Trump has a nose for public opinion, and his position is roughly where seemingly contrary sentiments meet.

Not yet. One of the things that attracted certain voters to Trump was his willingness to condemn the Iraq War as a mistake, and to implicitly promise not to get involved in more regime-change wars. This was a necessary and hygienic acknowledgment. A significant portion of the right has returned to its native skepticism of government ambitions, even when they come from the Department of Defense. This was the natural position of most of the right after the Spanish-American War and World War I. It was, as Sam Tanenhaus reminded us in his biography, the position of William F. Buckley in the run-up to the Second World War.

There’s been a little drama at the edges of the coalition this week, as the diplomatic talks with the Iranian government have been interrupted by Israeli strikes on that government, including some of the conversation partners. President Trump, adapting quickly, effectively endorsed the Israeli strikes and almost implied that the Israelis were acting as America’s junkyard dog in the negotiations.

A slice of the Trump-supporting right is now critical of the president. A few are asserting conspiracy theories about Israeli control over the president. Others assert that Israel has humiliated Trump by killing some of the very people the American delegation were dealing with privately. And yet others still suspect that Israel, having launched its campaign against the government of Tehran, will inevitably cajole the United States to join it.

So far this is premature. Daniel McCarthy, writing in Compact:

There is no reason for this to be America’s war. Ironically, however, many opponents of US involvement in Middle East wars share a premise with supporters of intervention. The common assumption is that America really can, and should, control events in the region. One side says we must get involved to aid Israel. The other says we must get involved to restrain Israel. The latter camp takes it for granted that President Trump could simply have ordered Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Iran. And what’s more, President Trump should have issued such an order because Netanyahu’s war will inevitably drag America into the maelstrom. The Iranians will blame us for Israel’s actions no matter what, the story goes, so we should have prevented Israel from launching its campaign.

That line of thought is wrong.

I agree. What we are seeing in the Middle East right now is a predictable consequence of our foreign-policy class recognizing our limits in the region, and beginning to limit our involvement. Israel learned after October 7 that waiting for American analysis and our opinion on their proposed operations in Gaza works to slow their effectiveness. They are showing more independence, even perhaps testing our appetite for their initiative. And yes, because it is in Israel’s interest, its leader Benjamin Netanyahu is conflating the danger Iran poses to Israel with a danger it poses to New York, and urging us to join them in their campaign.

So far President Trump has not committed the United States to using our military to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and he has nowhere near committed us to a costly regime-change war or nation-building in Iran.

Polling about Middle Eastern issues is all over the place. Majorities of Republicans simultaneously report that they do not trust the Iranians to keep their word and that they hope the United States does reach a diplomatic settlement of the Iranian nuclear question. If you ask the public about whether they favor strikes to keep a nuclear weapon out of the hands of Iranians, they endorse that too. That is, without any context of the sacrifices or risks, Americans are reliably in favor of positive-sum games. At the same time, you’ll find that the majority of Trump voters (and Americans) do not support the U.S. joining in Israel’s war on Iran.

Trump has a nose for public opinion, and his position is roughly where all these seemingly contrary sentiments meet: against an Iranian nuke, supportive of Israel, but wary of any major or costly campaign, conscious of the potential downsides and unanticipated consequences.