A Palestinian American medical student objected to working alongside IDF soldiers. The university suspended her
Umaymah Mohammad has wanted to be a doctor for as long as she remembers. She traces her ambition to the story of her mother, one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by Israel to Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and who contracted polio as a toddler. Despite living with the debilitating disease, Mohammad's mother went on to raise five children and obtain a graduate degree in the US.
It's the story of a woman who 'overcame unbearable medical circumstances', Mohammad said. It also taught the Palestinian American about 'the sociological determinants of health', she said, as Mohammad believes displacement contributed to her mother catching the disease, due to the poor sanitary conditions entire communities of Palestinian refugees faced at the time.
Mohammad, now 28, was up front in her applications to medical school about her goal of becoming a 'physician who speaks up about the social structures of violence that affect health' – and received rejections from most. Emory University, in Atlanta, was an exception. She began a dual program there in 2019 to get both her medical degree and a sociology PhD.
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Four years into her studies, 7 October happened. After watching Israel's deadly retaliation on Gaza in horror from afar, in January 2024, Mohammad sent an email to the entire medical school with the subject: 'Palestinian blood stains your hands, Emory University and School of Medicine.' She railed against her fellow students and the school's faculty for being 'silent about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians'.
That spring, Emory's campus erupted in protests seeking divestment from Israel, prompting Emory's president to call in the Atlanta police on 25 April. It was the fastest show of police force on a US campus at the time. Police used tasers on the students, also a first. As an organizer, Mohammad was in the thick of it.
The next day, she gave an interview on the Democracy Now! news program in which she spoke of the climate on campus for protesters. She also talked about an Emory medical school professor who had recently returned from volunteering as a medic in the Israeli military. This would lead, seven months later, to her suspension from medical school for a year, after she was found to have violated the medical school's standard of 'professional conduct'.
Mohammad's case has become a tense showdown over expression, mirroring the conflict playing out in institutions across the US over Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza. It is also emblematic of a specific concern: professors and students beginning to object to the presence of Israelis on campus who are fresh off military service.
***
When Mohammad went into the Democracy Now! interview in April, she was already upset about what she saw as an immoral double standard. Months earlier, an Emory medical school professor, Abeer N AbouYabis, had been fired after posting on Facebook in support of Palestinians after the events of 7 October. Her post included the phrase: 'They got walls, we got gliders / Glory to all resistance fighters,' a reference to the way members of Hamas glided over walls in Gaza to enter Israel and stage their attack. According to a report on AbouYabis's firing by Emory's committee for open expression, her post was seen as 'glorifying' the group.
At the same time, Mohammad told her Democracy Now! interviewer: 'One of the professors of medicine we have at Emory recently went to serve as a volunteer medic' in the IDF. That professor, she continued, 'participated in aiding and abetting a genocide, in aiding and abetting the destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza and the murder of over 400 healthcare workers, and is now back at Emory so-called 'teaching' medical students and residents how to take care of patients'.
Mohammad's remarks on the program drew complaints from the professor – who she did not name – and a dean, who has since left Emory. The professor told the medical school he didn't feel safe, as Mohammad's interview could expose him and his family to harassment. He asked medical school administrators to investigate her for violating the school's code of conduct.
In July, an investigator released their initial findings: Mohammad had violated the medical school's code of conduct with regards to 'professionalism' and 'mutual respect' by singling out and disparaging an individual during her Democracy Now! interview.
This caught the attention of Emory's committee for open expression, and that month, its chair, the physics professor Ilya Nemenman, asked the school of medicine to allow the committee to weigh in. But Nemenman was rebuffed: 'The School of Medicine Conduct Code does not include a role for the [committee] in a student disciplinary matter,' said the executive associate dean John William Eley in his reply.
Nemenman wrote back almost immediately, reiterating his request and insisting that this interpretation broke with at least a decade's worth of precedent. His reaction was echoed by George Shepherd, a law professor and Emory's faculty senate president, who also wrote to Eley expressing he was 'surprised' at the 'terse rejection'. (The faculty senate oversees the committee.)
'A student's right to free expression is implicated most dramatically when Emory disciplines the student for what they have expressed,' Shepherd added.
Neither Shepherd nor Nemenman received a reply, and in September, Eley asked Mohammad in a letter which of two routes she wanted to follow: accept the finding and allow a dean to decide on appropriate sanctions, or proceed with a hearing. She chose the latter.
'Accepting guilt would mean accepting not talking about Palestine and accepting not talking about genocide, and no career is worth that,' she told the Guardian.
Later that month, the open expression committee released a report of its own: according to its independent investigation, the content of Mohammad's interview was protected by Emory's policy on free expression. In fact, the committee said, the school of medicine had violated Emory's policy on open expression by conducting the investigation in the way it did.
Nemenman wrote in the report that, by ignoring the committee, the school of medicine 'violated not just the Policy, but, ironically, also the 'principles of professionalism and mutual respect', which they had aimed to enforce with this Conduct Code investigation'.
Caught between these two conflicting interpretations, Mohammad faced her hearing on 12 November. The professor and the dean who had accused her, together with a faculty adviser of the professor, 'testified for my expulsion', she said. 'They wanted me to never be able to practice medicine … [and] one was spitting across the table, his face red, yelling a lot,' she recalled. They demanded she provide evidence to support her claims about the professor. At one point, the adviser screamed: 'Who are you to decide what's a genocide?'
Mohammad said she felt outmatched and that attempts to argue her case fell on deaf ears. She described the hearing as 'one of the most dehumanizing two hours of my life'.
As Mohammad's PhD adviser, the sociology professor Karida L Brown, was allowed to accompany her in the hearing. Brown, whose research centers on race and racism, echoed Mohammad's description. It was 'like a Jim Crow court', she said. 'It never felt fair, from the beginning,' she said, citing the school of medicine's refusal to engage the open expression committee or consider its report.
