Whether they admit it or not, a lot of
people are rooting for disaster for the United States and Israel in the
conflict that began on Feb. 28, with the two allies attacking the
Islamic Republic’s leadership and military targets. And it’s not
overstating the matter to acknowledge that the diverse coalition of
opponents of President Donald Trump and the Jewish state has a lot
riding on whether their Cassandra-like predictions of doom for the
administration turn out to be right.
If they are, then the extreme right wing of the Republican Party, led by antisemitic podcasters like former Fox News
host Tucker Carlson, has an opening that they would hope to use to take
over the GOP. A disaster in Iran will also put even more wind in the
sails of the intersectional left-wing base of the Democratic Party. If
that happens, its leading figures, like New York City Mayor Zohran
Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will hope it means that their
faction will be in a position to name their party’s 2028 presidential
nominee.
Meanwhile, the somewhat less ideological
veterans of the Obama and Biden presidencies, of whom the most prominent
figure today remains former Vice President Kamala Harris, and their
liberal press corps rooting section will also assert that their belief
in appeasement of Tehran has been vindicated.
Betting on the regime’s survival
Such a result will be a political
landscape that will not only look bleak for conservatives and Trump
supporters. It might also be a body blow to the last vestiges of what
was once a bipartisan consensus in support of Israel that stretched
across the American political spectrum. That’s because the one thing
that links various elements of the loose, anti-Iran war coalition is
hostility to, if not outright hatred for, the State of Israel.
Their assumptions about the attack on Iran
are based on a belief in the resilience of an evil terrorist regime,
coupled with a conviction that Trump’s belief in the importance of the
U.S.-Israel alliance is inherently wrong. They are sure that either the
Islamist Republic will survive or that its ouster will lead to chaos
that will harm U.S. interests. Many of them are also convinced that,
despite Trump’s clear intentions to avoid such a scenario, the United
States is likely to be bogged down in an endless and unsuccessful
conflict in the Middle East. Indeed, some are counting on it resembling
those in Afghanistan, and even more so Iraq, which Trump critics on both
the left and right are citing as a likely precedent for his decision.
And that’s not even taking into account the way some in the Democratic
base tend to sympathize with anyone who is at war with the West.
Disillusionment over those wars led to the
success of anti-war factions and played a significant role in the rise
of President Barack Obama and then Trump. If that scenario is repeated,
it could result in the capture of both major political parties by
extremists who have nothing in common but their desire to abandon Israel
to its fate in a region still dominated by genocidal Islamists. It
could also impact the flow of and price of oil. And that could lead to
higher gas prices in the United States and hurt Republicans in the
midterms, leading to two years of Democratic congressional control that
would hamstring what was left of the Trump presidency.
Of course, there’s a chance that they are
right and that the Iranian government—or what’s left of it after strike
after strike has decapitated its leadership—will ultimately prevail in
one way or another. If so, it would be just another example of a second
presidential term that was undone by a foreign-policy misjudgment.
Thinking like Khamenei and Sinwar
But it’s also very possible, if not
likely, that they are citing the wrong precedent when they talk about
another Iraq. They could be making the same mistake others have made
when they underestimated Trump’s savvy and leadership. They could also
be channeling the same catastrophic mistake as those who assumed that
Israel was ripe for a defeat that could lead to a collapse in 2023.
The late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hamas
senior leader Yahya Sinwar never imagined that the war they launched on
Oct. 7 with unspeakable atrocities and the largest mass slaughter of
Jews since the Holocaust would turn out the way it has. Not only are
they, in addition to many of their associates and followers, dead; the
Islamist movement has suffered major defeats in Gaza and Lebanon, in
Syria with the fall of longtime dictator Bashar Assad, and now, in Iran.
Israel was shaken by that surprise invasion and attack, but it
rebounded and is in a much stronger strategic position than it was 29
months ago.
The impact on American politics of success
in Iran, which could entail the fall of the Islamist regime as well as
the further weakening of its allies in the region, could be just as
significant.
Since the fighting may go on, as Trump has indicated, for weeks, predictions as to how it will turn out are, at best, premature.
Given that Trump is mindful of the
Afghanistan and Iraq precedents, he will never agree to a U.S. land
invasion; what follows these strikes will depend on the actions of the
Iranian people as much as on the American and Israeli militaries. We
don’t know yet if Iranian dissidents—either from within the regime or
those who have demonstrated in the streets against the tyrannical
theocrats—can seize the opportunity Trump has given them.
Even if they can’t, a few weeks of
pounding from these two potent militaries will not be without effect.
While the Islamists may not fall, Washington will be able to ensure the
flow of oil from the Persian Gulf, no matter what happens in Tehran.
That would likely leave the regime in a position where its ability to
inflict harm on the region would be severely diminished.
