Trump's cabinet is less hawkish. Will that affect his Israel-Iran response?
Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump has surrounded himself with a cabinet and inner circle that is markedly less hawkish on Iran than during his first term.
But analysts told Al Jazeera that it remains unclear whether the composition of Trump's new cabinet will make a difference when it comes to how the administration responds to the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel.
Last week, fighting erupted when Israel launched surprise strikes on Tehran, prompting Iran to retaliate. That exchange of missiles and blasts has threatened to spiral into a wider regional war.
'I think there are fewer of the traditional Republican hawks in this administration,' said Brian Finucane, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, a think tank. 'And you do have more prominent restraint-oriented or restraint-adjacent people.'
'The question is: How loud are they going to be?'
So far, the Trump administration has taken a relatively hands-off approach to Israel's attacks, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed were 'unilateral'.
While the US has surged military assets to the region, it has avoided being directly involved in the confrontation. Trump also publicly opposed an Israeli strike on Iran in the weeks leading up to the attacks, saying he preferred diplomacy.
However, on Sunday, Trump told ABC News, 'It's possible we could get involved,' citing the risk to US forces in the region.
He has even framed Israel's bombing campaign as an asset in the ongoing talks to curtail Iran's nuclear programme, despite several top negotiators being killed by Israeli strikes.
Iran's foreign minister, meanwhile, accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of 'playing' Trump and US taxpayers for 'fools', saying the US president could end the fighting with 'one phone call' to the Israeli leader.
Analysts agree that any course of action Trump takes will likely transform the conflict. It will also reveal how Trump is responding to the deep ideological rift within his Republican base.
One side of that divide embraces Trump's 'America First' ideology: the idea that the US's domestic interests come before all others. That perspective largely eschews foreign intervention.
The other side of Trump's base supports a neoconservative approach to foreign policy: one that is more eager to pursue military intervention, sometimes with the aim of forcing regime change abroad.
Both viewpoints are represented among Trump's closest advisers. Vice President JD Vance, for instance, stands out as an example of a Trump official who has called for restraint, both in terms of Iran and US support for Israel.
In March, Vance notably objected to US strikes on Yemen's Houthis, as evidenced in leaked messages from a private chat with other officials on the app Signal. In that conversation, Vance argued that the bombing campaign was a 'mistake' and 'inconsistent' with Trump's message of global disengagement.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Vance also warned that the US and Israel's interests are 'sometimes distinct… and our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran'.
According to experts, that kind of statement is rare to hear from a top official in the Republican Party, where support for Israel remains largely sacrosanct. Finucane, for instance, called Vance's statements 'very notable'.
'I think his office may be a critical one in pushing for restraint,' he added.
Other Trump officials have similarly built careers railing against foreign intervention, including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who testified in March that the US 'continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon'.
Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who had virtually no previous diplomatic experience, had also floated the possibility of normalising relations with Tehran in the early days of the US-led nuclear talks.
By contrast, Secretary of State and acting National Security Adviser Marco Rubio established himself as a traditional neoconservative, with a 'tough on Iran' stance, during his years-long tenure in the Senate. But since joining the Trump administration, Rubio has not broken ranks with the president's 'America First' foreign policy platform.
That loyalty is indicative of a wider tendency among Trump's inner circle during his second term, according to Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
'I think Trump 2.0 has a cabinet of chameleons whose primary qualification is loyalty and fealty to Trump more than anything else,' he told Al Jazeera.
Katulis noted that the days of officials who stood up to Trump, like former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, were mostly gone — a relic of Trump's first term, from 2017 to 2021.
The current defence secretary, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, has shown an appetite for conducting aerial strikes on groups aligned with Iran, including the Houthis in Yemen.
But Hegseth told Fox News on Saturday that the president continues to send the message 'that he prefers peace, he prefers a solution to this that is resolved at the table'.
All told, Trump continues to operate in an administration that is 'probably more hawkish than MAGA antiwar', according to Ryan Costello, the policy director at the National Iranian American Council, a lobby group.
At least one official, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, has sought to equate Iran's retaliation against Israel with the targeting of US interests, highlighting the large number of US citizens who live in Israel.
