Israel’s military operations against the Iranian regime has brought to the forefront deep simmering tensions within the modern American right on the question of foreign policy. At the forefront of this dynamic is President Trump himself, who escalated tensions with Iran his first term by ending the Obama’s administration nuclear deal and authorized military strikes against Qasem Soleimani before prioritizing a new diplomatic arrangement with Tehran during the first six months of his term. Trump’s foreign policy style has allowed both non-interventionists and hawks to identify elements aligned with their values, reflecting a diverse view of opinions held by foreign policy staffers during his second term.
It is precisely Trump’s lack of ideological commitments that has allowed his broader political coalition to appeal to different elements of the American right, not including the sort of cynical opportunists that were willing to serve in his administration in order to be a self-appointed “adult in the room,” such as John Bolton, actively subverting policy aims.
Electoral coalitions, however, are easily fractured when policy decisions have to be made, and—despite an early attempt to distance the Trump administration from the Israeli strikes on Iran—the Trump administration seems increasingly comfortable with direct American involvement, sparking criticism from leading elements of Trump’s MAGA base, such as Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene.
The critique of Carlson, in particular, has been seen as significant enough that even President Trump has publicly commented on it, claiming that he alone gets to dictate the meaning of “America First.” It also spurred Senator Ted Cruz to confront Carlson head-on in an interview-turned-debate on Carlson’s podcast.
The result is truly a remarkable piece of public discourse. For any criticism of his own political views, Cruz is widely regarded as one of the most intelligent members of the Senate, an accomplished lawyer and debate champion, and a passionate defender of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and an advocate for regime change in Tehran. For Carlson, the two hour long platform notes a significant change from his previous primetime Fox News show where his skewering of pro-interventionist politicians was restrained to segments only a few minutes long.
One’s takeaway from the Cruz-Carlson debate is likely to be largely shaded by one’s pre-existing views on the topic of Iran, but what immediately made for social media fodder was Cruz’s defense of the Israeli government grounded in his own theology and apparent ignorance regarding the population and demographics of the Iranian republic.
Key to the worldview that holds Iranian regime change as a necessary pursuit for “American interest,” to use the words of Senator Cruz, however, is ignorance of modern Iranian history that is often ignored in Washington. The justification for Iranian nuclear ambitions being a red-line is the belief that the Iranian Republic is an irrational political actor that places the death of Americans as a primary objective of the government’s policy. As the logic follows, Iran’s nuclear objectives are clearly offensive in nature, with the inevitable aim being mushroom clouds over the United States.
Contradicting this view, however, is the same regime’s reaction to September 11, 2001. The response from the Iranian government was not to cheer the deaths of 3,000 Americans, but rather the Iranian president expressing “deep regret and sympathy with the victims.” Public sentiments of condolence were followed with action.
The Iran government offered direct military assistance to the United States in their efforts against Afghanistan and al Qaeda. Iranian airspace was opened up for American efforts. In the words of James Dobbins, the Bush administration’s chief negotiator on Afghanistan, the Iranian’s were “comprehensively helpful,” sharing intel and helping organize regional allies for action against the Taliban—including putting American forces in contact with the Northern Alliance.
The Iranian regime saw 9/11 as a potential catalyst for a new era of relations between Washington and Tehran for the first time since the Iranian Revolution. To pursue those aims, they honored our dead and cooperated militarily with America.
The Bush administration, however, had no interest in considering an Iranian reset. A few months later, George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” would lump Iran’s government alongside their sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein.
With outreach to the West now dead, the Iranian government sought to consolidate support from within by stoking anti-US sentiment and appealing to Islamic hardliners within the country. They picked an engineer from a small village in Northern Iran who had risen to the ranks of mayor of Tehran—Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As Valir Nasr describes in his book, The Rise of Islamic Capitalism, the clerics considered him “the perfect vehicle for stirring up the populist and revolutionary fervor of the lower classes and beating back a rising tide of reformist sentiment.”
Ahmadinejad did what he was expected to do. He was a populist champion for Iranian fundamentalists who despised the West and wanted to see Israel wiped off the map. In response to both his rhetoric and re-commitment to Iran’s nuclear program, the UN imposed new sanctions on the country. The US followed up with attacks on Iran’s banking system.
Interestingly, Ahmadinejad’s populist appeals eventually became viewed as a threat to the political and religious supremacy of the Ayatollah, resulting in the former’s political banishment, including the blacklisting of his allies from political leadership in the country.
While this inconvenient history of US-Iranian relations cannot be viewed as assurance that Trump-Iranian diplomatic relations would have been successful in the absence of Israeli intervention, it does undermine the key assumption stated by Senators like Ted Cruz that a primary objective of the Iranian Republic is the death and destruction of Americans.
While a re-evaluation of the historical record is useful for refining our understanding of the world we live in, it does not alter the conditions we find ourselves in and the horrific realities of military conflict. It should, however, guide us in identifying whose voices we should listen to going forward.
