Declare victory and get out: Trump allies split over Iran war
Senior advisers, conservative commentators and US lawmakers question the strategy behind the US-Israeli campaign against Iran.
By Abdullahi Yusuf
Senior advisers and prominent supporters of President Donald Trump publicly called for the U.S. to end its war with Iran, as growing dissent within the MAGA movement, bipartisan congressional alarm and sharp criticism from former allies exposed a widening rift over the U.S.-Israeli military campaign.
Trump’s AI and crypto adviser David Sacks said on his All-In podcast that the U.S. should “find the off-ramp.”
“This is a good time to declare victory and get out,” Sacks said, adding that such a move “is clearly what the markets would like to see.”
He raised specific concerns about further strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure, warning that if they continued, Iran “could target oil and gas infrastructure across the Gulf states, that would be a much worse outcome.”
He added: “Further escalation could render the Gulf almost uninhabitable,” singling out Saudi Arabia as particularly vulnerable.
On Israel, Sacks warned: “If this war continues for weeks or months, Israel could just be destroyed. Their air defences could become exhausted and then you have to worry about Israel escalating by contemplating using a nuclear weapon.”
Sacks is close to Vice President JD Vance, whom Trump on Monday described as being “maybe less enthusiastic” about the initial strikes on Iran.
Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said the Trump administration and Republican Party are “going in the wrong direction” on key issues including the Iran war, writing on X that the party had been “hijacked by the Lindsey Grahams, Mark Levin, and the neocon establishment Republicans we all voted against.”
Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson called the conflict “Israel’s war” and criticized the strike on an Iranian girls’ school that reportedly killed more than 170 people, mostly children.
“If you wake up in the morning and you’re living in the kind of country that thinks it’s okay to kill not simply military officers but their daughters, that country is not worth fighting for,” he said.
Trump rejected the criticism, telling ABC News that “Tucker has lost his way” and that he is “not MAGA.”
Senator Lindsey Graham drew backlash after saying on Fox News he would ask his constituents to send their “sons and daughters” to fight in the Middle East. Representative Nancy Mace said she did not want to send “South Carolina’s sons and daughters into war with Iran.”
Representative Anna Paulina Luna wrote on X that if Graham “wants to go fight in a foreign conflict, let him be the first to volunteer.” Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly called Graham “a homicidal maniac” and urged Trump to end the war.
On the Democratic side, Senator Chris Murphy said Israel should not determine when Washington enters a conflict.
“We should have leverage over Israel. Israel should not be telling us when to wage war against Iran,” he said. Following a two-hour closed-door briefing that included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Murphy said the administration’s war plans appeared “incoherent and incomplete,” and that officials failed to answer the central question of what happens when bombing stops and Iran restarts weapons production.
“They hinted at more bombing which is, of course, endless war,” he wrote on X.
He also warned that officials presented no clear plan for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Senator Richard Blumenthal said he left the briefing “dissatisfied and angry,” warning the conflict could lead to ground troops being deployed in Iran. Senator Elizabeth Warren questioned the financial burden: “While there is no money for 15 million Americans who lost their health care, there’s a billion dollars a day to spend on bombing Iran.”
Senator Rand Paul said he saw no “imminent threat” from Iran and cautioned against regime change: “If our foreign policy is to free oppressed people, the wars would never end.”
Since the U.S. and Israel launched joint attacks on Iran on February 28, killing more than 1,300 people including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and more than 150 schoolgirls, Iran has retaliated with drone and missile strikes targeting Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Gulf countries hosting US military assets.
SPONSORED
SPONSORED