That, in turn, will make their allies in
Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen much weaker. And it would give Trump the room to
maneuver that could also lead to better outcomes in Gaza, where Hamas
is hanging on, as well as the further weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The latter terrorist organization fired on Israel during the war’s
second day, but the reaction from the Lebanese government to the
prospect of being dragged into a war to defend the Iranian regime
indicated that the era in which Hezbollah dominates that country may be
about to end. Far from the war expanding, a weakened Tehran with no
ability to inflict further mayhem would only strengthen U.S. allies like
Israel and Saudi Arabia, and open the possibility of expanding Trump’s
2020 Abraham Accords.
While U.S. elections are determined by
economic issues far more than anything that happens abroad, the
scenarios in which Trump benefits from his Iran decision seem more
realistic than those that predict disaster.
Exposing Carlson and Vance
Indeed, anything short of disaster in Iran
will significantly damage Trump’s right-wing critics. Carlson and other
extremist podcasters who have been trafficking in antisemitic tropes
about Israel dragging America into war, and smearing the Jewish state
and its supporters, have been speaking as if this is their moment.
Carlson has ignored Trump’s demands that he desist from this antisemitic campaign and has instead doubled down
on it again. His description of the president’s decision as “absolutely
disgusting and evil,” predicting that it “will shuffle the deck in a
significant way”—presumably, in his favor—presages a full break with
Trump.
Simply put, after this, Carlson can’t
pretend that he is merely trying to push Trump in a different direction.
He has now joined the anti-Trump resistance.
He has plenty of company there. More than
that, his assumption that he speaks for the GOP grassroots may be about
to be exposed as a big lie. To date, there is no evidence that
Carlson—and the rest of the anti-Israel and antisemitic right-wing
podcaster corps, including the likes of the ever more fanatical Candace
Owens, neo-Nazi groyper Nick Fuentes and their once mainstream ally,
media personality Megyn Kelly—speak for a genuine political movement.
These political commentators may have a
lot of viewers and listeners, but how many of them are bots, as opposed
to Republican primary voters? Unlike the left, there is no indication
that in 2027, there will be a right-wing “Squad” of antisemites to make
common cause with the dozens of Israel-hating “progressives” caucusing
with the Democrats.
Anything short of the sort of Iraq-style
fiasco in Iran that Trump is deliberately refusing to allow to happen
will expose this segment of the MAGA movement as a politically marginal
faction in a way that is not true of the left.
That could also undermine the prospects of
Vice President JD Vance, whose huge lead for the 2028 GOP presidential
nomination could diminish if he doesn’t soon disassociate himself from
Carlson. It could open up the possibility of U.S. Secretary of State
Marco Rubio getting into a race that he now says he won’t enter. Rubio
has become far more visible and seemingly close to Trump in the past few
months as foreign-policy issues relating to Venezuela, relations with
America’s European allies, the president’s Board of Peace to help
reconstruct Gaza and the conflict with Iran have dominated the news. A
good outcome—or at least one that is not another Iraq—makes him the most
important figure in the administration not named Trump.
The left’s stake in regime survival
The strengthening of Israel as a result of events in Iran could also impact the Democrats.
Nothing—not even the collapse of a terror
regime in Iran—will convince the Trump-haters that the president is
right about anything. They are ideologically and temperamentally
committed to “resisting” the president, rather than being a loyal
opposition. The Democrats’ left-wing base is also wedded to toxic,
left-wing, neo-Marxist ideas that have convinced them of the truth of
the big lies about Israel—and its Jewish supporters—as being “white”
oppressors. It also leads some to sympathize with or at least oppose
action against Islamist terrorists like the Iranian regime and Hamas.
What they aren’t counting on is a
transformation of the Middle East in which anti-Israel Islamists and
other extremists are no longer able to bolster the Palestinians’
century-old futile war against the Jewish state. That won’t silence the
Israel-haters that proliferate throughout the liberal mainstream media
and elsewhere in society. But it will make it easier for a counter-force
of moderates who, at the very least, don’t want to support a genocidal
war against Israel to further tarnish the Democrats’ brand to emerge as a
force in 2028. If the war in Iran makes future conflict less likely,
that exposes and undermines left-wingers who have gone all-in on
Israel-bashing and helps those who want to talk about other issues.
Such a faction won’t agree with Trump on
the Middle East in the manner of a Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) or likely
nominate an ardent supporter of Jerusalem. But it will further diminish
the influence of the Obama administration alumni and liberal critics of
Israel, who have been wrong about everything in the Middle East for the
past four decades.
A good outcome opens up the possibility of
a future in which both parties move in a more reasonable direction on
Israel and the Middle East, and harm the prospects of extremists who
share a predilection for antisemitism.
There may be much to fear in the coming
days and weeks as the wounded regime seeks to lash out and, as it has
already done, kill Americans, Israelis, residents of the Gulf States and
wherever else it might reach with its missiles.
Still, what those who are betting on
disaster in Iran aren’t taking into account is the possibility that
Trump’s keen instincts for when to strike and his instinctual good
judgment when it comes to defending American interests against its
enemies will actually be a political success for him—and a defeat for
both his left-wing and right-wing opponents.
John Curnutt highlights the breaching training course at ALERRT’s facility. 
Training courses provided by ALERRT prepare law enforcement for mass shooting events. 
Investigators on the scene of mass shooting at Buford’s on downtown
Austin’s 6th Street on March 1, 2026.