For more than four decades, Donald Trump has called for invading Iran, seizing its oil, and preventing it from gaining a nuclear weapon. You wouldn’t know this if you listened to some of Trump’s erstwhile supporters. In the wake of his latest attack on Iran, they accuse him of betraying the America First movement. “This isn't stabbing Trump’s original followers in the back. It’s stabbing them in the front,” says American Conservative editor Curt Mills.
Trump has always taken a less idealistic approach to foreign policy than do neoconservative interventionists or liberal internationalists. He has frequently and opportunistically attacked his opponents as warmongers. But his problem with “forever wars” was not that they involved bloodshed; it was that they didn’t end in victory.
Trump’s Iran-hawk bona fides go back to 1980, when he gave what the historians Charlie Laderman and Brendan Simms describe as his “earliest recorded statement on foreign policy to a national audience.”
In an interview with NBC, Trump complained that the Iran hostage crisis was a sign that America no longer commanded international respect. His interviewer replied, “Obviously you’re advocating that we should have gone in there with troops, et cetera, and brought our boys out like Vietnam.” Trump replied: “I absolutely feel that, yes.”
Trump then worried aloud that the Iran-Iraq war could develop into a larger conflict because the United States “is not more involved in terms of setting policy in that area.” This interview set the pattern for the coming decades.
In a 1987 speech in New Hampshire, Trump suggested, in the words of The New York Times, that the United States should “attack Iran and seize some of its oil fields in retaliation for … Iran’s bullying of America.”
In 1988, Trump told The Guardian, “I’d be harsh on Iran. They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools. One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island,” an Iranian oil hub.
In 2000, Trump complained again about how Jimmy Carter had handled Iran and said that as president he would “believe very strongly in extreme military strength.”
In 2007, Trump said, after being asked what he’d do if he were president, “First, I’d try and solve the problems in the Middle East.”
In 2011, Trump told Bill O’Reilly, “I wouldn’t let them have a nuke”—referring to Iran. He then dismissed Barack Obama as a “weak president that kisses everybody's ass.”
In 2020, after killing General Qasem Soleimani, Trump warned that any retaliation from Iran would result in his hitting Iranian cultural sites “very fast and very hard.”
In 2024, after intelligence officials told Trump that Iran was attempting to assassinate him, Trump declared, “An attack on a former President is a Death Wish for the attacker!”
Given this record, it isn’t exactly surprising that Trump ordered strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in 2025, or that he has now launched a more ambitious attack on Iran.
It is true that Trump often presented himself as the anti-war candidate. But just as frequently, he indicated his readiness to use military force. He was more restrained in his first term than he has been in his second, making it easier to see him as a non-interventionist. And he brought into his second administration several people identified with foreign-policy restraint. But his overall record indicated a readiness to vindicate American honor and advance American interests, rather than a rejection of foreign conflicts. Even as Trump claimed to be the “president of peace,” he spoke of achieving “peace through strength.”
It is understandable that non-interventionists are disappointed in Trump. But many have gone further, accusing him of a radical about-face brought about by undue influence from Israel. Both Dean Baker, the establishment liberal economist, and Candace Owens, the anti-establishment right-wing podcaster, have begun referring to “Operation Epstein Fury.” Curt Mills says that Trump has been “conned and bullied by Israeli hawks and Capitol Hill neocons.”
“Trump’s actions should be blamed on—or credited to—himself.”
But there was no need to con or bully Trump into a course of action he was always ready to pursue. Trump’s actions should be blamed on—or credited to—himself and his supporters, rather than any foreign country. Here as elsewhere, talk of Israeli conspiracy has become a way for MAGA influencers to explain away the gap between their claims about Trump during the campaign, and his record since entering office.
Precisely because this war reflects Trump’s priorities, it will be an important test for his vision of foreign policy. There are reasons to doubt the prudence of Trump’s latest move. But as Stephen Wertheim has noted, the fact that Trump does not care about democracy promotion gives him greater freedom of movement than George W. Bush enjoyed. Just as Trump’s actual foreign policy views never constrained him from launching this attack, they may leave him freer to bring it to an end.