Republished from the UK Socialist Website Left Horizons
War with Iran will split Trump’s maga movement
By John Pickard
When Donald Trump was running for president, he posed as an ‘anti-war’ candidate, claiming that he would not send US military personnel into unwinnable wars, notably in the Middle East.
According to the Washington political magazine The Hill, it was even a contributory factor in his victory last November. “Trump was able to claim another attribute traditionally reserved for the Democratic Party, that of being anti-war. We have no doubt that this association contributed to the election results”.
Donald Trump is a man without a moral compass of any kind and no principles worthy of the name. He wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit him on the nose, so everything he says is for effect at that moment only, whether or not it contradicts something he said earlier. That said, those who voted for him will take seriously his apparent commitment to keep the US out of unnecessary wars.
If Trump does decide to bomb Iran, it might be the most important and decisive decision he has made so far, and a turning point in his presidency. Already, the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement is split over the possibility of US entry.
After the Israeli attack on Iran had started, CNN reported a US intelligence assessment from last March that said at the time Iran was attacked, it was “up to three years [away] from being able to produce and deliver to a target of its choosing.” This was the assessment reported to Congress that month by Trump’s own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who said, “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon“. She added that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah, Khamenei, “has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in 2003.”
Trump allies speak out against war with Iran
At least some in Washington and in the maga movement have taken these assessments seriously and believe Trump is being ‘conned’ by Netanyahu into diving headlong into the Iranian quagmire with US forces. Several long-time allies of Trump have openly spoken out against any US involvement.
Steve Bannon, for example, one of Trump’s chief strategists in his first adminisration. “This is not something you play around with,” Bannon told reporters. “You have to think this through. And the American people have to be on board. You can’t just dump it on them.” (Guardian, June 18). He repeated his opposition, telling Trump that entering the Iran war would “tear the country apart”. “My mantra right now”, he added, [is] “the Israelis have to finish what they started. They started this. They should finish it…”
Tucker Carlson, another powerful media backer of Trump, also weighed in against “warmongers” in the media, saying that the description “would include anyone who’s calling Donald Trump today to demand airstrikes and other direct US military involvement in a war with Iran”.
Carlson has publishes a regular newsletter and has used this to suggest that Trump “drops” Israel. “Let them fight their own wars”, and he added prophetically, “What happens next will define Donald Trump’s presidency.”
Another former Trump loyalist, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, spoke out. “Anyone slobbering for the US to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/Maga”, she said. “We are sick and tired of foreign wars.”
Opposition from within the US military
Voices of opposition have also been heard in the US military. A US army colonel, Nathan McCormack, the chief of the Levant and Egypt branch at planning directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was removed from his position this week after he used social media to criticise Washington’s unwavering support for Israel.
He described Israel as “our worst ‘ally’…We get literally nothing out of the ‘partnership’” he said, “other than the enmity of millions of people in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia…”
According to Gideon Rachman, writing in the Financial Times, an Economist/YouGov poll suggested that “53 per cent of Trump supporters opposed the US joining the war, with just 19 per cent supporting involvement”. Even if that changed temporarily – as it inevitably would for a while, if US forces became involved in the war – it would quickly dissipate, as soon as there were US casualties.
This war, as long as it goes on, and the wider it gets, will have a profound effect on the Middle East, but no less an earth-shattering effect on US politics. It will spur on the growing opposition to Trump and Trumpism.
As an aside, here in the UK, the Labour Friends of Netanyahu have a baleful but significant influence in the tops of the Labour Party. Just like in the USA, if Starmer is persuaded that British forces should join in the attack on Iran (albeit in a bit-part role), it will be another nail in the coffin of his leadership.
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