Iran hawks will hold less sway in Trump’s new government

Republicans are split over how aggressive the next administration should be toward Tehran as the incoming president pursues an America-first foreign policy

By Abigail Hauslohner

Shortly after Iran’s launch of some 180 missiles into Israel in October, Sen. Marco Rubio had strong opinions, like other Republican lawmakers, about what should happen in response.

“Only threatening the survival of the regime through maximum pressure and direct and disproportionate measures has a chance to influence and alter their criminal activities,” Rubio (R-Florida), now President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee, declared on social media.

Other Trump allies on Capitol Hill similarly called on the Biden administration to green-light a sweeping Israeli military retaliation. Strike Iran’s nuclear arsenal and wipe out its oil refineries, some suggested. Others urged U.S. participation in such strikes.

“Back Israel to the hilt to destroy our common enemies,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), whose name also circulated as a potential Trump Cabinet pick, wrote on X at the time. Brian Hook, Trump’s special envoy for Iran during his first term, told Fox News Business that he expected Israel to respond with a “major” attack, potentially including assassinations, that would change “the balance of power in the region” and said the Jewish state “can and they should” do so.

Trump’s election victory has meant that the GOP’s traditionalist foreign policy hawks — for whom Iran has long been a top focus — are ascendant once again, as the party prepares to take control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

To Tehran, the message from many of Trump’s surrogates has taken the form of a broad warning. Gone, they say, is the Democrats’ “weak” policy of appeasement. Prepare to be squeezed into submission.

Among them is Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee), who served as ambassador to Japan during Trump’s first term and has called for strong action against Iran. “There’s going to be a massive departure from the Biden administration’s foreign policy at every level,” he said in an interview, signaling his belief that there will be “bold and immediate action,” including sanctions enforcement, “that will have a very rapid effect.”

But while those most eager for a U.S. assault on Iran, or even regime change, held sway in the last Trump administration, several GOP lawmakers and officials are cautioning that those voices will enjoy far less clout this time around.

A secret meeting, reported by the New York Times, between Trump confidante Elon Musk and Iran’s U.N. ambassador as a preliminary effort to defuse tensions between Washington and Tehran could be the first such indicator of a seismic shift, analysts said.

Spokespeople for Trump’s transition team, Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations and Musk all declined to comment.

“This was a very interesting move,” said Trita Parsi, an Iran expert and the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a Washington think tank.

While Trump during his first term ended U.S. participation in the Iran nuclear deal, levied strict sanctions and ordered the assassination of one of Iran’s most powerful generals, Qasem Soleimani, he also made repeated — albeit failed — attempts to open a dialogue with the Iranians. And he has mused about making a deal, including most recently on the campaign trail.

“I think he really wanted it,” said Parsi, surmising the Iranian government believed that too but thought Trump had been thwarted by the Iran hawks in his first administration, including his former national security adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Iran envoy Hook, who is a part of Trump’s State Department transition team.

Pompeo and Hook did not respond to requests for comment. Since leaving the administration, Bolton has written disparagingly about Trump’s “zeal for the deal” and warned in a July opinion piece that if Trump returned to the Oval Office, “his propensity to treat national-security issues simply as opportunities for making deals” could soon lead to a “get-together” between Trump and Iran’s new president.

In a separate piece this month, Bolton derided the incoming administration for continuing to cling to the “fantasy” that a deal was possible.

Come January, when Trump takes office for the second time, he will confront a drastically different Middle East, where Iran and Israel, as well as the United States and its Arab partners, are perilously close to a major confrontation, Parsi said.

“The region is already on the brink of exploding; the runway from ‘maximum pressure’ to actual conflict is much shorter today than it was in 2017,” he said. So the fact that Musk, one of Trump’s closest representatives, appears to have reached out to the Iranians signals a desire “to defuse tensions, while recognizing that there’s a very dangerous two months ahead and they have to avoid a miscalculation.”