Seven days after the hearing, Mohammad was informed that she had been suspended from the medical school for one academic year, and would be on probation from the time she returned until she graduated. Her appeal of the suspension was denied.
Mohammad decided to go public: in the new year she wrote about her case for Mondoweiss and held a press conference, in the hopes the school of medicine would reverse its decision and change its code of conduct to better align with Emory's policies on open expression. Her name and photo had already been posted online after her January 2024 email by pro-Israel groups such as Canary Mission, and fellow medical school students had also called her a 'terrorist' online. In this atmosphere, she decided at one point to leave her Atlanta house for a week – 'for safety', she said.
A request for comment to Eley was forwarded to an Emory spokesperson, Laura Diamond, who said: 'Emory is unable to discuss student conduct cases.' Diamond also pointed out that Emory released an updated open expression policy on 20 March. The new policy states that while a representative from the free expression committee may play an advisory role in disciplinary hearings if requested by the person facing discipline, it has no right to relevant information or records from university officials, nor does it have a right to participate in hearings.
'Administrators are still able to ignore open expression policy – [the updated language] doesn't sufficiently provide protection under open expression policy to students rights,' said a person familiar with the deliberations. The language was updated because of Mohammad's case, they said.
Mohammad has at least a year left on her sociology PhD, after which she was planning to return to her MD program. Instead, her suspension will go into effect then, delaying her MD another year.
As she returned to campus this spring, one scene in particular from her hearing played over and over in her head. 'I'll never forget what one of them said to me at the end,' she said. 'I'm sorry about your mother, but that has nothing to do with this.'
***
Particularly since the 1967 war that displaced Mohammad's mother and thousands of others, healthcare for Palestinians in Gaza has been fragmented and weakened. But in the last 18 months, 'Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system,' according to a UN report, which accused the IDF of war crimes including targeting medical personnel and bombing most of Gaza's hospitals. More than 1,000 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. Israel has denied the allegations.
It is in this context that Mohammad and some in the medical field in the US have grown increasingly frustrated at the lack of outcry from members of their profession – especially since most of those bombs were made in the US. The frustration, in some cases, has become personal, feeding tensions between students and faculty protesting Israel and Israelis on campus who have served in the IDF since 7 October. (Military service is compulsory in Israel, and a number of Israelis in the US traveled back to volunteer in the military after the Hamas attacks.)
'What kind of care are medical students learning when these are our mentors and educators?' Mohammad wrote in her Mondoweiss article. 'What kind of care are patients receiving from doctors who believe in the legitimacy of apartheid, and that some human lives are not as important as others?'.
At least two professors at US universities have faced consequences in recent months after publicly expressing concern about former IDF soldiers on campus. The Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke said she was forced out of the school in January after bringing up the issue of Israeli students 'right out of their military service … [who have] been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus'. She had also been speaking on Democracy Now!
Dr Rupa Marya, a professor of medicine and a physician, was banned from campus at the University of California, San Francisco, for posting on X about the presence of former IDF soldiers at medical schools specifically: 'Med students at UCSF are concerned that a first year student from Israel is in their class. They're asking if he participated in the genocide of Palestinians in the IDF before matriculating.'
In an interview with the Guardian, Marya elaborated on her concern: 'How do we integrate [Israeli] reservists into the medical community – with [Palestinian] students who have lost 50 or 60 family members? What is the moral obligation of medicine?'
She is still undergoing hearings at UCSF to determine her future at the school, she said. UCSF did not reply to a request for comment.
Also in January, a scheduled talk by a surgeon and member of the IDF medical corps at the University of Maryland school of medicine, on 'advancing care, saving lives and improving outcomes', was cancelled, after the school received thousands of emails in protest.
Azka Mahmood, executive director of Cair-Georgia, or the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Mohammad's case was unusual because 'we haven't seen medical students targeted in this way,' she said. 'You have a Palestinian medical student who specifically joined the field trying to understand inequities and the role of medicine in violence. To have to work side by side with an IDF soldier is exacerbating, and makes it uniquely painful for her.'
Mohammad and Marya have connected and are now part of a small group, including the founders of Doctors Against Genocide, who are launching a Zoom course aimed at healthcare workers and medical students who want to 'speak up about the genocide in Gaza … and build a just future for our health systems'. They called the course 'Cultivating Courage'.
'It is our obligation as a medical community to do no harm and to protect life,' said Karameh Kuemmerle, a Palestinian American doctor and founder of Doctors Against Genocide, a self-described 'global health coalition committed to stopping genocide' that has recently organized healthcare workers to lobby US lawmakers on getting aid to Gaza. 'To see our hospitals and medical institutions avoid this issue because it's 'too divisive' … is something we simply do not accept,' Kuemmerle said.
Nidal Jboor, another founder, noted that medical institutions such as the Red Cross failed to speak out against the Holocaust while it was happening. If US doctors and medical students continue down the same path with regards to Gaza, he said, 'it's putting us on the wrong side of history.'
The project has been a rare bright spot for Mohammad. 'Repression often brings you new community,' she said.
Back at Emory, Brown, Mohammad's doctoral adviser, said she was proud of her student. 'She's doing what she's supposed to do – holding her field accountable to its stated ideals,' Brown said, adding: 'She will be Dr Mohammad, one way or the other.'