Costello acknowledges that Trump's first term likewise had its fair share of foreign policy hawks. Back then, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, his replacement Robert O'Brien and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo all advocated for militarised strategies to deal with Tehran.
'But there's a big difference between Trump's first term, when he elevated and very hawkish voices on Iran, and Trump's second term,' Costello said.
He believes that this time, scepticism over US involvement in the Middle East extends throughout the ranks of the administration.
Costello pointed to a recent conflict between the head of US Central Command, General Michael Kurilla, and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby. The news outlet Semafor reported on Sunday that Kurilla was pushing to shift more military assets to the Middle East to defend Israel, but that Colby had opposed the move.
That schism, Costello argues, is part of a bigger shift in Trump's administration and in the Republican Party at large.
'You have many prominent voices making the case that these wars of choice pursued by neoconservatives have been bankrupting Republican administrations and preventing them from focusing on issues that really matter,' Costello said.
Finucane has also observed a pivot from Trump's first term to his second. In 2019, during his first four years as president, Finucane said that Trump's national security team gave an 'apparently unanimous recommendation' to strike Iran after it targeted a US surveillance drone.
Trump ultimately backed away from the plan in the final hours, according to multiple reports.
But a year later, the Trump administration assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Iraq, another instance that brought the US to the brink of war.
To be sure, experts say Trump has a notoriously mercurial approach to policy. The last person to speak to the president, observers have long said, will likely wield the most influence.
Trump also regularly seeks guidance from outside the White House when faced with consequential decisions, consulting mainstream media like Fox News, breakaway far-right pundits, social media personalities and top donors.
That was the case ahead of the possible 2019 US strike on Iran, with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson reportedly among those urging Trump to back away from the attack.
Carlson has since been a leading voice calling for Trump to drop support for the 'war-hungry government' of Netanyahu, urging the president to let Israeli officials 'fight their own wars'.
But Carlson is not the only conservative media figure with influence over Trump. Conservative media host Mark Levin has advocated for military action against Iran, saying in recent days that Israel's attacks should be the beginning of a campaign to overthrow Iran's government.
Politico reported that Levin visited the White House for a private lunch with Trump in early June, just days before the US president offered his support for Iran's strikes.
But Katulis at the Middle East Institute predicted that neither Trump's cabinet nor media figures like Levin would prove to be the most consequential in guiding the president's choices. Instead, Trump's decision on whether to engage in the Israel-Iran conflict is likely to come down to which world leader gets his ear, and when.
'It's a favourite Washington parlour game to pretend like the cabinet members and staffers matter more than they actually do,' Katulis told Al Jazeera.
'But I think, in the second Trump administration, it's less who's on his team formally and more who has he talked to most recently – whether it's Netanyahu in Israel or some other leader in the region,' he said.
'I think that's going to be more of a determining factor in what the United States decides to do next.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Qatar Tribune
7 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Donald Trump throws curveball at Japan tea giant's United States expansion swing
