Iranian American couple from California speaks out against anti-war protests: ‘It is a rescue mission’

When an Iranian American husband and wife see protests against the war with Iran in the United States, they shudder, recalling living and being raised under a regime that “controlled” their young lives.

Since its start, Operation Epic Fury has drawn scrutiny from the American public, inspiring anti-war protests across the country. 

Behzad Hemmati and Rahil Nazarian both had the opportunity to come to America from Iran as young adults. 

Decades later, Hemmati, 50, and Nazarian, 42, told Fox News Digital that they are watching the situation unfold from their new home in Southern California, and to them, this conflict isn’t a war, it’s a “rescue mission.”

Born under the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Hemmati recalls he was too young to experience the “good things” before the Islamic Revolution in 1979 overthrew Pahlavi’s reign.

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“I came here [just because of] my natural personality, I couldn’t bear with the things that [were] happening [in Iran],” Hemmati said.

He recalled his life as a teenager and said, “You want to be yourself, to be free,” but shared that what Western culture considers a “normal” teenage life, wasn’t allowed in Iran.

“You want to dance, you want to hang out with your friends, but we couldn’t … girls and boys [are] always separate,” Hemmati explained. “This is how [the government] control[s] you, this is how [they] break you in pieces and take that beautiful life that you can have [and] take it away from you.”

Nazarian was born during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Her father was a teacher and after the Islamic Revolution, she explained that the Islamic Republic took her family’s home, their land and her father was unable to work.

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“After [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini came and took over, they fired [my father] because they told him, ‘You work during Shah, you don’t deserve this,” Nazarian said.

Murderous regime

In an emotional moment, she recalled her father being brought back and forth between Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) camps until one day, he did not come back.

“They were executing most of his family members,” Nazarian said. 

“One day, he went, and they told him, ‘Oh, we have a plan for you, we’re gonna give you back everything we took to you, we’re going to give it back to you,’” Nazarian recalled. “He left home [that day], he never came back.”

Since the initial strikes in Operation Epic Fury that began in the early-morning hours of Feb. 28, the conflict has struck a chord with the American public, leading to backlash against the Trump administration.

Still, when Hemmati and Nazarian see protests against military action, Hemmati told Fox News Digital that they “don’t understand.”

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“People should understand [here], those that they don’t understand,” he said. “People are going on the street and saying no to war, I can tell you 100%, they have no idea.”

The operation has also garnered support from many in the Iranian American community. 

Hemmati said protests in favor of U.S. military action in the country have sprung up around Southern California, and that he attends an event almost every weekend. He says this is a way for people to be the voice for people inside Iran who are in favor of the operation.

“[Iranian’s] inside Iran want to show the world — obviously, they can’t do anything because everything is disconnected from Iran — but that’s why we’re going out to be their voice,” Hemmati said.

Family in Iran

Nazarian and Hemmati said they spoke to relatives still living in Iran and despite constant bombardments near their homes, they’re “glad this is happening.”

“No matter what happens, no matter if we lose our house, no matter if the whole house is destroyed, as long as we’re alive to fight back, we’re still grateful and happy,” Hemmati said.

“They were thanking President [Donald] Trump and said, it’s OK, we have to pay the price for freedom,” Nazarian continued.

Hemmati said by targeting specific IRGC locations the operation is “cutting the regime’s bloodlines.”

“They’re targeting those very special places for their government,” Hemmati said. “Once they’re eliminated, then it’s time for people to go out.”

Once able, Nazarian and Hemmati said they’ll be on the first flight to Iran to see family for a long-overdue visit.

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“[Our] kids are so thirsty to see their cousins, their family, because I don’t have any family [in the US],” Nazarian said. “I haven’t seen them for nine years [and Hemmati] hasn’t been there for 19 years.”

“[This] is what I’ve been waiting for [for 47 years],” Hemmati said. “Unfortunately, we’re going to lose some lives in this rescue mission … but again, people are saying inside Iran, they’re saying, ‘How many are we gonna lose? … We’re ready to sacrifice again until we get to [freedom].’”

