Israel’s strikes against Iran are splitting President Donald Trump’s supporters, who are divided over whether assisting Israel in the conflict is in line with an “America First” foreign policy or not.
Trump ran on and continues to espouse a more isolationist worldview, saying he wants to avoid wars and intervention abroad. But some lawmakers and activists within the Republican Party are fearful he won’t stick to that approach now because of Israel’s close relationship with the United States. They’re urging Trump not to allow the attack against Iran to devolve into a full-scale new conflict in the Middle East — one with American troops involved.
“The American people overwhelmingly oppose our endless wars, and they voted that way when they voted for Donald Trump in 2024,” Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian-minded Kentucky Republican, responded to the strike. “I urge President Trump to stay the course, keep putting America first, and to not join in any war between other countries.”
“No war with Iran,” Paul put it bluntly another post. “The Neocons latest plan must be opposed.”
Some like-minded Republicans see Israel’s strike on Iran on Thursday as a “war of aggression,” in the words of Rep. Thomas Massie, who often aligns with Paul (and Trump) on foreign policy.
“Israel doesn’t need US taxpayers’ money for defense if it already has enough to start offensive wars,” Massie argued.
And Breitbart editor Matthew Boyle, who is closely allied with Trumpworld, said that Trump hadn’t “done anything here so far that goes against his America First agenda” but he “faces enormous challenges moving forward.”
Trump “has to balance keeping USA out of a new war with also helping the USA’s greatest ally in the Middle East, Israel,” Boyle said. “This is a major test for the president.”
Most mainstream Republicans, meanwhile, said they were just glad to see top Iranian officials killed in the attack, celebrating Israel’s moves. Israel’s offensive reportedly killed several senior Iranian leaders, including the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces and the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“It was a brilliant strike by Israel,” Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who served in the Air Force for nearly three decades, told NOTUS on Friday. “The exquisite planning — it is incredible. The foundation here was incredible intelligence. They have what appears to be great boots on the ground in Iran, with their eyes on the target.”
“This is our enemy as well,” Bacon said of Iran. “I served in Iraq. Six hundred and nine Americans were killed in Iraq by Iranian-funded and trained militias.”
“A degraded Iran is great for Israel,” he said, and “it’s great for America.”
Bacon acknowledged there is a possibility of escalation, and that the conflict could eventually harm some Americans. But, he said, it’s “a worse scenario that Iran gets a nuclear weapon. You’ve got to deal with what’s worse.”
On Thursday, just hours before Israel launched its attack but signaled it was imminent, Republican senators were making the same point.
“Well, somebody’s got to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told NOTUS. “Everybody says that they’re opposed to Iran getting a nuclear weapon, but the only country that’s willing to do anything about it is Israel.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin was ready for what he called more “kinetic” options, too.
“The president has made it very clear: In no circumstances are we allowing the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon,” Mullin said Thursday.
Lawmakers had largely departed Washington, D.C. by the time Israel began its strikes, but on Friday, a few had started to receive intelligence briefings, according to several members who spoke with NOTUS on the condition of anonymity.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has long advocated for a confrontation with Iran, responded to the situation with enthusiasm.
“Game on,” he said on X as the attack unfolded Thursday night.
On Friday, he followed up by writing that if Iran doesn’t agree to Trump’s demands about its nuclear program, “I strongly believe it is in America’s national security interest to go all-in to help Israel finish the job.”
Israeli leaders argued the attack was necessary because Iran had been working toward producing nuclear weapons. Trump responded Friday by urging Iran to return to the negotiating table over its nuclear program — and he didn’t sound likely to stay out of it, as Paul and other “America First” adherents hope.
“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Friday morning. “But no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done. I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come - And they know how to use it.”
Iranian officials “spoke bravely” in the face of those threats, Trump added, but “they are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!”
Some “America First” types are trying to find a balance. Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally and founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, wrote in an X post on Friday that Israel’s initial attack had been “remarkably successful,” but that initial stage of the conflict had been “the easy part.”
“In the hours and days to come, there will be hawks who urge America to increase its involvement in this conflict,” Kirk said. “We should be deeply skeptical of these arguments.”
“In any drawn-out war with Iran, America loses — even if we win,” he said. “The last thing America needs right now is a new war. Our number one desire must be peace, as quickly as possible.”
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS. John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.