On Monday night, five days after Israel began its campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to declare: “IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!” As of late Monday evening, Eastern time, he was flying back from the G7 summit and convening his National Security Council for a meeting. Earlier in the day, the president was speaking of the importance of a deal.
So: Which will it be?
The president now faces the biggest foreign policy decision of his second term: whether or not to join Israel in its efforts to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program by force.
This moment raises fundamental questions: Does Iran pose a direct and serious enough threat to the United States to justify intervention? Is the prevention of a nuclear-armed Iran solely Israel’s concern, or does it constitute a vital American interest? Should the U.S. pursue further diplomatic engagement, or is military action inevitable?
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC News: “Today, it’s Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it’s New York. Look, I understand ‘America First.’ I don’t understand ‘America Dead.’ ”
The question is whether the man who popularized “America First” agrees.
Today, we turn to two people who represent the two major schools of thought on the right when it comes to Iran: analysts Dan Caldwell and Simone Ledeen. Caldwell is a former senior adviser to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and the Iraq War, and belongs to the “restrainer” faction—a group skeptical of U.S. involvement in conflicts in the Middle East. Ledeen is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East. She is a senior fellow at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law. And as you’ll see, she takes a different view.
Let’s get to it.
