Isolationist US right-wing commentators decry Iran war; Trump says he doesn’t care
Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly claim Israel is dragging the US into a damaging war; president says that's not true, and that he alone represents MAGA
Prominent right-wing commentators came out against the US-Israeli campaign against Iran on Tuesday, drawing a dismissal from US President Donald Trump.
“This happened because Israel wanted it to happen. This is Israel’s war. This is not the United States’ war,” said Tucker Carlson, a prominent voice on the right.
Carlson said the war was based on “lies” and led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s manipulations, and argued that the campaign was not in the interest of Israel or the US.
“You have that country breaking apart, and what does that mean? Hard to see that as a good thing for the rest of the world,” he said.
“The United States didn’t make the decision here. Benjamin Netanyahu did,” Carlson said, dismissing concerns about Iranian weapons development.
“The point is regional hegemony. Really simple,” he said. “Israel wants to control the Middle East.”
Carlson regularly asserts that Israel controls the US, echoing traditional antisemitic tropes. He also blamed Israel for getting the US to kill Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, and has previously said Israel made the US invade Iraq.
He claimed Israel was seeking to “sow chaos and disorder” in the Gulf states in its pursuit of regional power, adding that authorities in Qatar and Saudi Arabia arrested Mossad agents in their territory this week, a claim that appeared to be baseless and was rejected by Qatar.
Carlson has previously fabricated claims to attack Israel.
He suggested that Israel attacked oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and that Israel was seeking to eject the US from the Middle East, claims that also appeared to be baseless.
The interview had more than 1 million views on YouTube alone in less than a day.
Megyn Kelly, another leading right-wing commentator, said, “No one should have to die for a foreign country,” referring to American troops killed in the war.
“I don’t think those four servicemembers died for the United States. I think they died for Iran or for Israel,” Kelly said. “This is clearly Israel’s war.”
She also mocked Trump for saying that Iran posed an imminent threat to the US.
“Does it make any sense to you that Iran was planning preemptive strikes against us?” she said. “Obviously, it doesn’t.”
Trump dismissed the comments.
“I think that MAGA is Trump — MAGA’s not the other two,” Trump told journalist Rachael Bade, referring to Carlson and Kelly.
“MAGA wants to see our country thrive and be safe, and MAGA loves what I’m doing,” he said.
Carlson “can say whatever he wants. It has no impact on me,” Trump said.
On Tuesday, Trump specified that, if anything, he had dragged Israel into the war, rather than the other way around.
Trump was asked by a reporter in the Oval Office, during a press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, “Did Israel force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran? Did Netanyahu pull the United States into this war?”
He responded: “No, I might have forced their hands. You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they [the Iranians] were going to attack first.
Claims that Jews wield outsize power from the shadows, and that Jews are manipulative warmongerers, are based on historical antisemitic conspiracies.
Carlson has leaned into antisemitic tropes in the past, and has increasingly adopted anti-Zionist talking points more familiar to the left in recent months.
Far-right commentators have taken an isolationist stance to US foreign policy, dovetailing with the anti-imperialist left, although polls show the Republican mainstream is largely in support of the Iran war. Carlson and Kelly are powerful voices on the right, though; Carlson is close to US Vice President JD Vance.
Carlson traveled to Israel to interview US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee late last month. The discussion saw Carlson attack US support for Israel and question Israel’s right to exist, while Huckabee defended the Jewish state, illustrating the clash between the traditional, pro-Israel Republican party, and its isolationist flank.
The growing isolationism and anti-Israel rhetoric on the right, coupled with the widespread hostility to Israel on the left, means that the once-prominent pro-Israel center in the US is becoming increasingly narrow.