Agencies Top Japanese tea brand Ito En's latest push to win over health-conscious U.S. customers with its traditional unsweetened brew has hit a new road bump: President Donald Trump's trade tariffs. The company, which splashed out on a tie-up with Major League Baseball star Shohei Ohtani and launched a less bitter tea to capture a bigger slice of the lucrative growth market, is now debating whether to hike prices or move some production across the Pacific, executives said in interviews with Reuters. The dilemmas facing Ito En can be found across Japan, the biggest foreign investor in the United States, as Tokyo's trade negotiators returned to Washington this weekend to try and strike a deal to cushion the blow to its fragile economy. Makoto Ogi, Ito En's general manager of international business development, told Reuters the company may raise prices of its products in the U.S. to compensate for Trump's 24% levy on Japanese goods set to come into force next month. The problem is their retailers and distributors may resist for fear of losing sales. 'We may not be able to ask them to raise our prices despite what Trump is saying,' he said. The last time Ito En raised prices in the U.S. - by approximately 10% in 2022 - sales dropped by around 5%. The company said the decline reflected the price hike as well as factors such as COVID-19 that affected market conditions. The company is also considering making tea bags in the United States, and bottling drinks there rather than in Japan, Taiwan and Thailand as it does presently, Ogi and other executives explained during interviews in Tokyo. These details of the firm's potential plans to counter tariffs have not been previously reported. The executives did not disclose the costs of such moves. In its latest results released this month, Ito En reported its profit shrank by 8.2% in the year to April, but forecast an 11% jump this year. It set a modest 3.7% profit growth target for its U.S. tea business, versus 20.7% growth achieved last year, an outlook partly related to tariffs, a company spokesperson said. Its shares rose to nearly a four-month high in the wake of the results, with its president later telling investors the forecasts were 'conservative'. Many Japanese firms have set up war rooms to chalk out plans to restructure supply chains or cut costs to offset tariffs and keep their U.S. growth plans on track, said Mizuho Bank analyst Asuka Tatebayashi. A survey of 3,000 Japanese companies by export promotion organization JETRO late last year before Trump's tariffs found the level of interest in U.S. markets at the highest in nearly a decade, with food and beverage companies like Ito En the most enthusiastic. 'When you talk to companies in Japan, the U.S. comes first,' said Tatebayashi, adding that they face shrinking domestic demand and are generally cautious about expanding into riskier emerging markets. For Ito En, the U.S. has long been a market it is eager to years ago, Joshua Walker, the newly-appointed head of U.S. non-profit Japan Society, hosted Ito En's North America head Yosuke Honjo in his New York office. Honjo gestured to the green-colored bottles of their flagship Oi Ocha brand lining the shelves and said he wanted them to spread around the world like Coca-Cola's red bottle. 'It was refreshing. Japanese companies would not normally have ambition of that type of grandeur,' said Walker, recounting the executive's previously unreported remarks. Honjo, via a company spokesperson, confirmed the remarks. Founded in the 1960s by Honjo's father and uncle, Ito En has grown to dominate Japan's tea market, using around a quarter of the country's total crude tea production. Since expanding into the U.S. in 2001, it has dabbled in selling sweet and flavored tea varieties familiar to Americans. But more recently it has focused on the unsweetened tea popular in its home market, hoping to tap health-conscious customers and a boom in Japanese food and cultural exports. Honjo said growth has also been aided by a sharp rise in Asian Americans, estimated at nearly 25 million in 2023, or around 7% of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center. Japan's exports of green tea surged 24.6% to 36.4 billion yen last year, with nearly half destined for the United States, official data showed. Some equity analysts like Jiang Zhu of Tokyo-based rating agency R&I have highlighted the high marketing cost of Ito En's international push at a time it faces tough competition at home from tea brands such as Coca-Cola's Ayataka. The company said it has around a 2% share of the U.S. market for tea beverages, ranking eighth largest, with Unilever's Pure Leaf leading the sector. But it has a long way to catch up with the 3.9 billion gallons of Coca-Cola's trademark Coke drinks sold in the U.S. last year, at only 3.1 million gallons by comparison, according to research firm Beverage Marketing Corporation. 'Kikkoman's soy sauce is probably in every American household now, but it took about 50 years for it to become a part of the culture,' said Akihiro Murase, Ito En's public relations manager, referencing the Japanese food manufacturer as a template for success. 'We are not there yet but we would like to make unsweetened green tea a part of the food culture,' he said.
