For the president of the United States, Donald Trump, few objectives on the world stage have been more explicit: he will not drag the country to another “war forever.”
However, Israel’s mass attacks on Iran will evaluate that promise as never before, potentially establishing a confrontation with its base, since Trump decides how much support will offer the United States.
Trump had publicly asked Israel not to attack, since he was looking for a negotiated solution, and his itinerant envoy Steve Witkoff had been scheduled to meet with Iranian officials for the sixth time on Sunday.
Trump, who hours before warned that an attack would cause “mass conflict”, then praised Israeli attacks as “excellent.”
He boasted that Israel had “the best and most lethal military team anywhere in the world” thanks to the United States, and was planning more strikes unless Iran were agreed to an agreement.
The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, insisted that the United States was not involved in the strikes and warned Iran not to retaliate against thousands of US troops parked in nearby Arab countries.
However, an American official confirmed that the United States was helping Israel knock down retaliation missiles shot Friday by Iran.
“The United States has calculated that it can help Israel and that Iranians will obviously be aware of this, but at the end of the day, at least on public level, the United States remains out,” said Alex Vatanka, founding director of Iran’s program at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
The hope is that “the Iranians do a rapid cost/benefit analysis and will decide that it is not worth fighting,” Vatanka said.
He said that Iranian leaders are focused for now on staying alive, but they could decide to swallow difficult treatment, or further internationalize the conflict by causing chaos in the gulf rich in oil, which can send the prices of oil on the rise and press Trump.
‘America First Skeceptical Base’
Most of the key legislators of Trump’s Republican party quickly joined behind Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a hero for many in the United States and for a long time he has called Iran an existential threat.
But Trump’s “America First” populist base has been skeptical.
Tucker Carlson, the leading media commentator who advised Trump against an American strike against Iran in the first mandate, has called fears that Tehran built an exaggerated nuclear bomb, saying that neither Ukraine will guarantee US military resources.
Carlson wrote in X after the Israeli strike that there was a division in Trump’s orbit between “those who casually foster violence, and those who seek to prevent it, between warmongers and peacemakers.”
Trump has brought non -interventionists directly to his administration.
In an unusually political video this week, Trump’s national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, warned after a visit to Hiroshima that the “warmongers” were putting the world at risk of nuclear catastrophe.
In a speech in Riad last month, Trump denounced decades of American interventionism in the Middle East and said: “My greatest hope is to be a peacemaker and be a unifier. I don’t like war.”
Support for Israel
Daniel Shapiro, who served as ambassador of the United States in Israel under former President Barack Obama, said it had been sure that the United States would support Israel’s defense against Iranian reprisals.
But Trump will face a more difficult decision on “if using the unique abilities of the United States to destroy Tehran’s underground nuclear facilities and avoid an Iranian nuclear weapon,” Shapiro said, now on the Atlantic Council.
“The decision will divide its advisors and the political basis, in the midst of accusations and perhaps their own doubts, that Netanyahu is trying to drag him to war.”
The legislators of the rival Democratic Party that widely revila to Netanyahu, including Israel’s bloody offensive in Gaza.
“This Netanyahu attack is pure sabotage,” said Democratic Representative Joaquin Castro.
“What does ‘America First’ mean even if Trump allows Netanyahu to drag the country to a war that Americans don’t want?” He wrote on social networks.
Sina Toossi, the main member of the International Policy Progressive Center, said that China, identified by Trump as the main threat, could take advantage of the moment, perhaps moving over Taiwan, as she sees the United States as even more distracted.
“Even without direct participation, Washington now faces the possibility of indefinite refueling, intelligence and diplomatic support for Israel, as well as the war in Ukraine intensifies and global crises multiply.
“The wars are easy to turn on, but once unleashed, they tend to spiral beyond control, and rarely end in the terms of those who begin,” Touossi added.
