Trump Says He Might Strike Iran—and That He Defines 'America First'
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President Trump says he'll decide within two weeks whether the U.S. military will join Israel in striking Iran's nuclear weapons program, offering another window for diplomatic disarmament. Meantime, Republicans and Trump supporters debate how hitting Iran would fit into the president's America First message.

Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues, columnist Kim Strassel and editorial board member Kate Batchelder-Odell. Iran's nuclear ambitions have been dealt a setback by days now of Israeli airstrikes, but the enrichment site at Fordow, south of Tehran, where it's believed to be producing highly enriched uranium, is buried deep inside a mountain.

The U.S., though, has the bunker buster bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bomb encased in dense metal designed to dive into the ground before exploding. But will President Trump decide to use that on the Fort O's site?

Here's what Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt said on Thursday. I know there has been a lot of speculation amongst all of you in the media regarding the president's decision-making and whether or not the United States will be directly involved. In light of that news, I have a message directly from the president, and I quote...

Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks. That's a quote directly from the president for all of you today.

Kim, what do you suppose the president is thinking about that two-week timeline? And if it comes down to it, do you think that he is prepared to launch a U.S. strike on the Fort O's site? On the one hand, I heard the president's two-week timeline. He does love to throw around two-week timelines.

He seems to do it often with foreign policy questions. So my first thought was, oh, we're just kicking this down the road. But look, I think the president's instinct is to minimize if he can, if there is some legitimate opportunity.

that Iran will essentially give what Donald Trump turned an unconditional surrender without unleashing more firepower or walking into the thicket of being accused by his own political, some on his political right of entangling the United States. He might be waiting to see if there's an opportunity there. We also don't know

what the Israelis are advising him at the moment and how this fits into their operational plans. They might need more time to do a few things before they want to go there. And we're not privy to any of that information. On the other hand, what I hope this is not

very much. Is Donald Trump giving himself more time to be convinced by some on his isolationist right that it would be better to step back from this moment? Iran is on its heels. It's weaker than it has potentially ever been. There's an opportunity to finally end this threat of nuclear enrichment once and for all, or at least for the long-time immediate future. And I would hope that domestic politics

And the lobbying of that smallish wing of his party does not hold the day here. Okay, what's your view of this question, the decision facing the president now? It's not out of the question that the Israeli forces have prepared a backup plan if Trump decides not to go through with it. I don't know if that would be commando raids or something like that. But the analysts

seem to think that the real best way to deal with the Forto site is this bunker buster bomb. It certainly seems to be the lowest risk option. I mean, I was listening this morning to something that Mark Dubowitz of FDD, the think tank, was talking about. If you think about a commando raid on a site like Forto, which is a mountain, and some of this stuff that we're talking about is buried deep in the ground, and if you send in commandos, that represents a pretty profound risk to the personnel undertaking that mission. And

I mentioned Dubowitz and he was saying, imagine a potential Israeli hostages taken captive and paraded through Tehran, executed. I mean, these are possible. So when we talk about things that could potentially go wrong, an Israeli commando raid is about a much higher risk operation than using a B-2 American bomber. Another reason for that is because Israel has been so successful so far. I mean, one of the wonders of the Israeli campaign so far is that Israel has almost total control of the air.

and has taken out an enormous amount of Iranian missile defense. And so they are basically able to hit the targets they want to hit from the air without much opposition. And that has reduced a lot of the risk for the United States if it were to get involved with the B-2. But Kyle, I think the larger question here is not as much about

whether it's a high risk operation for the United States, I think that's manageable and can be calibrated. But I think the larger question too is what is the world going to conclude if the United States refuses to get involved? I think this is a very big inflection point. And I think if the United States is not willing to help a close friend like Israel get something like this across the finish line in uncontested airspace, I don't think the United States is going to defend Taiwan. I think

Beijing will conclude that if they see this. And so I think this is a really big moment for Trump and his presidency. I think it will be that a lot of other parts of the world are watching to see what he does here and will draw certain conclusions from it. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small.

The Department of Defense is working with Google to help secure America's digital defense systems, from establishing cloud-based zero-trust solutions to deploying the latest AI technology. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.

Welcome back. The debate has already joined on the right about what the Make America Great movement stands for, what President Trump actually substantively means when he says America first. Let's listen to a clip of Texas Senator Ted Cruz being interviewed by Tucker Carlson.