Qatar Tribune
7 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Trump family set to launch mobile phone company
Agencies The family of US President Donald Trump, through its Trump Organization, said on Monday it will launch a mobile phone company, the latest in a string of ventures that have been announced while the Republican is in the White House despite concerns that the president could mold public policy for personal gain. Eric Trump, one of President Donald Trump's sons who will run the business, said that the new company would build its own phones in the U.S. and maintain a call center in the country as well. A self-branded mobile service comes with a $499 smartphone, dubbed Trump Mobile, a Reuters report said, signaling a new effort to court conservative consumers with a wireless service positioned as an alternative to major telecom providers. The announcement of the new mobile phone company and service follows several real estate deals for towers and resorts in the Middle East, including a golf development in Qatar announced in April. A $1.5 billion partnership to build golf courses, hotels and real estate projects in Vietnam was approved last month, but the deal was in the works before Trump was elected. Trump criticized Apple last month because it planned to make most of its U.S. iPhones in India, and threatened to slap a 25% tariff on the devices unless the tech giant starts building the product in its home country. 'We are going to be introducing an entire package of products where people can come and they can get telemedicine on their phones for one flat monthly fee, roadside assistance on their cars, unlimited texting to 100 countries around the world,' said the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., announcing the product at Trump Tower in New York. The Trump family, long known for its real estate empire, luxury hotels and golf resorts, has in recent years ventured into newer arenas, including digital media and cryptocurrency. The Trump Organization, which is the main holding entity for most of the U.S. president's business ventures, said ahead of Trump's inauguration that control of the company would be handed to his children, replicating the arrangement from his first term, though concerns about potential conflicts of interest remain. A website that went live after the announcement included details of the new Trump-branded smartphone that will be available from September, and a $47.45 a month subscription plan to the new network. DTTM Operations – the entity managing President Trump's trademarks – has filed applications to use his name and the term 'T1' for telecom-related services. The filings, submitted Thursday to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, cover mobile phones, accessories like cases and chargers, wireless telephone services and possibly even retail stores. The smartphone industry in the U.S. is among the most saturated and competitive in the world, with leading global players Apple and Samsung dominating the market. More than 60 million smartphones are purchased annually by American consumers, but nearly all of these devices are manufactured abroad: primarily in China, South Korea and increasingly in India and Vietnam.
Qatar Tribune
7 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Wall Street climbs as oil prices ease, Fed meeting in focus
Agencies New York US stock indexes rose on Monday as oil prices fell after the Israel-Iran attacks left crude production and exports unaffected, allaying investor concerns ahead of a central bank policy meeting. Crude prices, retreated more than 3 percent on reports that Iran is seeking an end to hostilities with Israel, raising the possibility of a truce and easing fears of a disruption to crude supplies from the region. Oil prices surged more than 7 percent on Friday after Israel began bombing Iran. Tehran has asked Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman to press US President Donald Trump to use his influence with Israel to agree to an immediate ceasefire, in return for Iran's flexibility in nuclear negotiations, sources told Reuters. This follows a Wall Street Journal report earlier in the day that Iran was urgently signaling that it sought an end to hostilities. 'The market has already priced in some of the worst fears in terms of the energy markets getting disrupted, or this kind of spreading to be a wider conflict. So now, people are just buying the dip,' said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Northlight Asset Management. Focus will shift to the US Federal Reserve's monetary policy decision on Wednesday, when policymakers are widely expected to keep interest rates unchanged. Money markets showed traders pricing in about 48 basis points of rate cuts by the end of 2025, with a 56 percent chance of a 25-bps reduction in September, according to CME Group's Fedwatch tool. Key data expected this week includes monthly retail sales, import prices and weekly jobless claims. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 409.76 points, or 0.97 percent, to 42,607.55, the S&P 500 gained 66.23 points, or 1.11 percent, to 6,043.19, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 300.92 points, or 1.55 percent, to 19,707.75 points. Nine of the 11 major S&P 500 sub-sectors rose, with information technology and financials adding 1.7 percent each. Energy was down 0.7 percent. The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index advanced 3.1 percent. Advanced Micro Devices rose 9.5 percent, Super Micro Computer gained 5.8 percent and Palantir Technologies was up 3.8 percent. Most megacap and growth stocks rose. Meta advanced 2.9 percent on plans to roll out new WhatsApp updates over the next few months and Nvidia was up 2.7 percent. UPS and FedEx edged up about 1 percent after the Trump Organization launched a self-branded mobile network, dubbed Trump Mobile, and named the companies as shipping partners. Shares of Sarepta Therapeutics plunged 45 percent after the company disclosed a second case of a patient dying due to acute liver failure after receiving its gene therapy for a rare form of muscular dystrophy. US Steel rose 5.1 percent after Trump approved Nippon Steel's $14.9 billion bid for the company. Cisco gained 2.3 percent after Deutsche Bank upgraded the communications equipment maker to 'buy' from 'hold'. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 3.24-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 2.53-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq. The S&P 500 posted 16 new 52-week highs and five new lows, while the Nasdaq Compositerecorded 66 new highs and 86 new lows.
