The Maga coalition will not survive a bunker-buster in Iran

As the US President weighs whether to join Israel's war against Iran, a rift cleaves his own base, not to mention the world.

- Andreas Kluth

The foreign policy of US President Donald Trump, as captured in the simplistic slogan "peace through strength," has always been fraught with contradictions. So it was only a matter of time before those would explode, detonating his Make America Great Again (Maga) base and leaving it and distant parts of the world in ashes.

Five months into the President's second term, that moment may have arrived.

Will he or won't he join Israel in attacking Iran, perhaps by dropping bunker-busting bombs on a mountain where the Iranians have hidden parts of their nuclear programme? Will he or won't he line up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go even further and topple Iran's regime?

If Mr. Trump does give the order to attack, he will lose a large and especially zealous part of his America First crowd. Those are the fans to whom he promised that he would be a "peacemaker"; that he, unlike previous Republican and Democratic presidents, would keep the United States out of "forever wars" and ill-fated regime-change missions such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, which he has used to excoriate his predecessors. His Maga vow was that he would act in the interests of America only and no other country.

To sense how Iran plays in this demographic, look to the media influencers with an outsized role in Mr. Trump's movement. Mr. Tucker Carlson, the often-buffoonish television pundit who's prone to rebroadcasting Russian propaganda and other conspiracy theories, is usually all-in for Trumpism. Once Mr. Carlson heard war drums in the White House, however, he wrote in his newsletter that getting involved "is not in our national interest" and that Mr. Trump should "drop Israel. Let them fight their own wars".