MAGA Isolationists Are in a Tailspin on Iran | World News

WSJ

Jun 24, 2025 11:56 AM IST

‘Mr. Trump needs the best information available. He won’t get it from the shrieks from the fever swamps.’

A satellite image shows the Arak heavy water reactor facilities in Iran, June 18.

Public debates about secret information are almost unenlightening: Those who know don’t tell, and those who don’t know pound the table. But last week, like America, was exceptional.

MAGA Isolationists Are in a Tailspin on Iran PREMIUM
MAGA Isolationists Are in a Tailspin on Iran

Before launching its air campaign, Israel clearly developed exquisite intelligence about the Iranian regime, including the names and locations of its most important nuclear scientists and the communications and procedures of the ballistic-missile force. When the Israelis leak that the mullahs triggered the latest phase of the Oct. 7 war by, among other things, scheduling a meeting between Iran’s nuclear-weapons scientists and its ballistic-missile commanders, the evidence should be taken seriously.

As you hint at in your editorial “MAGA’s Misguided Isolationists” (June 20), the ferocity of Israel’s counteroffensive has left its critics dazed and confused. A week or so ago, they officiously reminded everyone that the U.S. intelligence estimate about Iraq was mistaken. The implication? Only a fool would trust any warnings about Iran that emanated from the bowels of the Deep State. Many of these critics still deny that Iran attempted to murder Donald Trump last year. Yet as the president deliberated about striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, they declared their trust in the American intelligence community and its assessment that Iran wasn’t working toward a bomb.

What accounts for their Damascene conversion? Little about the intelligence community has changed in recent days, other than CIA director John Ratcliffe’s discounting that assessment and stating that Israel had stopped Iran’s bomb program at the “one-yard line.” The isolationists’ ideology evidently requires facts to rearrange themselves.

Polls reveal that actual “MAGA Republicans” and Trump voters overwhelmingly supported the Jewish state’s air campaign and the American strikes. They seem to place as much faith in Israel’s intel as the president does.

Erasing Iran’s nuclear program is important, and Mr. Trump needs the best information available. He won’t get it from the shrieks from the fever swamps.

Mike Watson

Hudson Institute

Washington

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