By Jonathan S. Tobin
(JNS) — Ten days after the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli air offensive against Iran’s terrorist regime, the ultimate outcome of the joint campaign remains uncertain. Iran’s government and military have largely been decapitated, with the country’s ability to inflict terror on the region drastically reduced. Further damage has been done to its ballistic-missile and nuclear programs. Yet it’s still unclear if the theocratic tyranny in Tehran will fall, as both America and Israel want and expect.
What is clear is the focus of the opposition. Its campaign primarily revolves around one issue — and it isn’t the Jewish state.
That comes despite attempts by right-wing and left-wing antisemites to advance the big lie that the United States was forced or led into the conflict by Jerusalem. Many of the war’s critics from both ends of the political spectrum are united by their antipathy for Israel, plain and simple.
But as critiques of the Iran war start to harden, it’s obvious that Israel’s role as America’s partner in the conflict is not the main factor driving the opposition.
Opinion polls taken during the war’s first week made one thing obvious. The decision to strike Iran appears to be opposed by a majority of Americans.
A deep dive into the numbers finds that the main driver of opinion on the conflict is partisanship. An overwhelming majority of Republicans are in favor of military action against Tehran, while 86% of Democrats and 61% of independents are against it. That led to an overall result of 56% against the war and 44% in favor of it. When asked what they think about Iran, 70% of Republicans perceive Iran to be a major threat to the United States; however, only 27% of Democrats see it that way.
It’s really all about Trump.
Disapproval of the war is different from the debate about Israel that has been simmering for the last 30 months.
What it all boils down to is a belief that anything done by this president has got to be misguided and manipulative.
A classic example of how this works was a so-called “news analysis” published by The New York Times on March 8, which tried to make the argument that the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran were analogous to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Even if the article had been framed as an opinion piece, it was absurdly argued and devoid of context or sense. Its only point was to paint Trump as no different from Putin.
Simply put, there is no comparison between these two events. Ukraine was not a nuclear or terror threat to Russia — or any other country. Its government was not driven by a messianic belief in its right to impose a particular religion on the world. It was also not building missiles and seeking to acquire nuclear weapons to destroy another nation, as was the case with Iran’s attempts to eliminate Israel.
This article is a particularly egregious example of journalists having no shame about letting their Trump Derangement Syndrome affect their work. But even a dispassionate look at most of the liberal mainstream media’s war coverage shows that it has more in common with how they treated the Russia collusion hoax than their coverage of Oct. 7.
The consistent theme that colors arguments about Trump’s right to authorize U.S. airstrikes, America’s relations with allies, his statements about the war and uncertainty about its outcome is the belief that the specifics about the threat from Iran are not as important as the liberal detestation for the president. The point being: If you’ve spent the last decade believing that he is a fascist, neo-Nazi authoritarian, then it doesn’t really matter if the position he’s taken is one that all of his 21st-century predecessors have essentially endorsed, though he is the first to act on it.
Even if the war is being waged in defense of American interests and global peace, they simply cannot get behind any initiative undertaken by the Trump administration.
Let’s concede that reasonable arguments can be made about the limits of presidential power. There are also reasons to doubt whether an American push for regime change will work. Nor can anyone be sure that a change would lead to an improvement.
The debate about the war isn’t so much about those concerns as it is one rooted in the belief that Trump is simply beyond the pale and must be opposed at all times and at all costs.
On Iran, as on other issues, such as illegal immigration and the deindustrialization of America, Trump is merely confronting a longstanding problem that his predecessors helped create and then ignored. The same was true of his approach to Israel, where he swept aside establishment thinking with respect to decisions like moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and declining to let Palestinian intransigence get in the way of his 2020 Abraham Accords.
The refusal to give him credit for that diplomatic achievement was proof of the belief among his supporters that even if he cured cancer, his opponents wouldn’t applaud. Ending the appeasement of Iran and taking decisive action to ensure that it can no longer threaten America and the West is not quite the same thing as curing cancer. Still, the tone of critiques of his decision is not dissimilar to the way his peacemaking efforts have been dismissed by those who now oppose the war.
They blame him for not making the case for war while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge the arguments he has made justifying military action. They accuse him of acting on an authoritarian whim. However, the long buildup to the offensive, along with the last attempts the administration made to get Iran to come to a diplomatic agreement, makes it obvious that the decision was the result of a long, deeply considered process. Faulting him for failing to build bipartisan support for his policy ignores the fact that his opponents have no interest in playing the role of loyal opposition; instead, they forge ahead as a “resistance” to a presidency they believe is inherently illegitimate.
Both left-wing hysteria about alleged Trumpian authoritarianism and the antisemitic conspiracy mongering of right-wing opponents of the war, such as far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson, should be seen for what they are. Most of what passes for anti-Iran war arguments aren’t about the actual situation on the ground and are fundamentally unserious.
That arguments about Iran, Islamist terror and the war to destroy Israel have been largely overridden by those about Trump is frustrating to those who see these issues as transcending politics. The struggle to resist Iran’s Islamist terror shouldn’t be bound up with the derangement that Trump inspires in his opponents.
Israelis are dodging missiles shot by the Islamist regime and its terrorist auxiliaries, while Iranian civilians weigh whether a renewed struggle to overthrow their tyrants is worth the risk. While that is happening, we in the United States ought to be able to have an open conversation about these subjects. That dialogue should not be determined by feelings toward the president; rather, it should focus on the clear threat the Islamist regime poses to the West and the United States.