We should be very careful about entering into more foreign wars that don't help us when our country is dying. When you say don't help us... Look, yes, focus on our country. I'm all for it. But the naivete... You don't even know how much money this costs. You don't know anything about the country whose government you want to overthrow. And you're calling me reckless.

I want to stop a lunatic who wants to murder us from getting nuclear weapons that could kill millions of Americans. You say, I can't see how that benefits America in any way. That is bizarre. Kim, your column on Friday is about this debate under the headline, the America first face off. What

What is the argument that you're making? By the way, it is a bizarre position that Tucker Carlson has taken. And by the way, I'd also note one that he had the exact opposite views on not so very long ago. So I'll leave people to decide what has caused him to change his mind on that. And that podcast was interesting to watch. You don't need to know all the ins and outs and exact

population and where they sit in Iran to know that the Ayatollah Khomeini is a very bad person and that for decades, Iran has been killing and kidnapping Americans, views us as a great Satan and is an existential threat to Israel, our allies, and most of the world, especially if it were to get nuclear capacity. This is a really interesting thing. I think what happened here, if you step back, is those four years that Donald Trump was out of office, a lot of

Aspiring politicians and pundits figured that the best way to capitalize on his movement was to double down on certain of his positions and mold them into definitions of their own making. And one of this was a neo-isolationist faction that has now decreed that America first means America should not engage anywhere in the world under any circumstances.

There's all kinds of problems with that thinking. One is that you have to make distinctions here. Helping Israel to get rid of the last remnants of Iran's very real nuclear threat is not the same as putting boots in the ground and engaging in a 20-year nation-building exercise as Iraq. They are simply qualitatively and quantitatively extremely different propositions.

There's a little bit of an Iraq derangement syndrome going on there among the right where they see doom in every U.S. action. So that's one problem. But the other thing that they have misread is Donald Trump's own views on this. Donald Trump has always been incredibly clear he is not an isolationist.

He views America first in the parameters of making sure America is safe and also as part of his wider campaign to want very much for America's allies to step up and pay more for their own defense, their collective interests alongside the United States. He is not someone that has retreated from engagement in the world at all.

And I think by attempting to pigeonhole him and push him and say, you're not really MAGA or America first unless you comply with our definition, he has not appreciated that much. And so far, the slapdown from him has been pretty notable. You know, he actually did come out and say, well, seeing as how I came up with that term, I think I'll decide what it means.

and then got in a shot at Tucker Carlson, putting out a call on social media that someone please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson why Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb.

So he's pushing back on that. So far, he's not been bullied by them into taking his position. But we'll see now what this next two weeks brings. To build on that, I mean, I think that if you're trying to figure out what Trump means by America first, this is an interesting moment. I mean, he's long been skeptical of efforts to change regimes. I mean, he recently went to the Middle East and said, we're not going to preach to you about how you rule your countries more or less.

On the other hand, he has not sometimes shied away from decisive action in specific moments where he thinks the United States has an opportunity to make a difference. And so he's skeptical of long deployments. He's skeptical of long commitments. He says,

critical things of NATO, Kate. Sometimes he suggests that the U.S. should take troops out of South Korea. What is the U.S. interest there? And I'm not persuaded by that argument, but you have to temper that view of what Trump actually believes

with the other side of the ledger, including in 2020 when he did that decisive strike killing the Iranian Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani. And the people who are trying to say that America first means that we are withdrawing from the world, I think are missing part of the picture of what President Trump's own record from his first term in office shows about how he thinks about foreign policy.

I think that's right. But I would add, in addition to all the other distinctions you're making, his thinking on Iran has been more consistent than he has been in other parts of the world. And some of us have sometimes wondered why maybe he can't apply some similar logic about deterrence to Ukraine, for instance, and why he sees those differently. But he does see them differently. And he has been very consistent on the fact that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. He's been unequivocal about it.

And he's also been willing, to your point about the strike on Soleimani, been willing to take calculated risks. At that time, remember, there was a lot of warning similar to the kind that we're hearing now that this would ensnare the United States and protracted conflict that Iran would escalate.

