Republicans stick with Trump on Iran strikes amid lasting ceasefire

Days after President Trump announced a Middle East ceasefire, Republicans are almost unanimously backing his decision to launch U.S. military strikes on Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites.

Mr. Trump’s intelligence and military advisors briefed both chambers of Congress in recent days, leaving Republicans satisfied he made the right move when he sent B-2 bombers to drop 14 “bunker buster” bombs on Iran’s Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities on June 21. The president also ordered a nuclear submarine to launch more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles onto Iran’s Isfahan nuclear enrichment site.

“I think it was executed very well,” Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican who has clashed with Mr. Trump on spending issues, said after the classified briefing Friday.

Mr. Roy noted that the actions were “limited, in terms of the possibility of war afterwards, which Congress has to get involved with.”

The Iran-Israel ceasefire has endured since Tuesday, making the strikes more palatable, even to Mr. Trump’s anti-war MAGA base. They believe Mr. Trump will steer clear of further U.S. military intervention in the region and that he has stopped Israel from taking out Iran’s supreme leader and battling for a total regime change in Iran, which could have dragged the United States into further military involvement.

“I’d like to see everything calm down as quickly as possible,” Mr. Trump said this week. Regime change, he said, “takes chaos, and we don’t want to see so much chaos.” 

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, television host and one of the loudest anti-war voices in Mr. Trump’s MAGA base, said the president is acting as a peacemaker. He is aligned with Steve Bannon, another important anti-war voice in Mr. Trump’s ear who speaks for the MAGA base. 

“The 12-day war is over. The president is pivoting back to other issues,” Mr. Bannon said on Mr. Gaetz’s television show. 

Very few GOP lawmakers are publicly criticizing the strikes. The dissenters so far are limited to Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

Ms. Greene said Mr. Trump should not involve the U.S. military in Israel’s fight with Iran. She’s not backing down on her position even though it appears the strikes ushered in an end, however tenuous, to the bombing between Iran and Israel, and could lead to a broader peace agreement in the Middle East.

“It’s not antisemitic to say we should not be fighting a war that Israel started,” Ms. Greene said Friday on the Tucker Carlson podcast.

New polling shows Republican voters overwhelmingly support the strikes.

In a Friday press conference, Mr. Trump said Iran’s nuclear facilities are now buried under millions of tons of rocks but that the U.S. would “without question, absolutely” strike Iran again if the Iranian regime restarts its enrichment of uranium to a weapons-grade level.

The Republican response in support of Mr. Trump is largely aligned with post-strike polling. 

A new survey of U.S. adults taken by The Tyson Group on behalf of Axios found support for the strikes among identified Republicans jumped by 10 points — from 72% to 82% — when respondents were informed the strikes hit nuclear enrichment sites.

Among independents, support increased from 32% to 44% while Democratic support jumped from 20% to 33%.

The poll, released Friday, found that overall, 62% of Americans believe the U.S. air strikes “were worth it” if Iran agrees to stop enriching uranium.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans were more confident than Democrats that the U.S. strikes significantly hobbled or destroyed Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb, although assessments of the damage are ongoing.

“It is clear. Everyone can see by the videos that these massive ordinance-penetrating bombs did the job, and I think their key facilities have been disabled, and I think Iran is now a long time away from doing what they might have done before this very successful operation,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican.

Democratic lawmakers said there is no proof that Iran did not move its supply of highly enriched plutonium ahead of the U.S. strikes, which would make it easier for them to resume their mission of building a nuclear bomb. 

“There is, I think, very frankly, a very over-optimistic portrayal of what was not accomplished on this issue, because we do not have an understanding and control of where all of that material is,” Rep. Bill Foster, Illinois Democrat, said.

Iran was under bombardment since June 13, when Israel began striking the country’s military sites and taking out top regime members. 

Mr. Trump said that “time will tell” if the Iranians will try to build another nuclear bomb. 

“It would be years before they could ever get going, and I really think it’s probably the last thing,” he said. “They have to recover from a hell of a tough war.”