The Memo: Trump under pressure as he seeks to make case on Iran

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Karoline Leavitt clashes with CNN's Kaitlan Collins in WHPB

Karoline Leavitt clashes with CNN's Kaitlan Collins in WHPB

President Trump and his administration are facing criticism for mixed or implausible messaging on some key elements of the attack on Iran — and the dissatisfaction is not confined to Democrats and liberals.

A YouGov poll this week found 48 percent of Americans disapproving of the U.S. attacks on Iran while just 37 percent approved. Fifty-five percent of independents disapproved.

One key issue is why the attack needed to happen now.

Trump on Wednesday told reporters the Islamic Republic had been “a tremendous threat to us for many years. Forty-seven years they’ve been killing our people.”

But that leaves open the question of why Trump did not mount an assault on Iran during his first term — and why he is using events like the hostage crisis of 1979-81, or the bombing of a U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983 as part of his case for going to war now.

In his Wednesday comments, he also said, “I think if we didn’t do it first, they would have done it to Israel and give us a shot if that was possible.”

This remark echoed claims earlier this week from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who appeared to suggest that the U.S. went to war now because Israel was intent on attacking Iran, and Iran could have targeted American interests in reprisal.

However, Rubio’s remarks helped fuel a firestorm among some prominent figures in the Make America Great Again (MAGA) universe, where there is a growing and vocal skepticism about Israel’s influence on American foreign policy. 

Tucker Carlson is probably the most prominent advocate of that view but it is not limited to him.

Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly, speaking about the war generally, said on her show: “My own feeling is no-one should have to die for a foreign country….Our government’s job is not to look out for Iran or for Israel, it’s to look out for us. And this feels very much to me like it is clearly Israel’s war.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times noted social media comments from pro-Trump influencer Mike Cernovich, who wrote that Rubio “said what most guessed was the case. That he said out loud this is a sea chance in foreign policy. There will be massive calls for a walk back.”

Rubio — who is often portrayed as embroiled in an internal battle for influence with the more isolationist-leaning Vice President Vance — has indeed sought to clarify his comments, suggesting he was referring only to the timing of an attack that should have happened sooner or later.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also addressed the purported imminence of the Iranian threat at Wednesday’s media briefing. She said Trump “had a feeling, again, based on fact, that Iran was going to strike the United States, was going to strike our assets in the region.”

But the idea that Trump was being guided to such monumental decisions in part by “a feeling” was seized on by critics of the administration.

To be sure, not every critique of the Trump team’s comments is fair. 

One clip from Trump’s Wednesday remarks that went viral on liberal-leaning social media, showed the president saying, “If we didn’t hit within two weeks they would have had a nuclear weapon.”

A fuller transcript of his remarks from the White House press pool showed he was talking about the U.S. strikes last June on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The claim is contentious even in those circumstances, but he was not saying Iran was two weeks away from a nuclear weapon when the U.S. and Israeli strikes began on Saturday,

Still, there are enormous questions that hang unanswered. 

One is whether Trump is intent on full-on regime change or whether he would accept some kind of continuation of the current regime under a more compliant leader — however unlikely such a scenario sounds.

In specific terms, Trump has seemed lukewarm about the idea of Reza Pahlavi, the U.S.-based son of the last Shah, taking over in Tehran. On Tuesday, Trump said “somebody from within, maybe, would be more appropriate.”

But many of the potential candidates “from within” have been killed in the past few days, as Trump has acknowledged.

“Most of the people we had in mind are dead …And now we have another group, they may be dead also based on reports,” he said on Tuesday. “So, I guess you have a third wave coming in pretty soon. We’re not going to know anybody.”

As to how regime change plays into the broader case for war, Leavitt again outlined four objectives for the attack at Wednesday’s press briefing. Those objectives are: destroying Iran’s ballistic missiles, crippling its navy, stopping it from supporting militant proxies in the region and ensuring it can never develop a nuclear weapon.

Asked by this reporter if it might be acceptable to Trump for the Islamic Republic to continue to exist so long as those objectives were met, Leavitt said, “That’s a hypothetical question that I’m not going to engage in.”

Relatedly, Trump has suggested that his preferred scenario for Iran would be akin to what happened in Venezuela. There, after U.S. forces captured President Nicolas Maduro in a raid on his Caracas home at the start of the year, Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez in effect took over.

The outcome assuaged the fears of those who were worried about a power vacuum or civil strife but disappointed those who hoped for more democratizing change.

Meanwhile, Trump’s case for war has also failed to persuade some traditional U.S. allies. The president has been irked with the United Kingdom and Spain, who have imposed restrictions on how they will allow joint airbases on their soil to be used.

“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with,” he complained earlier this week, referring to British prime minister Keir Starmer.

The problem is, Starmer is far from alone in harboring grave doubts about the endeavor upon which Trump has embarked.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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