One of the people making those arguments was Tulsi Gabbard, who's the director of national intelligence now and is in this group that we're talking about, encouraging the president not to help Israel finish the job. So that was predicted and it didn't materialize. And another example is Trump's campaign against the Houthi terrorists who were launching missiles at ships in the Red Sea. That was supposed to cause a similar escalation from Iran and so on. That also didn't materialize because they're Iran's proxies. So there are cases here where

the things that are being warned about don't materialize. And I think that really should inform part of the U.S. choice here. You know, when you listen to that Tucker and Ted Cruz podcast, as I did about 80 minutes of it, one theme that Tucker hits is just, of course, there's so many risks, it's so unpredictable. And it's true that war is always unpredictable and that military action carries risks. Don't want to diminish those, but they have

to be weighed against the risks of doing nothing, the opportunities for the United States if Iran no longer is on the brink of a nuclear weapon, and also, you know, the risks of this two-week wait. Just one other quick thing I'd add is that Iran is launching missiles back at Israel. Are we going to just continue to tolerate that as we think through more whether this is really in our interest to help them? Israel has the upper hand right now, but that is really an argument for a prompt strategic decision from the president and not another two weeks of thinking about it.

A couple other thoughts I would add, Kim. One is that the intelligence seems pretty clear about what is at this Fordow site. There does not seem to be a whole lot of doubt about the uranium enrichment that Iran has been doing there and far in excess of what it needs to operate any sort of civilian nuclear program as it keeps claiming. And two, I wonder sometimes when I hear Trump pushing back

against these people, if there's a bit of peek from him about what looks to me like attempts to box in the president of the United States and narrow his options in the foreign policy arena, sometimes from people who were chosen by him, nominated by him to high-level positions and are working in his own administration.

We mentioned on a previous podcast this social media video that the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, put out last week. Let's listen to just a piece of that. Political elite and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers. Perhaps it's because they are confident that they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families that regular people won't have access to.

So it's up to us, the people, to speak up and demand an end to this madness. We must reject this path to nuclear war and work toward a world where no one has to live in fear of a nuclear holocaust.

Kim, it is not hard to imagine that a president of the United States might be a little upset at his director of national intelligence going to the public and making an argument that there are warmongers pushing the United States toward nuclear war because they are confident that when the missiles start flying, they will be able to have bomb shelters that the regular people don't have access to.

Yeah, you think? That whole video was surreal, by the way, and I still remain a bit flabbergasted that she released it. Stepping back, if you just look at what the so-called or self-ascribed America First faction of the party has done here, it's really remarkable in terms of political mistakes. The biggest one I would note is choosing this particular hill to plant their flag on.

They have had some successes since the beginning of this term. They've managed to place some folks who are very ideologically sympathetic to their views in key portions of the administration, including J.D. Vance, the vice president, and in the Defense Department. I think that when you look at Donald Trump's actions so far in Ukraine, you certainly see their stamp and their

imprint on some of the decisions and actions that he has taken, as Kate was saying, which has been quite opposition and strikingly different than his views on Israel and the threat of Iran. But choosing to make this battle about Israel and Iran was just silly from a historical perspective and missed the moment on the political feeling in this country.

Israel is one of America's strongest allies. American support for Israel remains remarkably strong. It's borne over decades of close religious ties, family ties. I mean, you think about the number of Americans who have a relative that lives or has gone to Israel over periods of time, diplomatic ties, military ties.

But also, Iran is one of those unique adversaries that generations of Americans also understand is a menace and a threat. It's leadership. It's theocratic, autocratic dictatorship, a force for bad, not just against America, but against its own people. So a very unsympathetic enemy, a very sympathetic ally. This was not the place to decide to challenge him. And then secondly, was the way they did so with Russia.

Things like that video. If you know anything about Donald Trump, he does not like getting pushed around. Having his own advisors putting out videos that are so clearly aimed at circumscribing his actions as president cannot be taken well. And in fact, there is some reporting out saying he was incensed by that. And I would note how quickly some other people are now scurrying to go get back on the right side of Donald Trump's good graces. J.D. Vance came out with...

Great speed saying, my good friend, Donald Trump, I think he has earned the right to have some time and make these decisions here. And he went into a long explanation about what the problem is with Iran's enrichment program. Even Steve Bannon, who's been one of the lead protagonists on the no new engagements front, came out and said, well, if Donald Trump decides he's going to go this way, his mega base will be behind him. We might hate it, but we'll be behind him. So

So folks have realized that they overstepped. It's been interesting to watch them retreat, but they went about this all wrong. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small.

