With war against Iran, Trump compounds maga’s crisis of faith

Donald Trump’s rationale for war with Iran keeps shifting because he does not believe his own rationales. His goal has little to do with Iran. It has to do with creating conditions in which an old, depleted and unpopular president looks big, tough and loved on American TV. 

But there may be a reason outside the fear of midterm defeat. While he believes he benefits from being a war president, the decision to become one may not have been entirely his.

Early reporting on the war suggested that Israel was going to attack Iran without or without Trump, and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had lobbied him to join the effort. USA Today reported yesterday that Netanyahu decided in November of last year to order a long-planned operation to assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Marco Rubio confirmed that reporting on Monday.

"We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action," he said. "We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

Just so I have this straight in my mind: The United States did not attack Iran in order to stop it from having nukes; in order to stop it from being a global leader in state-sponsored terrorism; in order to liberate the Iranian people; or in order to manifest world peace.

No, Trump launched an illegal war, because our ally put him in a no-win situation in which, as one source told the Post, “the only debate that seemed to be remaining was whether the US would launch in concert with Israel or if the US would wait until Iran retaliated on US military targets in the region and then engage.” (Trump could have condemned Netanyahu after the fact, but apparently the appeal of being a war president was just too great.)

If I were the commander-in-chief of the world’s mightiest military, and if I allowed a foreign head of state to lead me around by the nose, I would also come up with a dozen reasons for going to war with Iran, no matter how unconvincing those reasons may be, because I would be highly motivated to draw attention away from the view that I’m not entirely in charge.

I mean, Trump can’t even take credit for Khamenei’s death. Pete Hegseth said Israeli strikes killed him Saturday. The only “credit” he can claim is having followed Netanyahu’s lead.

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That the decision appears to have been more Netanyahu’s than Trump’s is going to be a problem, most immediately because of the outcry in the Congress. If Trump was not acting in self-defense, then this is a war of choice, which requires the consent of the Congress. Trump is going to be forced to explain himself, thus risking being held accountable for the spike in goods and oil prices, Tuesday’s sell-off on Wall Street and chaos in the Middle East.

(According to Steve Herman, the State Department told Americans to “immediately leave" 16 countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, West Bank and Yemen. NBC News reported the orders are coming despite many airports in the region being shuttered. In Qatar, Americans who can’t get out were told they “should not rely on the US government for assisted departure or evacuation.”)

The White House’s best rationale for war seems to be that the US was forced to attack Iran, because Iran was forced to defend itself against Israel’s attack. Such a rationale is not going to fly with most of the Congress, including many maga Republicans. That’s why Trump lied Tuesday. He said Netanyahu didn’t force my hand. I forced his. According to CNN's Kaitlan Collins, he said “it was his opinion that Iran was going to attack first if the US didn't.”

For the lie to work, however, he needs maga's faith. To get it, he must affirm his dominance. If supporters believe he’s Netanyahu’s puppet, however, such displays will seem empty, thus creating problems much bigger than abstract debates in the Congress over war powers. 

To understand the problem the president has created for himself, bear in mind the true nature of America First, which has been largely sanitized by the Washington press corps.

It is not rooted in high-minded principles like freedom and national sovereignty. It is rooted in conspiracy theory and antisemitism, which are often given the veneer of respectability by rightwing intellectuals and gullible reporters. Peel away the noble-sounding language, however, about nation-builders “intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” as Trump said last year in Saudi Arabia, and what you find at the center of America First is an unshakable belief in a global Jewish conspiracy against America.

This belief in a global Jewish conspiracy against America was beneath the push to release the Epstein files during Trump’s 2024 campaign. The belief took on a slightly different form, but the animus was the same. Trump was supposed to have been the hero sent by God to fulfill a prophecy to save America from a secret cabal of powerful Jews who sex-trafficked young girls to untouchable elites. In maga lore, Jeffrey Epstein came to represent this shadowy syndicate. Once reelected, he was supposed to bring them all to justice. When he didn’t, he triggered a crisis of faith that can be registered in polling that lumps him in with the rest of the “wealthy elites” who act with impunity for the law – the so-called “Epstein class.” 

The Times reported Tuesday on the growing uproar within the maga movement over the appearance of Netanyahu saying “jump” and Trump asking “how high?” Some maga personalities, men like Jack Posobiec, told the Times that divisions can be overcome and lingering doubts will only be relevant to future candidates to lead the maga movement. 

If supporters believed Trump betrayed principles, Posobiec might be right, as they don’t really care about principles. Supporters could shift from anti-war to pro-war as seamlessly as Trump does. But what Posobiec is ignoring, because it’s in his interest to ignore it, is that America First is not rooted in high-minded principles. It’s rooted in Jew-hate. Supporters are not going to warm up to the appearance of an American president seeming to take orders from the leader of a Jewish state. Instead, they might see Trump doing to believers in America First what he has done to supporters who demanded the release of the Epstein files.

This is why the president lied Tuesday. To assert dominance, he said he was the one to force Netanyahu’s hand, not the other way around. That might have worked – the base might have trusted him enough to play along – except for his heel-turn in the Epstein case. With Iran, he has now compounded maga’s crisis of faith. He must contend with the growing suspicion that instead of destroying the global Jewish conspiracy against America, he has joined it.