’s political base and favor an Obama-esque approach to the Islamic Republic. They have run into a major force in American politics, one that Khamenei should fear: America’s Jacksonians.
Before they crossed the Atlantic, the original Jacksonians were some of Europe’s most formidable warriors. British statesmen sprinkled these people, who originally hailed from the lawless borderland between Scotland and England, around imperial trouble spots. Their settlements in Northern Ireland gave them the name “Scots-Irish,” and at the time of the American Revolution, they blocked Spanish expansion up from Florida and American-Indian raids across the Appalachians.
Other types of Americans, such as the Midwest’s heavily Catholic “Reagan Democrats,” grafted onto the Jacksonian tree. Walter Russell Mead, who first identified this group in Special Providence, describes their values as “a deeply embedded, widely spread populist and popular culture of honor, independence, courage, and military pride.” A “Jacksonian hero dares to say what the people feel and defies the entrenched elites.” Andrew Jackson was one such hero; another is Donald J. Trump.
Trump rocketed into the White House largely thanks to his intuitive understanding of the Jacksonians and their resulting bond. They nod along to his criticisms of democracy promotion and nation building and are skeptical of long, drawn out wars. Since they prefer to ignore foreigners who they do not consider a threat, they can appear quite dovish.
They are not at all dovish about terrorism though, or about major terrorism sponsors like Iran. Since Iranian revolutionaries attacked the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and took 52 Americans hostage for more than a year, Jacksonians have loathed the mullahs. Iran’s intervening decades of supporting worldwide terrorism—killing Americans and systematically cheating on agreements—have not engendered any new warm feelings. Jacksonians do not want Iran to get the bomb, and the economic incentives that the Iranians are dangling do not change their minds.
So the recent Rasmussen poll about Iran landed as a bombshell even though it should not surprise. Three-quarters of Trump voters support strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Among those who strongly approve of Trump, the figure climbs to 84 percent. The anti-Israel crowd, and the doves who voted for Kamala Harris, are in the minority.
Crossing the Jacksonians can fatally weaken presidencies. Barack Obama and Joe Biden both hoped to smooth things over with Iran and gracefully exit from the Middle East. But the Obama-era chaos in Syria helped create ISIS, and Oct. 7 destroyed Biden’s Middle East policy. The subsequent outbreak of domestic terrorism by ISIS members in 2015 and pro-Hamas rallies in 2023 fired up the Jacksonians and helped propel Trump into office.
Jacksonians tend to like Israel, since the two countries have many common enemies, and Jerusalem usually takes care of them without much American assistance. These fiercely independent heartland voters will stand up even to beloved leaders: Christians United for Israel grew out of a protest against international condemnations of Israel’s attack on Iraq’s nuclear program, which the Reagan administration had gone along with halfheartedly.
Managing Jacksonian expectations can be tricky: They prefer short wars that end with an utterly defeated enemy, and those kinds of victories are few and far between. If these negotiations fail to achieve Trump’s rightful goal of dismantling Iran’s weapons and enrichment programs, other tools such as cutting off Iran’s supply of foreign currency and causing an economic collapse or supporting an Israeli strike might suit Trump’s preferences better.
The heartland is often clearer eyed about threats to the American people than the talking heads who claim to speak on its behalf. Trump said the two ways to deal with Iran’s enrichment program are to “blow them up nicely or blow them up viciously.” If the mullahs choose to have it done viciously, plenty of Americans will be happy to oblige.
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