The reaction to Joe Kent’s principled, patriotic resignation from the Office of National Intelligence—and the numerous MAGA obituaries that appeared shortly thereafter—seem to share in common the idea that Donald Trump’s decision to go to war on behalf of Israel is both (a) surprising and (b) will cause a fissure within the Republican Party from which it might not recover.
There is little reason to believe either assertion: This is what the Republican Party has been since the end of the Cold War. It is not the GOP of Nixon or Kissinger or Reagan or Bush, Sr., or Shultz or Baker or Scowcroft. It is the Party of Bibi and Murdoch all the way through.
As I pointed out exactly three years ago, on March 20, 2023, in the pages of The Spectator, the idea that there is a brewing ‘civil war’ within the Republican Party over foreign policy would be nice, if it were actually true. Then as now, stories appeared in Beltway broadsheets claiming that the GOP was at war with itself over foreign policy. The Washington Post predicted “A Republican ‘civil war’ on Ukraine” on March 15, 2023. Only yesterday, March 19, 2026, POLITICO published a piece warning that “The Number of MAGA Fractures Is Growing.” The day before that, March 18, 2026, the UK’s Independent newspaper published a piece titled, “House Republican warns of MAGA civil war if Trump withdraws from NATO.”
What is now unfolding isn’t a GOP civil war over Iran—it is simply a reassertion of control by the people who actually control the Republican Party. We should understand this group as distinct from Republican voters, who most assuredly do not control the President or the Party apparatus on Capitol Hill.
Among the top GOP donors in 2024 were some of the least discriminating supporters of the far-right regime in Israel. The widow of the Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Miriam O. Adelson, donated $148,294,900; hedge fund manager Jeffrey Yass donated $100,322,180; another hedge fund manager, Paul E. Singer, donated $64,795, 800. And on it went.
What about Congress? Aren’t there scores of Rand Paul and Thomas Massie acolytes on the Hill, itching to oppose Trump’s collusion with Netanyahu? Not really. The Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is Brian Mast (R-FL), who routinely outfits himself in an Israeli uniform that he picked up while serving as a civilian volunteer for the IDF. The House Armed Services Committee Chairman is a longtime hawk named Mike Rogers (R-AL), who is as slavishly devoted to Israel as Mast. The Chairmen of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jim Risch, are likewise lifetime devotees of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. The same can be said for Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
And where are the voices of Republican restraint (or, scary word, “isolation”) in the national media? They are nowhere to be found. They exist on YouTube and Spotify in the form of Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Megyn Kelly. But laudable as their opposition to the war has been, it remains to be seen how much actual influence they have over Trump. It would seem that they have far less influence on the President than the troglodyte Fox Weekend host Mark Levin.
Still more, anyone who is surprised by Trump’s apostasy on Iran must have forgotten what his first term looked like. It included, among other niceties: The illegal occupation of northeastern Syria; support for Saudi Arabia’s war on and starvation of Yemeni civilians; as well as the arming of far-right battalions in Ukraine. Even worse, any of the sensible things Trump tried to do such as pulling troops out of Afghanistan and Syria; nominating Douglas Macgregor to be ambassador to Germany; forcing several well-off NATO states to pay their fair share for their own defense, were undermined by the Republican Party leadership on the Hill and/or by the very advisers he himself appointed. A president that has at one time or another employed the likes of John Bolton, Marco Rubio, Jared Kushner, Mike Pompeo, Mark Esper and Pete Hegseth and then crowns himself as the One True Leader of “America First,” simply renders the term meaningless.
This is not a ‘civil war.’ The war in Iran is simply a reversion to the mean, a reassertion of control by the people who actually hold the power in the GOP.
Reprinted with permission from The Realist Review.
Subscribe and support here.