Operation Epic Fury has developed from a war to deprive Iran of nuclear weapons into a political war of blame. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” Marco Rubio told reporters at the Capitol last night. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them [Iran] before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
The rationale came as a surprise to lawmakers. It sounded as though Israel had effectively bounced America into military action. Trump had told the American people from the outset that the war was to defang Iran of its nuclear weapons program as well as its ballistic missile capability. Regime change was optional.
Some lawmakers, such as Mark Warner, Democratic vicechair of the Senate intelligence committee, were furious after the closed-door briefing by Rubio, CIA director John Ratcliffe and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Dan Caine. Warner has said since: “There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory.”
Speaker Mike Johnson said Israel and the US were left with no choice by the Iranian regime. “Israel was determined to act in their own defense here, with or without American support. Why? Because Israel faced what they deemed to be an existential threat. If Iran had begun to fire all of their missile arsenal, short and mid-range missiles at our personnel and our assets and our installations, we would have suffered staggering losses.”
But, as he spoke, existing cracks within his own party were widening. J.D. Vance – who backed Trump in 2023 expressly because he “started no wars” – did his best to paper over them last night. He broke his silence on the Iran war to Jesse Watters on Fox News. “President Trump will not get the United States into a years-long conflict with no clear objective. Iran can never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.”
The VP’s words came shortly after CBS reported that he had, in fact, opposed military action but had told Trump that if it were to happen, the operation should “go big” and “go fast.” The VP, as Abraham Lincoln might have observed, appeared to be trying to ride two horses. And as Abe correctly told George B. McClellan, his rival for the 1864 presidency, in the famous political cartoon of the day, riding “them two hosses,” one war and one peace, “wouldn’t work.”
It seems likely that the reason Vance was silent for so long was that he knew that riding the same two horses as McClellan would play equally atrociously with his MAGA followers. They had embraced him in no small part because he appealed to their isolationist inclinations by declaring that war with Iran did not directly serve American interests.
Last night Tucker Carlson responded to the disclosure that Israel had been a factor in US action. “At some point the United States has to get Bibi under control. Sorry, it’s not anti-Semitism, this is a head of state whose decisions are getting Americans killed. The United States has to say to the government of Israel: you are not in charge.” Megyn Kelly told her listeners that four US servicemen who were killed by Iran didn’t die “for the United States. I think they died for Iran or for Israel. I have serious doubts about what we’re doing.”
A measure of the political danger Trump sees can be found in his willingness to pick up the phone to journalists and personally advocate for the US strikes. Last night he told Rachael Bade that Kelly “ought to study her history book a little bit,” and that Tucker’s criticism “has no impact on me.” He remains confident that he is still in control of MAGA. “I think that MAGA is Trump – MAGA’s not the other two,” referring to Kelly and Carlson. “MAGA wants to see our country thrive and be safe. And MAGA loves what I’m doing – every aspect of it.”
To emphasize the point, Steve Witkoff told Fox News that at his first meeting with the Iranian negotiators they said, “we have enough material for 11 nuclear bombs, and that is our starting point. They were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.”
‘MAGA loves what I’m doing – every aspect of it’
Benjamin Netanyahu also appeared on Fox as those who are in favor of this war flooded the zone. Netanyahu said it was “ridiculous” to suggest that Israel had dragged Donald Trump into the war, contradicting what Rubio said. And he claimed that Iran’s ballistic missile program and atomic bomb program would have soon been “immune” to attack. “Action had to be taken, and you needed the resolute President like Donald J. Trump to take that action.”
It’s hard to know whether MAGA has irreparably fractured. What we do know is that, of Trump’s 2024 voters, 53 percent opposed US involvement in an Israel-Iran conflict. Just 19 percent said they would support military action. Now Rubio is admitting that the White House felt they had no other option but to launch their own strikes once Israel began its bombing campaign.
The true test of whether the MAGA outriders are speaking for voters will come at the ballot box in the midterms. It is worth remembering that Biden’s support for Israel over Gaza infuriated many within his own party. That criticism weakened Biden and eventually split the Democrats. Will Trump suffer the same fate by aligning the destiny of the US with that of Israel?
As Republican feuds intensify, so too does the actual war itself. Last night Iran hit the US embassy in Riyadh with a drone attack, and hundreds of thousands of Americans were advised by the State Department to leave 13 countries in the Middle East. Trump may have put a four to five week timer on the Iran war, but the war for MAGA will be fought for years to come.
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