WASHINGTON
(AP) — President Donald Trump won the White House pledging to wind down
the nation’s many foreign entanglements and put “America First.” But as
his administration in recent days has sent mixed signals on the
prospects of a military conflict with Iran, Trump’s campaign trail
promise is being put to the test.
With the 2020 election approaching, the political pitfalls ahead for the first-term Republican president could be serious.
While
Trump enjoys overwhelming support from his party, there is little
appetite among his loyalists for a new military conflict in the Middle
East. Many are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now, but
a string of recent moves has sparked concerns that the administration
was beating the drums toward war. Among the possible precursors to
military conflict: new sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the
deployment of a U.S. aircraft carrier to the region and public warnings
of unspecified intelligence that Iran might strike at American
interests.
Asked this week if the U.S. was going to war with Iran, Trump said simply: “I hope not.”
Aware
of the potential backlash from within his party, the president is
trying to play down the possibility of hostilities. He held the door
open for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and malign activities
in the region amid reports that he was pushing back against his more
hawkish advisers’ preference for a military solution.
Prominent
Trump supporters offered a pointed warning on Friday about the prospect
of a new war, which they view as a direct violation of his “America
First” pledge.
“It would be a disaster for him and for the country
getting into another military engagement in the Middle East,” said
Corey Stewart, who led Trump’s 2016 campaign in Virginia. “It does
concern me that the president has (national security adviser John)
Bolton and a lot of these neocons advising him. That’s clearly not what
he ran on and what most Americans want.”
Foreign policy threatens to be a significant political liability for Trump heading into his 2020 reelection campaign.
Overall,
63 percent of Americans said they disapproved of his job handling
foreign policy, according to a January poll conducted by Associated
Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Like other issues, the
partisan divide was overwhelming: 76 percent of Republicans approved,
while just 8 percent of Democrats said the same.
Yet the
Republican Party under Trump’s leadership has shifted away from wanting
the United States to play an aggressive role in world affairs. Foreign
policy hawks in the GOP who have long embraced a muscular foreign policy
have been marginalized in recent years, dismissed as “globalists.”
By
contrast, Democrats are now far more likely than Republicans to say the
U.S. should play a more active role in solving the world’s problems.
In
the AP poll, 43 percent of Democrats said they thought the U.S. should
be more active abroad, compared to just 13 percent of Republicans.
Trump on Friday sought to blame the media for the sense of mounting unease over Iran.
“They
put out so many false messages that Iran is totally confused,” he told a
crowd of real estate agents in Washington, complaining about media
coverage of his administration’s recent moves. “I don’t know, that might
be a good thing.”
People close to the president acknowledge that an armed conflict in the region is a real possibility.
Liberty
University President Jerry Falwell Jr., a Trump confidant, signaled
support for a military solution if needed to prevent Iran from obtaining
a nuclear weapon — so long as the United States wouldn’t take the lead
role in a prospective war.
“Whatever needs to be done to keep Iran
from becoming a nuclear power needs to happen,” Falwell said in an
interview. “I’m not saying the United States needs to do it. Somebody is
going to need to do it.”
He added: “The way that it balances out, it might be Saudi Arabia and Israel that go to war with Iran.”
J.D.
Gordon, director of national security for Trump’s first campaign,
described Iran as “a delicate balance” for the president, who is
surrounded by advisers who “generally agree with his worldview.”
“Preventing
an aggressive state sponsor of terrorism from acquiring nuclear weapons
through primarily economic and diplomatic pressure isn’t as simple as
many people would like us to believe,” Gordon said.
While military conflict would likely be unpopular among Republican voters, the politics on Iran are nuanced.
For
years, Republicans railed against the multination pact struck under
former President Barack Obama to remove economic sanctions on Iran in
exchange for the country’s pledge to abandon its nuclear program. Trump
last year withdrew from the deal, thrilling Israel and anti-Obama
conservatives at home while troubling European allies who insisted it
was working.
Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the hawkish Foundation for
Defense of Democracies, said Iran takes a paramount position in Trump’s
worldview, with the president believing the country poses a particularly
destructive threat.
“I think one should never discount the
political calculation, which is that he knows a significant part of his
base, including tens of millions of evangelical Christians, agree with
him,” Dubowitz said.
The passionate opposition to the Iran deal
among Trump’s core supporters affords him some room to maneuver amid the
military buildup, even if “America First” conservatives oppose an
outright war.
“I haven’t met anybody who thinks we shouldn’t take
an incredibly hard line against Iran,” said Mark Meckler, an early
leader in the tea party movement. At the same time, he said, “Nobody
believes there’s going to be a war.”
“What Trump promised in regards to our foreign policy is ‘America First,’” Meckler continued. “He’s doing that.”
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