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There's a bitter clash on the right. It could determine whether Trump takes us to war.
is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He's worked at Vox since the site's launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker's Washington, DC, bureau. For months, leading up to Israel's attacks on Iran last week, an intense and bitter battle has been underway on the American right — a battle for influence over President Donald Trump's foreign policy. The core assumptions that have guided Washington's approach to the world for 80 years are suddenly up for debate. The global balance of power, the outcome of life-and-death conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, and more momentous future questions of war and peace all hang in the balance. GOP foreign policy has long been steered by hawks, who see the US as locked in a struggle for global dominance against hostile and dangerous foreign powers. They're willing to threaten — and, in some cases, use — military force to achieve American ends. During his first presidential campaign, Trump broke with the hawks on some key issues, but his first-term governance was largely hawkish in practice. In the past few years, though, an 'America First' faction came together to try and push Trump's second term in a different direction. Deeply skeptical of 'neocons,' foreign entanglements, and 'forever wars,' they've competed with the hawks over administration jobs, tried to swing the MAGA base to their side, and worked to win Trump over in private. Leading their fight was an unlikely foreign policy power trio: Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr., and Vice President JD Vance. The three are like-minded in their loathing for the establishment and are also personal friends. It is not uncommon, in Washington, to hear talk of a 'JD-Tucker-Don Jr.' axis of American foreign policy. Their increased influence meant Washington's hawkish consensus was facing perhaps its most serious challenge in decades. At times since January, it has seemed the America Firsters were winning. In April, when Israeli officials presented Trump with a plan to strike Iran, he rejected it in favor of pursuing negotiations over their nuclear program instead. Pro-Israel hawks were deeply worried about the concessions Trump's team might make. But as talks stretched on without success and Israel became more determined to strike, Trump decided not to stand in their way. The Israeli operation began Thursday night, killing many top Iranian military leaders and targeting nuclear sites. The hawks were overjoyed. Trump officials initially characterized the attack as a unilateral Israeli decision. But soon, the president began taking some credit for it, though he insisted a deal with Iran was still possible. Carlson had spent months urging Trump not to get involved. 'The greatest win would be avoiding what would be the true disaster of a war with Iran, which would not stay in Iran, of course,' he told me in an interview at the beginning of this month. He'd warned that US participation in a strike would be 'suicidal' and that 'we'd lose the war that follows.' The US is not at war with Iran yet. But the chances we'll be drawn into one are rising. So though Democrats generally despise the America Firsters' domestic politics, dismiss them as bigots and xenophobes, and are appalled by their calls to abandon Ukraine — it's worth noting that they're the leading GOP figures opposing war with Iran. The America Firsters have also called for rethinking the US's approach to the world more broadly. That not only includes questioning our involvement in NATO, but also questioning the logic that could lead the US into a major war with China over Taiwan. Generally, they doubt that trying to run the world helps Americans. The hawks dismiss them as dangerously naive, arguing that pulling back US involvement abroad would actually make war more likely — our enemies will run rampant, they say, if we don't check their influence. The America Firsters argue just the opposite: that it's our meddling attempts to run the world as if we're still the sole superpower that court disaster. 'We're not going back to a unipolar world,' Carlson told me. 'It's not going to happen. But I guess we could have a nuclear war over it — and we may.' Inside this story How JD Vance, Tucker Carlson, and Donald Trump Jr. came together to oppose aiding Ukraine — and then gained influence over Trump's second term The leaks, firings, and factional knife-fighting roiling Trump's foreign policy appointments The right's tense debate over whether to seek a deal with Iran or back an Israeli attack The qualms some on the right have over US military strategy to check China in Asia Have the hawks now gained the upper hand in influencing Trump? The power of the hawks In many ways, this is just the latest flare-up of a long-running tension inside the American right — one that's existed since the US emerged as a major global power at the start of the 20th century. Back then, hawkish interventionists pushed for the US to join both world wars and protect the peace afterward. But the isolationists didn't want to get bogged down in intractable foreign conflicts or send their sons to die in foreign lands. They supported, they said, America First. World War II gave the interventionist hawks the upper hand, and in the Cold War, the hawks held sway again, arguing the US had to intervene abroad to prevent communism from overrunning the world. The '90s brought a brief revival of isolationism championed by figures like Pat Buchanan, who questioned why, with communism defeated, the US needed such extensive overseas involvement. But 9/11 cemented the hawks' dominance again, confirming to many that the US had to fight foreign enemies over there, or they'd fight us over here. Buchanan criticized President George W. Bush's Iraq War as the work of a 'cabal' that included 'neocons,' but few on the right cared. Keywords of the right's foreign policy debate Neoconservatives : Critics of the hawks frequently call them 'neocons,' which is nowadays mainly a pejorative meant to disparage them as plotting to embroil the US in foolish wars. Back during President George W. Bush's administration, the neoconservatives were a subgroup of hawkish intellectuals who argued that war to depose the Iraqi government could help spread democracy across the Middle East. (Typical hawks don't necessarily share this rosy view of spreading democracy.) America First: Many skeptics of intervention abroad have long used the phrase 'America First' to describe their views. President Woodrow Wilson used the slogan in his 1916 reelection campaign — though, after winning, he entered World War I. Later, as World War II raged, the America First Committee argued vociferously against US involvement. Its most prominent member was the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, who Many skeptics of intervention abroad have long used the phrase 'America First' to describe their views. President Woodrow Wilson used the slogan in his 1916 reelection campaign — though, after winning, he entered World War I. Later, as World War II raged, the America First Committee argued vociferously against US involvement. Its most prominent member was the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, who said in a speech that 'the Jewish' were among those pushing the US toward war. Trump revived the 'America First' term during his first presidential campaign to signal a break with the GOP establishment. Carlson, then