MORNING GLORY: President Trump and the US are waging a righteous battle — and winning

The United States and Israel are winning this battle with the Islamic Republic of Iran — decisively. Our Gulf allies are standing strong. The cost has already been high with seven U.S. service members dead and many wounded, some seriously. Soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces have been killed and civilians in Israel and among the Gulf states murdered by the lashing out at every country in the region by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

But of course, some hard-left partisans hate the prospect of either President Donald Trump or the United States winning an important, indeed crucial battle.  That includes, shockingly, Catholic Cardinals in the U.S. These cardinals are putting politics ahead of faith and demonstrating deep ignorance of national security affairs combined with indifference to the patriotism of their parishioners — many of whom with family on the front lines — who can be expected to at least stop giving to an anti-American church if not leave it.

For anyone who, out of ignorance, real or feigned, does not understand the nature of the regime atop the 91 million innocent people of Iran: These fanatics murdered 35,000 of their own people in two days and nights of terror in January in Tehran and across other cities in the vast country. 35,000!

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The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps numbers between 150,000 and 200,000 and their street thugs, the Basij, between four and five times that. So a million of Iran’s people cruelly repress the other 91.

The left in America refuses to come to grips with how evil the Iranian regime is and for how long it has been so. They seem to have forgotten the original hostage crisis, the murder of our Marines in Beirut in 1983, the destruction of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and countless other acts of assassination and mass terrorism since the regime seized power in 1979. They do not know that we know for a certainty that Iran murdered and maimed thousands of our troops in Iraq in the war that began there in 2003. Our political left is defeatist and in the grip of their appeasers and anti-Israel caucus. That left now includes at least three high-profile Catholic cardinals.

The Senate and House GOP should stand proudly behind President Trump and proclaim the Islamic Republic of Iran as the evil and malignant terrorist regime run by theocratic fanatics that it has been for 47 years; that the cause of destroying the regime’s ability to threaten the region and the world is just; and that President Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Caine are conducting the war in remarkable fashion because the American military has no peer.

I hope House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune persuade the caucuses they lead to agree to bring forward a second reconciliation process to quickly resupply the military with the funds to replenish the ordinance expended and, indeed, to go further: To fully fund the next three years of spending necessary to the rapid build-out of the “Golden Dome” and the “Golden Fleet,” while also making sure the equal of any of our allies — Israel — has the funding and hardware we can provide to assist them on all of their fronts. The righteous battle with Iran and its proxies needs to be proclaimed and explained and cannot be done too often or too loudly.

MICHAEL OREN: IRAN HAS WAGED WAR ON AMERICA FOR 47 YEARS — TIME TO END IT

And, as a Roman Catholic, I hope some of our braver and certainly better informed cardinals stand up and address the brothers in red who have flown off the rails of national security reality.

Democrats who are defeatist, appeasers, anti-Semitic or simply deranged by their hatred of President Trump: You keep speaking up too. History will record your positions.

The region and the whole world is far better off already because of the crushing of Iran’s striking capability and will be immeasurably blessed by the collapse of this insidious regime.

What we have witnessed by the “Yosemite Sam” response of Iran to the attacks by the U.S. and Israel should have awakened even the least observant consumer of news to the nature of the regime. The mullahs ordered everything in their arsenal fired at all of their neighbors, none of whom other than the U.S. and Israel were involved in the conflict. In this respect, Iran acted as Hitler’s Germany did after Imperial Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941: Germany unilaterally declared war on the United States four days after the “day that will live in infamy.”

While Iran has been in conflict with Israel and the United States since the Islamic Revolution culminated in the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran on February 1, 1979, Iran was not at war with the Gulf States. That Iran attacked everyone it could hit should tell you why the regime was so dangerous. It is an unhinged and revolutionary power. It does not abide by anything remotely like the rules of civilized nation states. Its “threat” was not merely imminent, but ongoing and never ceasing. Its hideousness appeared unveiled on 10/7/23 in Israel when its puppet Hamas invaded Israel to kill, kidnap and maim. Iran could never be trusted with nuclear weaponry or the sort of forest of missiles it was aiming to assemble in order to blackmail the world into acquiescence to its nuclear ambitions.

