{"id":31439,"date":"2025-06-20T17:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T17:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=31439"},"modified":"2025-06-20T17:51:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T17:51:11","slug":"magas-battle-with-israel-for-trumps-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=31439","title":{"rendered":"Maga\u2019s battle with Israel for Trump\u2019s mind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\">Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington, business and the world<\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=1891e5b6-ccf1-401a-a07b-b4ae8d1c1ebe&amp;newsletter-id=65b8fec772badb00166eafc6\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Will he or won\u2019t he? Donald Trump prides himself on being unpredictable. \u201cI may do it,\u201d he said on Wednesday when asked if he was planning to strike Iran. \u201cI may not do it\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009Nobody knows what I\u2019m going to do.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>In practice, however, Trump is often easy to decode. Judging by his first term and the first 152 days of his second, Trump\u2019s most extreme rhetoric is frequently a precursor to its opposite. Ask Kim Jong Un. In 2017 Trump vowed \u201cfire and fury\u201d on North Korea\u2019s \u201crocket man\u201d. The next year, he disclosed that Kim had sent him \u201cbeautiful letters and\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. we fell in love\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>No deal came of it. Could Iran be in for a similar metamorphosis? Trump\u2019s signals are mixed. But his declaration on Thursday of a two-week timeout suggests he is inching away from war. In Trump\u2019s world, two weeks is a long time. Yet he can also turn on a dime. <\/p>\n<p>Repudiation of the 2003 Iraq invasion was one of Trump\u2019s most effective ways of signalling a populist break from traditional Republicanism and the wars of the Bush family dynasty. But that sprung from his reading of the public mood, not from some humanitarian impulse. His record shows he is happy to break any pledge if he senses an advantage.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Does he think a US mega-bomb strike on Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities would be quick and effective? Or would it trigger Iranian escalation? The first option would be hard for Trump to resist. But increasingly urgent warnings from Maga influencers about the second have clearly given him pause. Nothing would scream \u201cforever war\u201d louder than the US joining Israel\u2019s onslaught on Iran\u2019s regime. The bitter fight between restrainers and neoconservatives for Trump\u2019s ear is thus the greatest test so far of how much war he is prepared to risk. <\/p>\n<p>The now famous two-hour interview that Tucker Carlson, the ultra-Maga former Fox News anchor, conducted this week with Ted Cruz, the Texan senator and Trumpian henchman, was in practice a shouting match. Each claimed to be the keeper of the Trumpian flame from polar opposite positions. Trump\u2019s managerial style is usually to encourage squabbling between underlings. That enhances his role as the decider.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But it is Israel\u2019s Benjamin Netanyahu, not Trump or his loyalists, who has been dictating the agenda. For three decades, Netanyahu has been warning that Iran is close to nuclear breakout. He convinced Trump in 2018 to pull out of Barack Obama\u2019s US-Iran nuclear deal that eased sanctions in exchange for limits on Iran\u2019s nuclear programme. Though Netanyahu claimed Tehran was breaking the deal, the suspicion was that he feared it was working. <\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s ensuing campaign of \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d on Iran yielded his boldest military action to date \u2014 the 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the regime\u2019s most powerful commander. Trump only ordered the strike, however, after the CIA assured him that Iran\u2019s retaliation would be muted.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The clearest battle for Trump\u2019s mind is thus between Netanyahu, who needs the US to finish the war that he started, and Steve Bannon, whose <em>War Room<\/em> daily show is a direct line to the Maga base. Bannon\u2019s case is that Trump should not be tricked into an Israel First policy. <\/p>\n<p>Sixty-one per cent of Republicans told a YouGov\/Economist poll this week that they wanted Trump to negotiate with Iran. Just 18 per cent disagreed. This almost exactly matched America\u2019s response as a whole. The spectre of soaring oil prices and supply chain disruptions is what prompted Trump\u2019s pause. If the Pentagon cannot guarantee Trump that its 30,000lb bunker-busting bombs would demolish Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions, Netanyahu will have to find other tools of persuasion.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He is backed by a familiar chorus. The loudest of these is Rupert Murdoch\u2019s Fox News, whose star anchors, including Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, are nightly banging the war drums. Had Rip Van Winkle fallen asleep in 2003 and awoken today, he would perceive little change. <\/p>\n<p>The Fox network\u2019s agitation for regime change \u2014 and the ease with which the network\u2019s stars say it can be accomplished \u2014 is hard to distinguish from its case for toppling Iraq\u2019s Saddam Hussein. Other enthusiasts for war then and now, such as Lindsey Graham, the US Senate\u2019s leading neocon, pitch nightly to Trump on Fox.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Few of the familiar figures who got Iraq so wrong paid much of a price for a blunder that eventually sank George W Bush\u2019s presidency. But Trump does not fear them. Men such as Graham and Cruz have proved on every issue that they will toe the line of whatever Trump decides. <\/p>\n<p>Here is also a rare moment when Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin and America\u2019s European allies are saying broadly the same thing. Each is urging de-escalation. Trump is hearing a similar refrain from his royal friends in the Gulf. Israel\u2019s leader is alone on the world stage arguing for war.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Netanyahu\u2019s battle is for existential survival \u2014 that of his own political career. Trump\u2019s instincts are equally ruthless. In the coming days, Netanyahu will spare no effort to persuade Trump that their interests are one and the same. It would be a surprise if Trump were knowingly to outsource his fate to another.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/mailto:edward.luce@ft.com\" data-trackable=\"link\"><em>edward.luce@ft.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/1891e5b6-ccf1-401a-a07b-b4ae8d1c1ebe\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":31440,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}