the co-host of CNN's Crossfire, had supported the war. But on a December 2003 trip to Iraq, in which he spent time outside the Green Zone, he soured on it: 'I saw the opposite of what I expected to see, chaos and confusion and disorder and violence,' he told me. The following year, he was quoted in the New York Times voicing regret: 'I supported the war and I now feel foolish.' The pushback from the right, he says now, was furious: 'I was absolutely hated for that by people I knew well and worked with and was friends with.' Indeed, the adamant pro-war consensus among GOP elites and rank-and-file Republicans persisted even as conditions in Iraq worsened. And hawkishness continued to reign supreme on the right: Republicans criticized President Barack Obama for showing weakness toward Iran and Russia or for withdrawing from Iraq too soon. The only foreign policy critique they could imagine was a hawkish one, and the only solution was more hawkishness. Saying the Iraq War was a mistake or failure was unthinkable. Until, that is, Trump said it. During his first presidential bid, in 2015, he trashed the war as a debacle and a 'tremendous disservice to humanity' — suddenly giving the isolationists in the party, long an irrelevant fringe, a new life. In this, he was voicing what an increasing number of Republican voters had come to believe — that the war had failed. Trump's heresies went further. He wanted to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and Syria. He had friendly things to say about Russian President Vladimir Putin — which was so unusual for a mainstream politician that many wondered whether he was being blackmailed or bribed. He disdained NATO, widely viewed as the protector of peace in Europe, as an expensive waste. Yet he also had some more typical hawkish instincts, calling for more confrontation of China and Iran and promising to 'bomb the shit out of' ISIS. Yet while Trump embraced the 'America First' label in practice, much of his first-term policy was steered by the hawkish establishment — sometimes to Trump's enthusiasm, sometimes to his frustration. How Carlson, Trump Jr., and Vance helped turn the right against Ukraine – and rose to greater influence Tucker Carlson and VP nominee JD Vance joined Trump at the Republican National Convention July 15, 2024 in Milwaukee, most important challenge to the hawks during Trump's first term played out at 8 pm Eastern, every weeknight. This was when Tucker Carlson held the airwaves, using some of the most valuable airtime in conservative media — really, all media — to try to shape and articulate a distinct ideology that would appeal to the MAGA base. To this end, he indulged Americans' bigoted and xenophobic impulses, promoted conspiracy theories, and became loathed by liberals. But he also directed much of his ire at the GOP's establishment — and reserved particular scorn for the foreign policy hawks. Carlson often used his airtime to poke holes in hawkish arguments and warn against war. After Soleimani's killing in 2020, he said that the 'neocon objective' was war with Iran and regime change but asked, 'Is Iran really the greatest threat we face? And who's actually benefiting from this?' He was, essentially, waging a war of ideas for the future of the Republican Party — and trying to give the MAGA faithful a different, non-hawkish way to think about these issues. The hawks' lonely critics on the right were grateful. 'Tucker's the mothership,' Curt Mills, executive director of the American Conservative — a magazine Buchanan co-founded — told me. Carlson was a skilled entertainer and clever debater who could go highbrow and lowbrow. He could also be very persuasive — in public and in private. A prolific texter, he cultivated ties to key MAGA-world figures — including, crucially, Donald Trump Jr. In 2020, Politico reported Carlson had 'established a friendship' with the president's eldest son. Don Jr., at that point, had not been known for his foreign policy views, and he had limited influence on policy or personnel for most of his father's first term. But unlike his sister Ivanka and brother-in-law Jared Kushner, Don Jr. was drawn to the MAGA base — and to a worldview that was a lot like Carlson's. By 2020, Don Jr. had become an outspoken critic of 'forever wars' and the 'neocons' who he said were undercutting and sabotaging his father. After January 6 and Trump's ignominious departure from office, Jared and Ivanka stepped back and Don Jr. stepped forward, becoming an increasingly important adviser in his father's comeback plans. He believed a second Trump administration had to be filled with MAGA loyalists rather than establishment-tied saboteurs. Trumpworld's distrust of neocons continued to deepen, particularly once the Cheney family turned hard against Trump after January 6. Around the same time, JD Vance began running for Senate in Ohio. Carlson already knew him and began openly championing his primary candidacy on his Fox show. Then, after Vance had the good judgment to hire one of Don Jr.'s top advisers for his campaign, he got connected with the president's son — who was very impressed by him. They, too, became friends. The first test of their ability to influence the right on foreign policy came as Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. Amid warnings of a full-scale invasion, Carlson ran segments questioning how Americans have been 'told' to hate Putin and Russia. Vance said he didn't 'really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other,' and that 'the foreign policy establishment gets rich when American children die for dumb ideas.' Don Jr. asserted that 'there is no American interest that justifies our intervention in Ukraine.' Yet to many, the Russian invasion seemed to prove the hawks right. Putin, it turned out, did have malign intentions, and now here he was ending decades of peace in Europe. Supporting Ukraine to try to stop him, most believed, was both the moral and the strategically correct move. The trio stuck to their guns, though, arguing that moralistic war fever was setting in — and that the hawks, in their zeal to clash with a nuclear power, could get a lot more people, maybe all of us, killed. Trailing in polls in a crowded primary, Vance took heat from his more traditionally hawkish rivals in attack ads, but this eventually spurred Don Jr. to speak out publicly to defend him. After private lobbying from Carlson and Don Jr., an endorsement from Trump himself soon followed and carried Vance to a narrow victory. As the Ukraine war stretched into 2023, its support on the right grew shakier. Carlson hammered home his skeptical arguments nightly. He claimed that aid money to Ukraine was wasted when we have so many problems at home, that escalation of the war was dangerous, and even that the US was partly responsible for provoking the war by expanding NATO. In his narrative, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was, if not the villain, a villain — and certainly no hero. Democrats and traditionally minded Republicans watched in horror, believing this was a Bizarro World inversion of reality. But the GOP base — particularly its most engaged and pro-MAGA elements — was gradually won over. In part, this was due to negative polarization against a cause championed by President Joe Biden (whose son Hunter's past highly compensated work in the country further suggested that something was rotten here). Others, like Elon Musk, characterized Ukraine support as the latest in a series of foolish and annoying progressive fads. In the mainstream, criticizing