President after president of both parties vowed that Iran would never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. President Trump made good on that vow with the order to conduct Operation Midnight HammerOperation Midnight Hammer last June, which obliterated the ongoing enrichment and weaponization programs inside Iran.

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At that point, Iran could have taken the off-ramp, recognized that the U.S. and Israel had reached the point at which no further provocation or prevarication would be tolerated. Indeed, President Trump made repeated efforts to offer terms to the ayatollahs.

They refused. They obfuscated, playing for time, and always refusing to negotiate as their missile arsenal accumulated. President Trump then did what every American president of both parties pledged to do: He stopped them. And he ordered the military to prevent the next attempt to rebuild.

Stunningly ignorant clerics and critics have damned the United States for breaching international law. Some have incredibly turned their backs not only on the growing, ongoing and imminent threats posed by the fanatics but also on the mountain of corpses the IRGC piled up in the streets of Iran in January. Catholics: Stop giving money to those dioceses that are putting our troops at risk, and make no mistake, some cardinals are doing just that. They are the modern but left-wing versions of Father Coughlin of the 1930s. Their infamy will be as enduring as his.

Cardinal Cupich of Chicago joined Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C., and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, in co-authoring an incoherent statement titled “Charting a Moral Vision of American Foreign Policy” that ignores the massive evils perpetrated by the IRGC this year and over the decades. Politicians shouldn’t advise priests on their religious doctrine and priests should not demonstrate their lack of knowledge about basic national security.

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The cardinals are not alone, however, as the upside-down view of this battle has a grip on the Democratic Party. For the first time in my life, the partisanship that marks elections now defines a conflict in which American servicemen and women are on the front lines. We can perhaps excuse clerics for their ignorance of the world. The Catholic bishops of America presumed to lecture Ronald Reagan in the 1980s with lengthy letters on war and peace as well as on economic growth, and conveniently forgot how wrong they were when the policies of Reagan and President George H.W. Bush brought down the Soviet Union and freed much of Eastern Europe and even Russia for a time.

But now the American left, both in elected office and in pulpits high and low, have wholly lost their way. To repeat: The Iranian regime murdered 35,000 of its own people two months ago. Its proxy, Hamas, invaded Israel and slaughtered 1,200 on 10/7/23 while starting a war that devastated Gaza. Two other of Iran’s proxies — Hezbollah and the Houthis — also attacked Israel in the months after 10/7, as did Iran. Where were the cardinals then? Hiding, of course.

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The collapse of moral clarity among American elites on the left is complete, and it has even made inroads on the fringes of the right. The Republican Party should boldly proclaim that, even after 250 years, our country still knows right from wrong and will defend the right.

President Trump is leading a winning campaign to rid the world of as malign an actor as there is. The region and the world will be so much better off if the president perseveres. Pray he does, because it is obvious that many who should be doing so lack the wisdom and/or the courage to do so.

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Iran’s drone swarms challenge US air defenses as troops in Middle East face rising threats

Cheap Iranian drone attacks are forcing the Pentagon to rapidly expand layered air defenses in the Middle East, as thousands of U.S. troops stationed across the region face an escalating aerial threat that is testing the limits of traditional missile defenses.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) said Tuesday its air defenses detected nine ballistic missiles and 35 drones launched by Iran. Eight missiles were intercepted while one fell into the sea. 

Of the 35 drones, 26 were shot down and nine crashed on UAE soil, the country said. 

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The engagement highlights how the battlefield is shifting. 

Ballistic missiles travel high and fast, allowing long-range interceptors such as the Patriot air defense system and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) to engage them predictably. Drone swarms, which Iran increasingly has relied on in recent exchanges, present a different challenge to U.S. forces.

They fly lower, move slower and often arrive in clusters, making them harder to detect and more likely to strain defenses built for high-speed threats.

U.S. troops already have been directly affected by one-way attack drones in the region. In a March 1 strike near Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, six American service members were killed and dozens wounded when an Iranian drone hit a tactical operations center. 

