By Abe Greenwald
Monday, March 02, 2026
After American bombers took out Iran’s main nuclear
facilities in June, the populist right’s anti-Israel contingent spread the
rumor that neoconservatives were disheartened because the U.S. didn’t try to
topple the Iranian regime.
This was a lie. Neocons were thrilled that what we had
been advocating for 20 years or so had finally come to pass. We neither called
on Donald Trump to go further nor did we think there was any possibility that
he would.
So why did the neo-isolationists make up this story?
Because they were distressed that Trump had delivered on a top neocon
wish-list item. Even worse for them, it was successful, and we were happy. They
wanted to drink neocon tears, so they manufactured them and soothed themselves
with the fantasy of our discontent. It was what the kids call a “cope.”
Of course, Trump greenlit Operation Midnight Hammer not
because neocons wanted it or convinced him to do it. He did it because of his
long-held conviction that a nuclear Iran would pose an unacceptable threat to
the United States and because Israeli military action against Iran and its
allies had provided a unique window of opportunity that might soon close.
Now that Trump has allied with Israel in a war for
Iranian regime change, there’s no made-up story wild enough for the anti-neocon
gang to pretend that either Trump is “with them” or neocons are in despair.
They feel boxed out, and they’re enraged.
Tucker Carlson has called Operation Epic Fury “absolutely
disgusting and evil.” Marjorie Taylor Greene responded by saying that the Trump
administration was packed with a “bunch of sick f--king liars.” Nick Fuentes
instructed his simian audience to vote for Democrats in the midterms.
Blackwater founder Erik Prince said, “I don’t see how this is in keeping with
the president’s MAGA commitment.” And on and on it goes.
As if we neocons weren’t happy enough.
There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about where
the war leads and what it ultimately yields. But few of these critics cite
them. Instead, they’re lost in their own fantasy roleplay game where motives
are disguised or inverted, double agents are showing their faces, and
state-backed cabals wield wizardly powers of influence—you know, it’s the Jews’
fault. Megyn Kelly simply confessed, “This feels very much to me like it is
clearly Israel’s war.”
On X, Fuentes, Greene, and other unsavory figures I don’t
wish to name are giving it to JD Vance with a vengeance. They feel betrayed by
the vice president who made such a show of being on their side. Vance, after
all, once assured a groyper at a live event that “Israel doesn’t control this
president.” And in downplaying the rise of the right-wing Jew-haters he was
courting, he claimed that the whole issue of anti-Semitism on the right was
made up by pro-Israel conservatives to distract Americans from discussing the
supposedly problematic U.S.-Israel relationship.
Three days ago, that relationship showed the world the
most successful single day of warfighting in history. As ever, pro-Israel
Americans are happy to talk about it. The real question is how Vance tries to
explain to the hate-peddling right his own involvement in the most ambitious
U.S.-Israel military effort we’ve ever seen. Another is how he tries to justify
his association with the hate-peddlers to the rest of us. This is a dilemma of
his own making. Vance thought he could court the right’s Tucker wing without
losing conservatives. And he thought he could distance himself sufficiently
from Trump’s pro-Israel stance to keep the Tucker wing happy.
The war in Iran could turn in any number of directions.
At the moment, it looks far more promising than Vance’s battle for the future
of the right.
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