Ukraine aid made you anathema; on the online right, it made you cool. In March 2023, with the Republican presidential primary kicking off, Carlson sent a questionnaire asking every prospective candidate about their Ukraine views; Ron DeSantis, courting the base, flip-flopped to back Carlson's position. Soon afterward, Carlson was suddenly fired from Fox amid internal controversies and launched a new show on Musk's X. But the party kept moving toward him: Conservatives in the GOP-held House held up Ukraine aid for months. By summer 2024, 47 percent of Republicans said the US was doing 'too much' to help Ukraine, and just 30 percent said the US was doing the right amount or not enough. For the first time, the America Firsters had successfully mobilized and won an intra-party argument on a foreign policy issue. Carlson and his allies changed the default GOP position away from hawkishness and toward skepticism of supporting Ukraine — and, along the way, launched Vance's political career. In 2024, Don Jr. and Carlson again successfully lobbied Trump to endorse Vance — as his VP nominee. (Carlson reportedly told Trump that if he picked a 'neocon' instead, the 'deep state' might have him assassinated.) Once in office, Vance delivered — smacking down Zelenskyy in a public Oval Office meeting, and rebutting hawkish critics in lengthy, biting X posts. From left, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President Donald Trump, and Vice President JD Vance during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 28. Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images Yet Trump still seems hesitant to truly cut Ukraine loose. Rather than simply washing his hands of the situation, he wants to help end the war, and he's grown increasingly frustrated that Putin doesn't seem to share that desire. He's recently attacked the Russian president ('he's gone absolutely CRAZY') and threatened new sanctions on Russia. He has no love for Ukraine, but he still seems to fear being blamed for a Ukrainian defeat. The new divide on the right over Israel and Iran With Vice President Vance, the America Firsters had one of their own in a top administration post. But in the days after the presidential election, it briefly seemed as if he'd be the only one. Rumors suggested that Trump would name the conventionally hawkish Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, and Elise Stefanik to top foreign policy positions, while Mike Pompeo — his hawkish first-term secretary of state — seemed in line for secretary of defense. Quickly, Carlson and Don Jr. staged an intervention, warning the president-elect that he was repeating his past mistakes. When one X poster urged Don Jr. to keep 'all neocons and war hawks out' of the administration, Don Jr. replied, 'I'm on it.' Soon, Trump announced that Pompeo would not be chosen (he'd eventually go so far as to yank Pompeo's government security detail). And he made unconventional picks that shocked Washington: Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Pete Hegseth for defense secretary. The drama over lower-level appointments soon grew even more intense. And a major sticking point, it quickly emerged, was policy toward Israel and Iran. GOP hawks had long championed Israel and vowed to stand with it against its enemies, such as Iran. But many on the isolationist or populist right have long been less keen on this idea — suspicious of foreign entanglements, worried about advancing Israel's interest rather than America's, and dubious about more Middle Eastern wars. (For some, these concerns were paired with arguable or explicit antisemitism). After Hamas's October 7, 2023 attacks, Carlson, for instance, urged caution and restraint, worried about the US being drawn into war with Iran, questioned why Americans were so worked up about this rather than our problems at home, and argued the Israeli government mistreated Christians. 'How is this helping America, exactly? I don't see a huge upside for the United States in paying for this,' he told me, referring to Israel's Gaza war. But many others, including some in the America First camp, pushed back: 'There is no analogy between the situation in Ukraine and Israel,' Stephen Miller wrote in 2023, saying Israel was 'fighting a jihadist death squad' and that its war was 'a necessary action to ensure the survival of the sole Jewish state.' Don Jr. felt similarly: 'You don't negotiate with this,' he wrote. 'There's only one way to handle this.' And in a May 2024 speech, weeks before his selection as the VP nominee, Vance contrasted Ukraine's war and Israel's, saying he was fully supportive of the latter. But by the end of last year, Israel was making plans to strike Iran's nuclear program — and seeking US assistance in doing so. Many traditional GOP hawks were on board, arguing that since Iran's proxies Hamas and Hezbollah had been badly weakened, now was the perfect time to attack. More broadly, they believed Iran could never be allowed to go nuclear — it was simply too dangerous to Israel and the world. What was truly necessary, they thought, was regime change. The America Firsters, however, were not sold. They did not want war with Iran and saw another neocon plot taking shape. The Trump administration staffed up while this debate was unfolding, and hawkish Israel supporters responded to some of its hires with alarm. Critical articles appeared in publications like the New York Post, Jewish Insider, and Tablet, arguing certain midlevel appointees were worryingly soft on Iran. Elbridge Colby, who'd said containing a nuclear Iran was 'eminently plausible' and was nominated for the Defense Department's top policymaking job, became a particular flashpoint. Hawks in the Senate threatened to spike his nomination, but Vance vocally backed him and he made it through. Most alarming of all to hawks was Steve Witkoff, the real estate investor and foreign policy neophyte who surprisingly became Trump's negotiator in chief, and who they feared was giving away the store to Hamas and Iran. 'Our main worry is Witkoff, really,' a plugged-in hawk told me last month. 'You can boil it down to that.' President Donald Trump delivers remarks as Vice President JD Vance, right, and Steve Witkoff, center, stand by on May many hawks who sought administration jobs hit a wall. Here, Don Jr.'s influence was crucial — a friend and business partner of his, Sergio Gor, was named director of the Presidential Personnel Office, and took on the job of screening out neocons. A source with knowledge of administration dynamics told me that Gor 'made a decision that he wasn't going to hire from the traditional places' — the hawkish institutions that had long fed into GOP foreign policy jobs. The exception was Mike Waltz's National Security Council. Waltz, the source told me, initially had more freedom to do his own hiring, and he made the NSC staff a beachhead for hawks. But Waltz quickly became a beleaguered figure. As Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for attacking Iran, Waltz appeared to be closely coordinating with him in a way that raised the America Firsters' suspicions. Back in March, the Israeli attack proposal faced skepticism inside the administration from Vance and other top officials. While this debate was ongoing, Trump's advisers also debated whether to strike the Houthis, the Iran-backed Yemeni militia that was endangering shipping in the region. Waltz and Hegseth were on board, but Vance was one of the few urging caution. 