Six out of 10 Republicans reported supporting Israel’s campaign against Iran in a recent poll, while just 27 percent of GOP respondents said they oppose the strikes
President Donald Trump on Saturday directly addressed Republicans who oppose his steadfast support for Israel’s preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear sites, telling them, “You can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon.”
“For those people who say they want peace—you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon,” Trump told the Atlantic in a phone call, dismissing isolationist members of his America First coalition who accuse Israel of trying to drag the United States into a fresh Middle East conflict. “For all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon—that’s not peace.”
Israel’s critics in the Republican Party, including prominent allies of Trump like Tucker Carlson, have claimed that Trump is abandoning a central plank in the MAGA platform by openly backing the Jewish state and providing defensive military support. Trump, however, told the Atlantic that only he can say what “America First” truly means.
“Considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that,” the president said.
Carlson publicly broke with Trump on Friday, accusing him of “being complicit in the act of war.”
“While the American military may not have physically perpetrated the assault, years of funding and sending weapons to Israel, which Donald Trump just bragged about on Truth Social, undeniably place the U.S. at the center of last night’s events,” Carlson wrote in a newsletter.
But multiple polls show that GOP voters broadly support military action against Iran.
A survey published Friday by the Ronald Reagan Institute showed that 6 out of 10 Republicans support Israel’s ongoing airstrikes, with just 27 percent opposing them.
A previous Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that 60 percent of the American public backed an Israeli military campaign if diplomatic talks with Tehran over a revamped nuclear deal failed. Seventy-eight percent of Republican respondents backed an Israeli attack, while just 22 percent opposed a strike.
While Trump initially tried to delay Israel’s attack, his position substantially softened during the past week, according to the Wall Street Journal. The president said he was well aware of Israel’s attack plans and now sees them as an opportunity to strike a nuclear deal that completely dismantles Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure, including its ability to enrich uranium.
By Monday of last week, after a call with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump appeared to recognize that further diplomacy with Tehran was impossible under the current conditions.
On Thursday, in another call, Netanyahu “told Trump that it was the last day of his 60-day timeline for Iran to make a deal,” according to the Journal. At that point, Israel could delay its operation no longer.
“Trump responded that the U.S. wouldn’t stand in the way,” administration officials told the Journal.
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