During his first administration, several of Trump’s top advisers urged him at various points to take offensive action toward Iran, Russia and North Korea — positions often at odds with his desire to speak with hostile foreign leaders to see if they could reach an agreement.

In 2019, “most” of Trump’s national security staff was pushing for offensive strikes on Iran, after Iran shot down a U.S. drone, one former national security official said. Bolton, a longtime advocate of American military intervention in the Middle East, “desperately wanted to,” said this person, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations. Trump readied U.S. forces to carry out the strikes but called off the plan at the 11th hour.

Bolton wrote in an email Saturday to The Washington Post that, among the advisers who attended the meeting in the Situation Room that morning, the opinion favoring strikes was “unanimous.”

There were at least two other instances during Trump’s first term, in which “the Iranians tried reaching out to Trump through third-party countries,” said Parsi, citing his own conversations with Iranian officials. “But it failed because of the involvement of Pompeo” — a staunch proponent of harsh action against Iran — “despite efforts by the Iranians to deal directly with Trump and not have to go through Pompeo, or not having Pompeo involved,” he said.

“And that has created an impression on their side that it’s very difficult to strike a deal with Trump, even if he wants it, if his desire to get a deal can so easily be blocked by hawks in his circle,” Parsi added.

Pompeo has been the target of persistent Iranian threats in the years since he was a leading figure in Trump’s Iran policy.

Bolton, and many other senior members of Trump’s first administration, were ultimately pushed out, or left in frustration or disgust. And Trump has learned from the experience of having unruly advisers, his allies say.

“There is an aggressive effort right now to find national security officials who support the president’s approach to national security, so we don’t have what happened last time with H.R. McMaster, John Bolton, Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson, who did not support what the president wanted to do,” said the former national security official, naming some of the senior figures who clashed with Trump years ago.

These were advisers who didn’t support Trump’s vision, this person said. “They wanted to go to war. Now there’s a much different vetting process — not to find yes-men, but to find people who basically can support the president’s worldview.”

The new administration’s roster includes other relative hawks besides Rubio. Among them are Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida), who’s been tapped for national security adviser, and former Trump director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe as CIA director.

Others, like tech billionaire Musk; the incoming vice president, “Hillbilly Elegy” author JD Vance; and Trump’s picks for defense secretary and director of national intelligence — Pete Hegseth is a Fox News host, and former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has made controversial statements in support of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad — appear to hold views that stand in contrast to more traditional conservative ideals in support of an interventionist America.

Trump’s nominees this time “are only going to get us involved in an armed conflict if we have to,” said Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisconsin), another Trump ally and former Navy SEAL, who characterized the president-elect’s Cabinet nominees as a break from the foreign policy of his first term.

“They’ll all be yes-men,” said another member of Congress who is close to Trump, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid about favoring a more hawkish approach. “They’ll all be yes-men. And it’s very concerning.”

With the exception of Trump’s pick for attorney general, the polarizing former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), Republicans on Capitol Hill have thus far displayed little willingness to publicly challenge the integrity of any of Trump’s national security nominees.

Every senator who competed to be among the six leaders of the new Republican conference stressed to colleagues in private that there was “no daylight” between them and Trump, said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri). “There was a lot of pledges to work with President Trump and to implement his agenda swiftly,” he added.

Minutes before his nomination was announced, Rubio, in a brief pull-aside with The Washington Post, signaled that his own views on Iran or other foreign policy issues would carry little import for the next administration, and he demurred when asked what action he thinks Trump should take toward Tehran.

“I want to be supportive of whatever the president’s policies are,” he said. “He’s the one the American people elected, with a pretty clear vision about how he envisions the role of the United States in the world.”

“Rubio is going to follow the script,” said the former national security official. “And I believe that Trump’s philosophy on trying to avoid the use of military force and end conflicts was explained to everyone being considered for national security positions.” He added, “I don’t think that was explained to the last administration.”

Karen DeYoung and John Hudson contributed to this report.