'I think we are making a mistake,' he wrote in a group chat with other advisers, worrying about the economic impact and a lack of public buy-in. 'I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself,' he continued, but he urged delaying the strikes at least a month. The hawks won that argument but soon faced several setbacks. Waltz had inadvertently invited the editor of the Atlantic to that group chat, which put an unwelcome spotlight on him. Soon afterward, the far-right activist Laura Loomer convinced Trump to fire six NSC staffers she disparaged as 'neocons.' It didn't take long for Waltz himself, and dozens more NSC staffers, to be shown the door. (The NSC was handed to Rubio, who was initially deemed a hawk, but now seemed to have accommodated himself to Trump's priorities rather than trying to impose his own agenda.) On top of all that, the Houthi strikes were incredibly expensive and ultimately deemed ineffective; Trump has since called them off. In April, Trump rejected the planned Israeli strike on Iran and began pursuing negotiations with the Iranians led by Witkoff — to the hawks' deep dismay. And during a trip to the Middle East last month, Trump seemed to side with the America Firsters in a speech that criticized 'neocons' and 'interventionists.' In the speech, Trump insisted he wanted a deal with Iran — though he added that, if Iran rejected his overtures, he'd return to maximum pressure. President Donald Trump, right, speaks alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a model of Air Force One on the table, during a meeting in the Oval Office on April as Trump tried to deal, he was also facing pressure. The hawks soon united around the demand that any deal could not allow any Iranian nuclear enrichment — something Iran was insisting on. Every Senate Republican except Rand Paul, plus most of the House GOP, signed a letter urging Trump not to allow any Iranian nuclear enrichment, and soon he and Witkoff were saying that was their position, too. Compromises intended to let both sides claim victory were privately floated, but none stuck. In early June, hawkish talk radio host Mark Levin visited Trump at the White House, insisted that Iran was days away from completing a nuclear weapon, and urged Trump to 'allow the Israeli government to strike Iranian nuclear sites,' Politico reported. Carlson revealed Levin's visit in a lengthy post on X, writing, 'These are scary people. Pray that Donald Trump ignores them.' He did not ignore them. It is not yet known what exactly Trump privately told Netanyahu, but it is highly unlikely that Israel's extensive attack on Iran took place without his tacit blessing. At the very least, Trump stopped affirmatively standing in the way of an Israeli strike. The question now is whether the nightmare scenario Carlson and others warned of — in which the US gets drawn into the war and it goes disastrously — ensues. Since the strikes began, Carlson has argued that allowing them wasn't 'America First' policy. Asked about that by the Atlantic's Michael Scherer on Saturday, Trump answered: 'I'm the one that decides that.' Does Trump want a new Cold War with China — or a big, beautiful deal? China's President Xi Jinping, right, shakes hands with President Donald Trump on June 28, 2019, before a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images Bombs are already falling in Ukraine and Iran. But all that could, in the end, be a sideshow compared to the question of what happens between the US and its premier global rival: China. A potential war in Asia — perhaps started by China as an effort to reclaim the island of Taiwan — is the biggest fear keeping many US policymakers up at night. Elbridge Colby, the Defense Department's top policy official, is in an alliance of convenience with the America Firsters: he supports reducing US involvement in Ukraine and in the Middle East. But unlike them, he does so because he wants to better focus resources on what he believes is a far more important goal. The 'cardinal objective of US grand strategy,' Colby wrote in a 2021 book, should be to deny China 'hegemony' over Asia. In Colby's conception, hegemony is overwhelming predominance and authority without direct control — the US has it in North and Central America. China, he argues, is trying to achieve hegemony in Asia, by pushing the US out. Colby acknowledges hegemony over Asia would give nuclear-armed China little added ability to threaten the US homeland. The 'more plausible' danger, he says, is that China could 'set up a commercial trading bloc' that could exclude and disfavor the US from trade in Asia, which he calls the world's most important economic region. Preventing this, Colby writes, requires 'firm and focused action'; namely, the US must form and lead an 'anti-hegemonic coalition' of other states in the region. But there's a huge risk: If China forcibly seized a US 'ally or quasi-ally,' like Taiwan, US authority in the region would unravel. Therefore, the US should work to ensure that doesn't happen. And though hopefully the result will be peace through deterrence, we must accept 'the distinct possibility of war with China.' This is a realist version of the traditional hawkish argument, accepted by the national security establishments of both parties, that the US must prevent China from getting too much power in Asia. (Other, more moralizing versions tout the superiority of US values or a US-led world order.) And to most in the foreign policy sphere, this is common sense. Great powers compete and seek advantage, often at the risk of war, because if you don't risk war, you lose. The idea that we could just, well, not do this — that we could stand aside and let China dominate Asia — seems preposterous. The America Firsters have no love for China and tend to be all for a trade war. But some are more skeptical about this military competition logic — fearing, again, entangling alliances that risk getting Americans killed far from home. In Vance's May 2024 foreign policy speech, he criticized 'neoconservatives' who he deemed eager for war, saying: 'Put me firmly in the category of, I don't want to go to war with China, and I want to make more of our own stuff. Okay?' 'We're in a rivalry with China, no one would debate that,' Carlson told me. 'But are we hoping to revert to or maintain a unipolar world, where the United States makes all decisions unchallenged — where we get to make decisions about the borders in Asia? Where do we get the authority to make those decisions? And do we have the strength to make those decisions?' 'I guess we could have a war over Taiwan. I'm pretty certain we'd lose! But what would be the point of the war?' he went on. 'Because we need to get all the semiconductors? Because China doesn't like to sell us stuff?' The hawks argue, in contrast, that military counter-balancing is the best way to avoid war. 'You don't want to get to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan given what that would mean for Japan, the Philippines, etc.,' Matthew Continetti, of the American Enterprise Institute, told me. 'You need to deter it.' That, he said, can be done by 'making Taiwan as prickly and as frightening to Chinese military planners as possible.' The second Trump administration is filled with China hawks, and in keeping with his longtime China-bashing rhetoric and love of economic warfare, he's pursued a confrontational course. He ramped up his trade war with China, and talk of 'decoupling' the two economies has intensified. He's acting aggressively to keep technologies, such as advanced semiconductors, away from China. And in keeping with the hawks' weapons, he's arming Taiwan. Yet Trump does seem to share the America First skepticism about war to defend Taiwan or another Asian country. Unlike Biden — who repeatedly said the US would defend Taiwan — Trump has been more vague on what he'd do. He's complained that Taiwan 'took our chip business' and stressed how far away and small it is compared to China. His skepticism extends to US troop commitments in other Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, too. 