President Donald Trump does not seem to be preoccupied with the contradiction that his war with Iran presents for many of his MAGA allies and base.
His defense chief, however, was out early Monday morning to assuage feelings of betrayal among the “America First” isolationists who supported a president who railed against Washington’s “endless wars” and the campaigns of regime change and nation-building pursued by the U.S. during the Bush-Obama years.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared animated at his first press briefing on the Iran attacks, alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, as he tried to convince the war-weary Republicans that things would be different this time.
Hegseth insisted that the administration’s goals in Iran did not amount to “utopian” nation-building aspirations, and remained grounded in clear objectives.
"We set the terms of this war from start to finish. Our ambitions are not utopian. They are realistic, scoped to our interests and the defense of our people and our allies," he said.
“No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives,” Hegseth continued. “This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change, and the world is better off for it.”
Hegseth’s status as the administration’s most prominent public face on this issue is notable. Last year, when Trump directed strikes against three Iranian nuclear sites, Vice President JD Vance was quick to defend the president’s actions and claimed that the Trump administration was not “stupid” enough to get drawn into war in the Middle East.
Vance has been silent since the attacks were launched Saturday morning.
“The idea that we’re going to be in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight – there is no chance that will happen,” Vance told reporters on Air Force One last Thursday, one day before his boss ordered strikes on Iran.
Vance is known as one of the loudest voices against interventionism in the White House, and his silence comes amid rumors of a rift between him and Trump over the issue. The White House has denied that the vice president was “frozen out” of war planning after expressing reservations about the strikes.
But Hegseth’s assurances that the U.S. was not entering another “endless” war comes as anti-war sentiment was bubbling over among prominent rightwing figures.
Former MAGA scion, ex-Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, has loudly accused the White House of betraying Trump’s base with the attack on Iran.
Greene is one of several conservatives who have criticized the White House and the president over the strikes, tweeting to Vance and another pointed critic of interventionism in the administration, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Sunday.
“JDVance and TulsiGabbard you both need to speak out against the war in Iran. People are paying attention, very close attention. Silence won’t cut it. You were both on record repeatedly, publicly, and loudly against going to war with Iran. Our friend, Charlie Kirk was adamantly against war with Iran,” she wrote.
“You cannot be silent. Americans are dying. You both know this is not what we campaigned for and this is 100% what we said would not happen. We said, I said, you said: NO MORE FOREIGN WARS AND NO MORE REGIME CHANGE. All we wanted was America FIRST. This is not it,” Greene continued.
Anti-Israel sentiment and suspicion concerning Israel’s close ties to American foreign policy are growing among younger MAGA Republicans. The confirmation of close coordination between the U.S. and Israeli forces in this latest round of hostilities has reinvigorated those concerns. With the departure of Greene from Congress, Rep. Thomas Massie has become the most vocal critic of Israel’s reliance on the U.S. in the House GOP.
“This threat isn’t about freedom of speech in Iran; it’s about the dollar, oil, and Israel,” Massie posted after Trump threatened military action against Iran in January.
On the MAGA-friendly Real America’s Voice channel, Curt Mills of the American Conservative lamented Monday that neoconservatives like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Lindsey Graham appeared to be steering the president’s strategy with regard to Iran.
"Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton are old-guard, 2000s George W. Bush-era neoconservatives. They are taking what they can get from this president, and frankly they're driving him like a rented car,” he complained.
Blogger Matt Walsh, a prominent name on the post-neoconservative right, derided both the White House’s messaging and Trump’s supposed overall goal of replacing the Iranian government with one that would not pose a threat to the west.
“What nobody has even come close to sufficiently explaining is how this war will first and foremost directly benefit American citizens,” Walsh wrote in a lengthy post signaling disapproval of the strikes Saturday.
On Monday, he offered sharp criticism of the White House’s disjointed explanations. Walsh wrote: “So far we’ve heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war. And although we obliterated their nuclear program, we had to do this because of their nuclear program. And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the US, they also might have been, depending on who you ask. And although we are not fighting this war to free the Iranian people, they are now free, or might be, depending on who seizes power, and we have no idea who that will be.”
He concluded: “The messaging on this thing is, to put it mildly, confused.”
Voter polling suggests that Trump’s base is just as queasy. Nearly one in four Republicans said that Trump is too eager to use military force and 43 percent saying the Iran strikes were a mistake, in a Reuters/Ipsos poll Sunday.
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