Whatever the war in Iran may be, a betrayal of President Trump’s voters is not one of them. For anyone interested in reading his books and speeches, President Trump has, for over 25 years, been a consistent voice that Iran cannot possess nuclear weapons. This was not born of neoconservative philosophy, the Israel Lobby, or the influence of the so-called military industrial complex. It was born of a moral belief that the United States cannot have an Islamic enemy that both states to the world, “Death to America and Death to Israel,” and desires nuclear ballistic missiles.
As far back as 2000, Trump considered how best to think about dealing with the strategic threat of Iraq and Iran having a nuclear weapon. He would write:
I’m no warmonger. But the fact is, if we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion…. Am I being contradictory here, by presenting myself as a deal-maker and then recommending preemptive strikes? I don’t think so. There’s nothing really comparable to unleashing a squadron of bombers, but in the world of business sometimes you have to make quick, secret, decisive moves in order to gain a negotiating advantage…
Iran is even further ahead of the game than is Iraq. Within five years Iran is expected to have nuclear missiles capable of reaching the continental United States. Like North Korea, China, and Iraq, they’ve been importing crucial parts and technical assistance from Russia—today the world’s nuclear Walmart.
Donald J. Trump, The America We Deserve (pp. 120-121). Renaissance Books, 2000.
For Citizen Trump it was unreasonable that Iran, or other of America’s enemies, would have nuclear weapons and saw these enemies as part of a larger effort by Communist China and Russia to visit death and destruction upon the United States.
A common refrain today is that our conflict in Iran is the handiwork of Israeli manipulation of American politics and to be sure it is perfectly reasonable to disapprove of Israel’s outsized influence in American politics. But President Trump has always understood America’s relations with Israel in strategic terms. He would write about Israel in 2000:
Why do we have this special relationship? It is not out of charity, guilt, or what some who would attack these bonds have called the political pressure of “ethnic lobbies.” We have been there for Israel, as for England, because Israel is there for us. Israel is a stable democratic ally in a region filled with instability and dictatorship. It is an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” for America’s interests and values, from the United Nations to the Mediterranean.
Donald J. Trump, The America We Deserve (pp. 136-137). Renaissance Books, 2000.
By “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” Trump means it has a strategic utility for the United States. One may dislike Israel for a variety of reasons and one may disagree about its importance, but one cannot doubt that President Trump has believed for some time that they serve a strategic purpose for the United States.
Fast forward to the Global War on Terrorism where Trump was a critic of the prosecution of the war against Iraq and Afghanistan. He was specifically concerned about destabilizing the region and strengthening Iran. He would write in 2015 as he was preparing to run for president:
We targeted Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction as a justification. There was no plan (or a very flawed one) to win and leave. Before the war started I came out very strongly against it. It made no sense to me. I said then that it would be a disaster and would destabilize the Middle East. I said that without Iraq to hold them back, Iran would attempt to take over the Middle East. And that’s exactly what has happened.
Donald J. Trump, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, Simon & Schuster, 2015 (p. 45).
So just as Trump was beginning a serious campaign for president running in large part against the endless wars that he rightly saw as misguided, there was no equivocation on how he saw the more deadly threat that Iran posed. He would write:
Whatever it takes, whatever we have to do, Iran cannot be allowed to build a nuclear weapon…An Iran with a nuclear weapon would start a nuclear arms race in the Middle East with potentially devastating consequences. The situation would rapidly escalate to being the most dangerous threat Israel has ever faced. And it would force us to use extreme measures in defense of Israel and other allies in the region. That’s not going to happen, whatever Iran might think right now.
Donald J. Trump, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, Simon & Schuster, 2015 (p. 49).
Even while Trump was against the foreign interventionism of his predecessors, he was laying down an important marker that Iran was different and he was willing to state the importance of this publicly, even as a mere candidate.
As president, his first term saw him reject Obama’s ineffective JCPOA, sanction Iran’s nuclear program, label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, and eliminate Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
Indeed, throughout the 2024 election, Trump defended the idea that Iran could not have nuclear weapons. Many of Trump’s former supporters, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones most notably, now say that the use of military operations against Iran’s nuclear program is a betrayal. In fact, it is perfectly consistent with what Trump has said and written for over a quarter century. This was translated into policy in the first two weeks of the second Trump Administration with National Security Presidential Memorandum-2 that stated:
“Iran’s nuclear program, including its enrichment- and reprocessing-related capabilities and nuclear-capable missiles, poses an existential danger to the United States and the entire civilized world. A radical regime like this can never be allowed to acquire or develop nuclear weapons, or to extort the United States or its allies through the threat of nuclear weapons acquisition, development, or use.”
NSPM-2, The White House, February 4, 2025
These views of Trump must be seen for what they are: deeply held beliefs that an Iran with nuclear weapons would pose an existential threat to America and its allies. Further, he is not willing to have a nuclear-armed Iran as a proxy of Communist China or Russia.
He carries out this war in Iran at great risk to the lives of American servicemen and knowing that there will be significant short-term harm to the US and global economy. It would have been easier to push off the Iranian nuclear issue on some future president. That would have been the politically expedient thing to do. Instead, President Trump has kept faith with what he has transparently believed and told time and again to the American people: Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.
Pray he succeeds.