'This administration's China policy is objectively more dovish than Biden's,' the source with knowledge of administration internal dynamics argued, adding that Trump 'views the economic side fundamentally as different than the military side.' It may not be so easy to separate the two. In April, in response to Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs, China restricted exports of 'rare earth' materials that are crucial to US military technology as well as some civilian manufacturing. This move, the Washington Post reported, caused 'deep consternation at high levels of the administration.' It apparently spurred Trump to seek a truce in May. But Trump officials soon rolled out new 'tough on China' policies, and the truce fell apart. So what is Trump's endgame? Many speculate that he intends all his tough talk and actions to be a prelude to a big, beautiful deal with China — something far less disruptive than a lengthy, painful 'decoupling' would be, and something quite different than what the hawks envision. Would such a deal just be about trade, or might it also encompass the US's involvement in Asia? The New York Times' Edward Wong recently argued that Trump could be inclined toward an idea of 'spheres of influence' — basically, the US gets the Americas, and China gets Asia. This would horrify the hawks — much of Colby's positioning in recent years can be seen as an effort to convince Trump and MAGA not to do this. But there's little sign that this is the administration's actual policy so far. In early June, Trump tried to revive the trade war truce in a call with China's Xi Jinping. The Chinese president reportedly warned Trump that hawks in his administration were jeopardizing their relationship with provocative policies. After further negotiations with top officials, Trump claimed Wednesday morning that the truce was back on. He posted on Truth Social: 'RELATIONSHIP IS EXCELLENT.' Why Trump says he wants deals – but gets tempted toward hawkishness Trump shares many instincts with the America Firsters: He dislikes long wars. He wants to avoid pesky foreign entanglements. He's skeptical of our allies. But one complication is that, unlike the isolationists of old, he does not actually want to withdraw the US from the global stage. Instead, he wants to make deals. The complication is that, in such deals, Trump desperately wants to be perceived as a 'winner' and not a 'loser' or 'sucker.' And if he feels like there's a risk of that latter outcome, he starts to favor aggression to shake things up. Often this involves empty threats, but sometimes — as we saw in Iran last week — it entails actual military force. Sometimes, Trump grows concerned that too many people believe he typically bluffs or backs down and tries to restore his reputation for dangerous unpredictability. It remains to be seen whether Trump can actually clinch big, consequential deals with foreign adversaries. Talks with North Korea's Kim Jong Un in his first term resulted in nothing. The recent talks with Iran have now been derailed by Israel's attack. If talks with Russia and China also fail, Trump will likely find himself tempted back toward typical hawkish policies again. (He's already threatening sanctions on Putin.) New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd infamously called Trump 'Donald the dove' during the 2016 campaign. But Trump has never been anything like a peacenik. He dislikes wars that go poorly — but if he's persuaded a military action will go well and make him look strong and successful, he's happy to support it. The America Firsters have made a play toward challenging the hawks' dominance on the right, and Trump is often sympathetic to their critique. But his support of Israel's Iran attack is a major setback for their project. As global tensions rise and bombs fall, can Trump manage to return to the path of diplomacy? Or is it already too late?
Time Magazine
2 hours ago
- Time Magazine
How Involved Was the U.S. in Israel's Attack on Iran?
The U.S. has repeatedly denied involvement in Israel's initial attack against Iran —a position that Iran has disputed as missiles continue to fly between the two countries and the risk of further escalation looms should the world's biggest military be pulled into the fight, which has already killed hundreds and wounded more than a thousand since Friday in Iran and killed 19 and injured hundreds in Israel, as of Monday morning. A number of reports, however, suggest that the U.S. may have played a greater role than has officially been admitted. Unnamed U.S. officials told multiple news outlets on Sunday that President Donald Trump rejected an Israeli plan to assassinate Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 'Have the Iranians killed an American yet? No. Until they do we're not even talking about going after the political leadership,' one official told Reuters. Israel has denied such a plan, but the reported rejection by Trump would indicate some amount of coordination between the U.S. and Israel. The attack on Iran came amid protracted talks between the U.S. and Iran centered around Iran's nuclear program. Trump has emphasized finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict, touting his self-professed ability to broker peace, but Iran and Israel have so far shrugged off international calls for deescalation as both sides launched new attacks early Monday. Iran has vowed to retaliate against the U.S., too, while Trump has warned: 'If we are attacked in any way, shape, or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the U.S. Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before.' Here's what to know about U.S. involvement so far. 'Nothing to do with the attack' Israel launched its attacks, dubbed 'Operation Rising Lion,' early Friday, targeting Iran's nuclear facilities as well as military leaders and nuclear scientists and promising that strikes 'will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat' of Iran's nuclear program. Iran launched retaliatory strikes at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Friday evening and have continued to fire missiles at the country. Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran has 'solid evidence' that the U.S. provided support for Israel's attacks. Iran's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the attacks 'could not have been carried out without coordination with and approval of the United States,' adding that the U.S. will be 'held responsible for the dangerous consequences of Israel's adventurism.' The U.S. has denied any involvement in Israel's strikes, a position that the Trump Administration has repeated multiple times since Friday. 