Each interception also carries a cost. 

High-end missile interceptors can run into the millions of dollars per shot. 

Many of the drones they are designed to defeat are far cheaper and produced in large numbers — creating what defense officials have described as a growing “math problem” in modern warfare. The U.S. can end up firing expensive missiles at relatively inexpensive drones, a dynamic that becomes harder to sustain if attacks come in waves.

That imbalance is accelerating a push inside the Pentagon to expand a layered counter-drone strategy — combining short-range interceptors, electronic warfare tools and emerging technologies such as high-energy lasers.

For U.S. forces in the region, larger drone waves increase the odds that defenses are stretched, and that even one drone could reach a base or ship.

This marks the first sustained confrontation in which U.S. forces are facing large-scale, state-backed drone waves as a central feature of the battlefield — forcing commanders to adapt in real time and draw on lessons learned from Ukraine, where mass-produced Shahed drones reshaped air defense strategy.

Lasers and staying power

Among the new U.S. systems drawing renewed attention are high-energy lasers.

Directed energy is being developed and tested for counter-drone missions and has been used in limited domestic contexts. 

U.S. defense officials say lasers offer a potentially significant advantage: Once powered, they can fire repeatedly without expending traditional ammunition.

Unlike missile interceptors, which must be replaced after each launch, a laser system can continue engaging targets as long as sufficient power is available. In theory, that provides sustained defensive capacity during large drone waves.

“It’s a function now of our procurement system, moving those things to the troops as fast as we can,” retired Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. 5th Fleet, told Fox News Digital.

Donegan acknowledged the technology is real but not yet fully fielded across combat zones.

Scaling high-energy systems requires power generation, integration and infrastructure — all of which take time.

A U.S. official confirmed to Fox News Digital directed energy systems have been tested and employed to counter drones in combat scenarios and the Pentagon “continues to work to scale this capability as quickly as possible.”

Central Command, the U.S. military command tasked with overseeing the Middle East, declined to comment on whether lasers are part of its current drone defense system against Iran. 

Building defensive depth

While lasers represent a longer-term evolution, commanders are relying on multiple defensive layers today.

The recent deployment of the Merops drone-on-drone interceptor into U.S. Central Command reflects that approach. 

Developed by U.S.-backed defense firm Perennial Autonomy, Merops is a mobile counter-drone system that launches small interceptor drones from a truck-mounted platform to disable incoming threats. The system was battle-tested against Shahed drones in Ukraine and fielded in NATO countries such as Poland before being accelerated into the Middle East as drone activity intensified.

A former defense official familiar with counter-drone operations said effective counter-UAS capability depends on overlapping systems integrated around high-value targets rather than reliance on a single interceptor.

“Effective counter-UAS capability is overlapping,” the official said. “No one system solves the drone problem by itself.”

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U.S. ships in the region rely on short-range missile systems such as the Rolling Airframe Missile and Sea Sparrow, along with the Close-In Weapon System, a radar-guided rapid-fire gun that can engage threats at close range.

Ground-based defenses incorporate radar detection with specialized interceptors such as Raytheon’s Coyote family, designed to defeat small unmanned aircraft. Industry systems like Anduril’s Roadrunner add autonomous interceptor drones capable of engaging airborne threats and, in some configurations, returning for reuse.

Success begins with early detection. Radar systems track low-flying drones and give operators time to choose whether to jam, intercept or destroy incoming threats.

“We’ve built into the weapon systems of all our military platforms that are combatants counter-drone capability,” Donegan said.

Lessons from Ukraine

Iran’s Shahed drones were refined during Russia’s war in Ukraine, where cities faced nightly waves of low-cost one-way attack aircraft. There, layered defenses combining short-range interceptors, electronic warfare and evolving technologies proved essential in absorbing sustained attacks.

Ukrainian officials have said some cities faced more than a hundred drones in a single night, forcing air defense crews to remain on alert for hours at a time.

