00:02This is apropos. Well, the White House has been pushing back against mounting criticism that the
00:08U.S. president hasn't done enough to explain why it was necessary to start a war with Iran
00:13or to articulate his vision for an endgame to the escalating conflict. As energy prices surge
00:19and the death toll rises in a war the administration suggests may only be in the opening stages,
00:25the frustration is coming not just from the political left, but also from Donald Trump's MAGA base.
00:32Simon Moritz has more.
00:36The option is on the table and making headlines. U.S. President Donald Trump won't rule out
00:42sending U.S. troops into Iran if necessary and is planning for a protracted war.
00:47Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer
00:55than that. We'll do it. Whatever somebody said today, they said, oh, well, the president wants
01:01to do it really quickly. After that, he'll get bored. I don't get bored.
01:05But the deaths of U.S. soldiers and footage of fighter jets in free fall are drawing a lot of
01:10attention, even inside the MAGA movement. These longtime Trump supporters sound off on the right-wing
01:16broadcast channel, Real America's Voice. Some stand behind their president.
01:21We would have a nuclear holocaust throughout the Middle East. This government is trying to stop,
01:29and I just don't see how anyone could be against that.
01:33Others aren't so supportive.
01:34I'm not happy about the whole thing. I don't think this was in America's interest.
01:39He was the No More Endless Wars candidate in 2016 and 2024 particularly, and this looks like an open
01:45betrayal of the base. Indeed, Trump often said he would end wars during his presidential campaign.
01:50He will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars.
01:53When interviewed, some Trump voters questioned the war.
01:57Thousands of American lives, Bob, think that MAGA has become MAGA. Make Israel great again.
02:04I had friends of mine that I lost while I served over there. I don't want anybody to have to
02:10go through
02:11that again. I don't want my son to have to possibly go through that.
02:15Parallels with the long Iraq War, which killed almost 4,500 U.S. soldiers and over 100,000 civilians,
02:21are all too present. In a press conference, the U.S. Defense Secretary tried to offer reassurance.
02:26This is not Iraq. This is not endless. Our generation knows better, and so does this president.
02:33Just before its start, only 27 percent of Americans supported intervention in Iran.
02:38With just eight months before the midterm elections, President Trump has made a risky political bet.
02:46Well, for more, we're joined out by Stephen Zunas, political professor, politics professor,
02:51and program director for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. Thanks so much
02:57for being with us on the program this evening, professor. So Donald Trump again insisting today
03:03that people are very happy about the situation in Iran. The polls suggest that's not exactly true. It
03:11depends on which opinion survey you look at, but it seems that a majority of Americans don't believe
03:16that Trump made the right decision here in launching this campaign. What's your feeling
03:21about how people in the U.S. view this campaign? This is almost unprecedented. Even in the most
03:29controversial wars, like Iraq, when the war initiates, people tend to rally around the flag and support
03:37our troops, you know, that kind of thing. And initially, the support is pretty strong and then declines
03:44over time, particularly if the U.S. gets bogged down and the body bags come back and it looks like
03:52there's no end in sight. However, this is remarkable that at the very beginning of the war, there is
03:58overwhelming opposition, not just from liberals and the left, but as your reporter noted, you know,
04:04from much of Trump's base as well. And privately, what do you think Republican allies are saying
04:09about the potential risks here to the U.S.? We know and we've heard what they've been saying publicly,
04:15but behind the scenes, do you think there's a lot of pressure being applied to Donald Trump here?
04:21Already, Republicans are getting pretty nervous about the midterms due to the corruption, the
04:28stagnant economy, the political repression that we've seen through ICE raids and the like. And so
04:35this is a big risk, especially since it was the white working class voters who are traditionally
04:42voted Democratic who shifted to Trump when Hillary Clinton got the nomination, largely because she had
04:49the reputation of being a hawk. And Trump kept pounding on the theme that Hillary supported the
04:55invasion of Iraq, continuing war in Afghanistan, war in Libya, et cetera, et cetera. I'll bring the troops
05:03home, America first and all that. So this is a critical voting bloc, which, you know, Trump may be losing.
05:13And Stephen, do you think that Trump did enough to prepare the American people and his own supporters
05:18for these strikes on Iran in advance? Or were most people kind of taken by surprise by what happened over
05:25the weekend?
05:27Well, I can't help but compare with President George W. Bush and his State of the Union address prior to
05:34the invasion of Iraq. He spent almost half his speech trying to justify it. I mean, granted that
05:41most of his claims ended up being proved false, but at least he took the time and effort to try
05:46to convince
05:46Congress and the American people that this was the right thing to do. By contrast, Trump, who in his
05:51one hour and 48 minutes of his State of the Union, only three minutes were involved Iran and they're
05:59pretty vague. So it's like he doesn't seem to even care what Congress of the American public thinks.