'We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement released soon after the strikes started, describing the attack as 'unilateral action' by Israel. Rubio admitted Israel had informed the Trump Administration of the attack, which both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have also reiterated. The U.S. evacuated embassy staff from across the region the day before the attack last week. In a post on Truth Social urging Iran to 'make a deal,' Trump suggested Friday that he was also aware of 'the next already planned attacks,' which would be 'even more brutal.' Later that day, when asked by the Wall Street Journal if he was given a heads-up about the initial attacks by Israel, he suggested that description was an understatement, responding: 'Heads-up? It wasn't a heads-up. It was, we know what's going on.' But on Saturday night, following further strikes, Trump again posted: 'The U.S. had nothing to do with the attack on Iran, tonight.' 'Clear U.S. green light' Israel's attack had been months in the making. Reports in May of Israel's preparations to strike Iran suggested that the Trump Administration would not assist Israel in such an operation, especially as Washington was in the midst of negotiating a nuclear agreement with Tehran. But news outlet Axios reported Friday that Israeli officials said the strikes were in fact coordinated with the U.S., claiming that the Trump Administration publicly pretended to oppose an Israeli attack but gave Israel a 'clear U.S. green light' in private. According to the latest reports, the U.S. has even intervened to shape the attack. U.S. officials told Reuters, the Associated Press, CNN, and others that Israel had informed the Trump Administration of a credible plan to assassinate Khamenei and that the White House waved Israel off the plan. Netanyahu spokesperson Omer Dostri later denied those reports, calling them 'fake.' 'There's so many false reports of conversations that never happened, and I'm not going to get into that,' Netanyahu said when asked about it on Fox News on Sunday. 'But I can tell you,' he continued, 'we'll do what we need to do. And I think the United States knows what is good for the United States.' The unclear messaging about the extent of U.S. involvement, however, could reflect mixed priorities between the U.S. and Israel. Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and an expert on U.S.-Iran relations, told NPR that 'clearly there had been coordination and some form of a green light' by the Trump Administration for the Israeli strikes. 'Trump is making a major gamble here, thinking that this actually will soften the Iranian position and make them capitulate,' Parsi added. 'If they don't, what are his options? And this is where I think the Israelis are hoping that the Iranians will not capitulate and that will force the United States into the war.'
Boston Globe
3 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Why many Israelis support attacking Iran
To understand why, it is helpful to consider the timing of the Israeli attack. Since 1979, Iran has gradually positioned itself as Israel's main enemy. The revolutionary Islamic regime has viewed Israel as a foreign implant in the region and its leaders have openly called for Israel's destruction. (It is difficult to think of another instance in which one sovereign state calls for the destruction of another, highlighted by the fact that the two don't even share a border.) Israel, for its part, has responded with a series of sabotage operations and targeted killings against Iranian security and nuclear figures over the years. Advertisement Over the past decade, Iran has accelerated plans to encircle Israel with a 'ring of fire,' believing that arming paramilitary forces like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis with missiles, rockets, and drones would lead to Israel's annihilation. And though the leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, launched his murderous plan on Oct. 7 without the full participation from Hezbollah and Iran that he had hoped for, most Israelis directly link Iran — which funded, armed, and trained Hamas — to the attack. That attack is what touched off the bloody conflict that has now lasted 20 months. Advertisement Iran's nuclear program, which has included attempts at developing military nuclear capabilities over the years, is seen by the Israeli public and its leaders as the epitome of these efforts to destroy Israel. and believed that Israel needed to be able to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. In other words, almost no one in Israel believes that nuclear weapons in the hands of the current regime are anything other than a major danger. So why did Israel wait until now? Over the years, the possibility of attacking Iran's nuclear facilities has come up from time to time, Advertisement For its part, the United States did not demonstrate a willingness to join in, and even now, it seems happy to allow Israel to act on its own — at least as long as Iran doesn't directly target American interests. In addition, over the years, Iran has built deterrent capabilities against Israel, consisting mainly of its enormous missile arsenal and, even more so, the one it placed on Israel's northern border in the hands of Hezbollah. Various Israeli governments have repeatedly decided that the cost was not worth the benefit of independent action. So what changed? Four key factors have contributed to Israel's decision to attack last week. The first was the loss of Iran's deterrent power. Israel's surprisingly successful attacks against Hezbollah in October 2024 removed most of the missile threat from the north and, more importantly, broke the spirit of the group — which was built by Iran in large measure to deter Israel from attacking its nuclear program. This demoralization was illustrated by Second, the United States has changed. President Trump, who withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 and ordered the Advertisement Third, Iran's nuclear program was getting closer to the nuclear threshold. When the nuclear deal was in full force, Iran was kept a year away from the ability to enrich uranium to military grade. But by the time of the Israeli attack, Finally, there is the change brought about by the war itself. Hamas's attack on Oct. 7 and the events that followed created enormous fear of one kind in Israeli leadership circles while breaking down the barrier of another kind of fear. The fear of taking comprehensive, reality-altering action that characterized pre-war Israel, has been replaced by fear of any enemy building up its strength under the cover of short-term quiet. Many in Israel, in both security and political circles, have become convinced that Israel must act with maximum aggression toward enemies that challenge its existence. This is partly why Israel continues to hold territory in Syria and Lebanon, and why many Israelis believed that now was a window of opportunity that had to be exploited to act against Iran. The direct confrontation between the two countries that began after Israel's Advertisement Although it is too early to know how this phase of the direct war between Iran and Israel will end, Netanyahu could well emerge with the upper hand. He almost certainly believes this will benefit him politically after two years in which he struggled to restore his status. And yet, despite the deep cynicism many Israelis feel toward their prime minister, it is difficult to find prominent voices expressing opposition to the current operation against Iran. But if they are looking for a way to distinguish themselves from the prime minister, Netanyahu's political rivals now have room to act. The key must be to ask how to exploit the achievement created by the June 13 attack. Unlike Netanyahu and his allies, they must make it clear that weakening Iran should be used to promote political accords in our war-torn region — arrangements that should include the Palestinians.
