MAGA Coalition Split Over Iran: Trump Caught Between Warring Factions

MAGA coali­tion split Iran pol­i­cy has cre­at­ed unprece­dent­ed divi­sions with­in Trump’s base over Amer­i­ca’s role in the Mid­dle East. On June 17, 2025, The Atlantic report­ed that Israel’s mil­i­tary assault on Iran has frac­tured the pres­i­den­t’s coali­tion, with iso­la­tion­ists like Tuck­er Carl­son and Steve Ban­non demand­ing restraint while hawks Sean Han­ni­ty and Mark Levin push for deci­sive mil­i­tary action to destroy Tehran’s nuclear pro­gram. The arti­cle begins:

The MAGA move­ment usu­al­ly dis­plays remark­able uni­ty in attack­ing the left. But Israel’s mil­i­tary assault on Iran has splin­tered Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s coali­tion, as rival fac­tions fight over the true mean­ing of an “Amer­i­ca First” for­eign pol­i­cy. Right-wing fig­ures have descend­ed into vicious debate over whether the White House should take a more active role in Israel’s bom­bard­ment of Iran—one that, with Amer­i­can help, could dis­man­tle Tehran’s nuclear pro­gram or even lead to regime change.

Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/06/trump-iran-israel-maga/683211/

Key Points

• Carl­son pub­licly named Han­ni­ty, Levin, Rupert Mur­doch, and Miri­am Adel­son as “war­mon­gers” push­ing Trump toward mil­i­tary involve­ment, declar­ing “they will all have to answer for this.”
• Trump ini­tial­ly opposed Israel’s Iran strikes but changed posi­tion after Netanyahu brief­in­gs, now threat­en­ing Tehran evac­u­a­tion while claim­ing “com­plete and total con­trol of the skies over Iran.”
• Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene attacked pro-war voic­es as betray­ing Amer­i­ca First ideals, while Lind­sey Gra­ham called for joint U.S.-Israel oper­a­tions to elim­i­nate Iran’s nuclear threat.
• Trump dis­missed his own intel­li­gence direc­tor Tul­si Gab­bard’s assess­ment that Iran isn’t build­ing weapons, instead cit­ing Ambas­sador Mike Huck­abee’s mes­sage com­par­ing him to Tru­man’s atom­ic bomb decision.

National Conservatism & Foreign Policy: Sovereignty, Strategy, and Geopolitics

Nation­al con­ser­vatism ele­vates sov­er­eign­ty, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and reli­gious her­itage as cor­ner­stones of for­eign pol­i­cy, fre­quent­ly reject­ing mul­ti­lat­er­al frame­works in favor of uni­lat­er­al real­ism. A glob­al per­spec­tive on nation­al con­ser­vatism traces how the movement’s lead­ers, includ­ing Vik­tor Orbán and Nigel Farage, advo­cate nation­al inter­est as the pri­ma­ry lens for inter­na­tion­al engage­ment, often attack­ing EU insti­tu­tions and transna­tion­al coop­er­a­tion. In the U.S., JD Vance reflects this ori­en­ta­tion through his sup­port for cut­ting mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine and repri­or­i­tiz­ing strate­gic focus toward China—moves aligned with what AEI calls a shift toward “restrained strength” in U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, where pow­er is used selec­tive­ly and in defense of nar­row­ly defined nation­al goals.

This ide­o­log­i­cal shift is part of a broad­er con­ser­v­a­tive realign­ment; as Col­in Dueck has argued, nation­al con­ser­v­a­tives are reassert­ing for­eign pol­i­cy tra­di­tions root­ed in nation­al­ism, skep­ti­cism of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy abroad, and a pref­er­ence for bilat­er­al or ad hoc alliances over insti­tu­tion­al com­mit­ments. The GIOR report on Russ­ian influ­ence under­scores how this world­view inter­sects with Krem­lin pro­pa­gan­da, as Rus­sia exploits nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive nar­ra­tives in Hun­gary and else­where to weak­en lib­er­al inter­na­tion­al norms. As out­lined in Wikipedia’s entry on nation­al con­ser­vatism, this move­ment often com­bines cul­tur­al tra­di­tion­al­ism with mil­i­ta­rized nationalism—emphasizing nation­al sur­vival over glob­al cooperation—and in doing so chal­lenges the assump­tions of post–Cold War diplomacy.

This inter­nal strug­gle was recent­ly on dis­play in a clash between two promi­nent voic­es in the move­ment, as a media bat­tle erupt­ed between Tuck­er Carl­son and Mark Levin over a poten­tial U.S. war with Iran, high­light­ing the deep divi­sions with­in nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive ranks over the lim­its of mil­i­tary interventionism.

External References:

• Nation­al con­ser­vatism – Wikipedia
• Con­ser­v­a­tive Nation­al­ism and U.S. For­eign Pol­i­cy – Amer­i­can Enter­prise Institute
• The Future of Con­ser­v­a­tive For­eign Pol­i­cy – Texas Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Review

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.