06:06And what kind of impact then will the return of Congress have on the debate overall in the US,
06:10do you think? Well, I think, you know, often one of the controversies of the Democratic Party
06:17right now has been for years that the party leadership has tended to be more hawkish than
06:22the grassroots. They were tended to be part of the minority of the party that supported the Iraq
06:27invasion. They've been very hardline in support of Israel and its wars. But they're getting a lot
06:33of pressure right now to say, hey, you got to stand up to this. This is wrong, if not because
06:38of the war
06:39itself, at least on constitutional grounds, because this is a clear violation of Article One of the
06:43Constitution. I mean, for an offensive war like this, you have to get permission of Congress. I
06:47mean, it's not ambivalent. That was reinforced in the 1973 War Powers Resolution. And his ignoring this,
06:55like his ignoring a lot of other traditional constraints around presidential power regarding
06:59the budget and tariffs and a number of other things, I think will definitely lead
07:06Democrats to be a little more bolder than they've perhaps been willing to do before on foreign affairs.
07:12Yeah, because Trump has now ordered strikes on seven foreign nations. Can Donald Trump now expect
07:18the Democrats to receive perhaps a boost in the polls as they are going to be painting a picture of
07:24a
07:24president who's more concerned about what's happening overseas than the domestic concerns of voters in the US?
07:33They'd certainly be smart if they did so, because again, that's the line that Trump used against the
07:37Democrats when he was running. And I think, especially since this is not going to end soon,
07:43that there will be increasing casualties of Americans and large numbers of Iranian civilians,
07:51but also the fact that the Strait of Hormuz is closed at this point, where 20 percent of the oil
07:55comes and
07:56the impact at gas prices at the pump, as well as simply that whenever you have a big rise in
08:03petroleum prices, it can affect the economy as well, as a whole. And we could see the risk of even
08:10a
08:10global recession. So on economic grounds alone, this could hurt the incumbent president and something
08:18that the Democrats might want to take advantage of.
08:20And what do Donald Trump supporters make of the role that Israel is playing here? The US president,
08:25again, denying a little earlier that Israel forced him to attack Tehran, saying, actually,
08:30it was the other way around. We saw in the report earlier, supporters starting to talk about
08:35make Israel great again rather than make America great again. So how is all of that playing out in the
08:41MAGA base?
08:43Well, parts of the MAGA base are these right wing Christian fundamentalists who
08:49subscribe to this millennialist theology that, you know, Israel's the modern-day version of the
08:55Israelite kingdom. God is on their side. And even some have gone as far as talking about this war as
09:03the first phase of the conflict that will lead to Armageddon and the return of Christ and thousand-year
09:09reign and that kind of thing. So you have that kind of group that is really gung-ho in supporting
09:15Israel. And you do have sort of the right wing, you know, Zionists among the neoconservative
09:20intellectuals and those folks. But I think a lot of people in the base are a little skeptical of
09:27that and thinking, if this is for Israel, why are we making all these sacrifices? Now, I'm a little
09:32nervous. I don't want people to fall into these kind of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that, oh,
09:36the wealthy Jews behind the scenes are forcing, you know, Trump to do things against this will.
09:42I mean, that's obviously not true. But at the same time, I think there will be some, you know,
09:47growing skepticism and questions about, you know, the role of Israel and how that might have impacted
09:54U.S. decision-making.
09:55And Stephen, some observers also pointing out that the war, it's also posing a risk for future
10:01Republican leaders, complicating what has been really an America's first ideology. So might
10:08that ideology evolve and in what direction? It's really been at the core of the MAGA movement itself,
10:15hasn't it? Yes, it has. Though I should mention that the majority of Republicans in Congress predate
10:23the Trump phenomenon, and they were much more traditional hawks. And many of them, I'm sure,
10:30are pleased that Trump has done this kind of reversal. But of course, they're also going to
10:36have to consider, along with quite a few other issues, whether following in lockstep with Trump
10:43is going to negatively impact their political future. And of course, we've seen the great
10:48flip-flopping. I mean, we have J.D. Vance, as a senator, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street
10:54Journal
10:54four years ago saying he's voting for Trump because he's the peace candidate. He won't get us in any
10:59of these foreign wars and that kind of thing. And so it's been quite entertaining in certain ways
11:05to see him turn around to become this big super interventionist hawk now that he's vice president.
11:12And how does Trump's approach then differ to previous presidents? You mentioned some of
11:16them a little earlier, who've been much more reluctant to engage in foreign intervention scenarios,
11:22unless the United States is actually provoked or directly attacked.
11:27I think the striking thing about this war is that there is a broad consensus among the national
11:34security establishment. I mean, these are the professional
11:37people who study these kinds of things. These are the top admirals and generals. These are the
11:44people in the intelligence community that have long said a war with Iran would
11:49not be good, that the cost-benefit analysis did not turn out right, as terrible as the regime was,
11:56and as negative as their impact has been on the region in terms of supporting extremist groups.
12:03And prior to that, the Assad regime in Syria, that Iran's retaliatory capability was strong enough
12:11that even though obviously the United States would get the upper hand overall, it would still do a whole
12:15lot of damage in a whole number of ways. And this is exactly what we're seeing. So I think the
12:21fact
12:21that, you know, that again, the opposition to this war is not just coming from people who have concerns
12:28about human rights, international law, civilian casualties, or for that matter, the Constitution,
12:35but those just on a very pragmatic level, you know, see this as not strengthening American security,
12:42not bringing greater stability to the region, but in fact doing just the opposite.
12:46Stephen, thanks so much for being with us on the program. That is Stephen Zunas,
12:51Politics Professor and Program Director for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. We do appreciate your time.
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