When U.S. President Donald Trump re-ran for the presidency in 2024, American voters elected him on the premise that he would mark a shift from 2000s-era neoconservatism and keep the U.S. out of foreign wars. Americans on the political left, along with an increasing number on the right, did not think American interventionism worked throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, and felt these foreign conflicts were costly and did not always help American interests.

Then, this year, Trump ordered American troops to drop missiles on Iran. And some in the president's inner circle, according to journalist Gabby Deutch of Jewish Insider, said to themselves: "This is the Trump we knew all along."

The attack on Iran exposed a small but growing rift within the Republican party, wherein Israel sits squarely in the middle. Should the U.S. be interventionist or not? And what makes Israel the exception to any rule? Deutch, a senior Washington correspondent, joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy on The Jewish Angle to explain.

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
• Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective

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