The Air Force Research Laboratory is partnering with Google Cloud, using AI to accelerate defense research for air, space, and cyberspace forces. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation. Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Welcome back. On the point about the American public's sympathies, there's a survey cited in the journal's editorial today. It says MAGA Republicans support U.S. strikes on Iran by more than three to one. Another poll finds 83 percent of Trump voters support Israel's strike and 73 percent say Iran can't be trusted to honor an agreement.

Also, I was struck by this hedging, I think, by J.D. Vance, the vice president, who is a well-placed source who might know where the winds are shifting here. Here is part of what he said. He said Trump may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment. That decision ultimately belongs to the president. And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But

I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue, unquote. So not exactly predetermining a decision. I mean, you could read that either way. I don't know what J.D. Vance is saying behind the scenes there, but he has taken a notably different tack on this question than some of his fellow MAGA colleagues in the administration.

Well, I certainly wouldn't want to be too cynical about it, but he also may want to be president of the United States someday. And he's connected himself and his political fortunes with the president. And so he wants to be perceived as loyal to the president. And I think it is an indication of where the president's thinking on it is, which again, is not surprising. It's consistent with where the president has been on Iran since his first term, consistent with his maximum pressure campaign then. So it's not really a surprise. I am endlessly fascinated by this debate that we're having about

the Iraq War. And it does have some similarities to America after Vietnam, when the failures in Vietnam were so dominant over the public psyche about whether America could accomplish anything in the world or defend its interests in the world. And this is a little bit different than that. And especially with the phenomenon, we're talking about being so much on the political right now. But at the same time, then Ronald Reagan came along and said, basically, that Vietnam was a noble cause and that

You know, one of the lessons of Vietnam was that we should be prepared to succeed when we send in our troops. So I mentioned that because the president admires Ronald Reagan. And I think there is a parallel here, which is that the lesson of Iraq really isn't that we can never use military action. And so I think this is, like I said earlier, really an inflection point for his presidency and his

That's not to say there's no risk to it at any inflection point there is, but the Israelis have changed the facts on the ground pretty considerably over the last seven days. And if this ends with Iran only set back some or able to collect itself and get off up the mat and only work harder to get a nuclear weapon because now they're

enraged by this strike, I mean, that's not good for the United States. And so there's a real opening here for the president and for his stated goal, which is that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. So I understand his impulse to give another round of chance to negotiate to say, okay, either we come in and we watch you blow it up or we'll blow it up with a B-2. But that doesn't seem to me to be very likely.

to succeed. And there also are risks to it. And, you know, if the Europeans try to come in with their own bad deal, if Russia tries to come in and broker something themselves. So that two-week wait is not risk-free. And I think that's something that I hope is percolating in the president's analysis of the situation. Kim, we'll give you the last word, but is there, or should there be, or could there be a larger takeaway here for President Trump? I mean, you cited the

Steve Bannon saying, we'll be behind the president even if we hate this decision. But at the end of your column on Friday, you write this, this faction won't fade away and Mr. Trump would be prudent to go further to shut it down. What did you mean by that? Well,

As I was noting before, this faction within the party has had some notable initial successes. One is with the vice president. I also mentioned there's folks within the Defense Department, Tulsi Gabbard. I mean, they are pocketed all through his administration. And at some point, the president is going to have to decide.

if he wants to be fighting these kind of rearguard actions within his administration and with his base for the rest of the next three and a half years, and also somehow having these people define his legacy going forward. He's got a lot of other priorities. Iran is obviously a very big one, but if you think about his domestic agenda, it's huge. The

There's only so much energy you can have and you can't necessarily afford that kind of sabotage. And by the way, that is what I would call what Tulsi Gabbard did with that video coming from your own people. So look, this is a president who, as we know from his past administration,

doesn't necessarily have a problem saying you're fired. Maybe there's a moment here while we're still early in these days for him to rethink some of those initial decisions that were made on the basis of campaign promises, by the way. I don't think out of any great affinity from the beginning, but rather sort of promises owed and say, hey, you had your moment and now we're moving on. It might save him a lot of grief in the long run.

Thank you, Kim and Kate. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back next week with another edition of Potomac Watch. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small.

The Department of Defense is working with Google to help secure America's digital defense systems, from establishing cloud-based zero-trust solutions to deploying the latest AI technology. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.