Ukraine has since offered to share its battlefield experience with the United States and Gulf partners as Iranian drone activity expands in the Middle East.

Officials say those lessons are influencing U.S. planning.

“JIATF-401 is accelerating procurement of multiple counter-UAS capabilities across several combatant commands, including sensing radars, kinetic interceptors and other available systems, not just Merops, to expand layered defenses in the U.S. Central Command area of operations,” a U.S. official said.

“Some of the capabilities being surged to support our warfighters reflect lessons we are learning and technology we are transferring from the battlefield in Ukraine.”

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The result is expanding defensive depth — designed to absorb and defeat a threat that is inexpensive, persistent and increasingly central to modern warfare.

For the troops stationed at those bases and aboard those ships, that layered defense is what stands between a drone intercepted in the sky and one that reaches its target.

As drone production scales and tactics evolve, the contest between low-cost attack drones and layered air defenses playing out in Iran the future of warfare itself.

BRETT VELICOVICH: Iran built a drone terror machine — America just hacked it

As coordinated U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran continue, one thing is clear: this is not the kind of war we have spent decades planning for. There are no massed formations or carrier battle groups trading salvos. This conflict is being fought with swarms of relatively inexpensive, one-way drones. Adaptation and rapid innovation now determine how conflicts are fought.

Iran has spent years perfecting saturation warfare. The concept is straightforward: flood the sky with enough drones and missiles to exhaust the enemy’s interceptors, force impossible triage decisions and eventually break through. Iran has targeted hotels, tourist centers and locations without hardened counter-drone systems. Iran’s kamikaze drones, called Shaheds, are low, slow and persistent. They aren’t technically sophisticated, but they are difficult to stop in large numbers. This isn’t a failure of U.S. technology. It’s a logistics and economics problem that we need to solve and adapt to. And we’re already doing that.

For the first time, the U.S. has deployed the LUCAS system — a one-way attack drone modeled directly on Iran’s own Shahed design — in combat. The system was developed by reverse-engineering downed Iranian drone systems in Ukraine and rebuilding them with American guidance systems, hardened navigation and real-time targeting integration into our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) networks. Then we sent them back to Iran to destroy their infrastructure.

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LUCAS was used in the opening strike, hitting Iranian drone manufacturing sites and other weapons infrastructure before advanced fighters followed. These drones aren’t just munitions; they’re nodes in a combat cloud, receiving real-time targeting updates and networked with intelligence assets in ways Iran’s drones cannot match.

While Iran is building volume, the U.S. is building systems. This distinction matters.

This operation has also marked the largest-scale deployment of AI models across the U.S. Department of War in history. From intelligence assessments to target identification to battle scenario simulation, AI has been part of the decision cycle at every level. This precision has been another point of delineation between the two sides. While Tehran responds with indiscriminate barrages hitting civilian areas, U.S. strikes are being driven by layered intelligence, refined targeting and a disciplined operational picture. That gap in approach is not only strategic but ethical.

This conflict with Iran will be decided by the side that adapts fastest, identifying problems and finding solutions on a compressed timeline.

But there are still areas where we’re adapting. The cost dynamics of this new approach remain unresolved. The U.S. has traditionally favored high-tech, expensive weapons systems requiring extensive training and planning. But when the adversary has more drones than you have interceptors, the math turns against you fast.

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Relying on high-cost interceptors to counter cheap, easy-to-produce drones is not a sustainable equation. The answer isn’t to outgun; it’s to intelligently adapt — and to do so quickly. Lower-cost, high-speed, combat-proven intercept platforms designed to counter one-way attack drones, including the Shahed-136, Geran-2 and other Group 3-class unmanned threats, are what this new battlefield demands.

That’s the lesson Ukraine has been teaching for years — and one this conflict is reinforcing in real time: no military in the world is adequately prepared to stop cheap, mass-produced one-way drones at scale. Not yet. The U.S. industrial base has the capacity to change that. The constraint is understanding the new reality and deciding to move on it.

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Iran spent years developing and proliferating the Shahed as a tool of destabilization, deploying it in Yemen, Iraq and Ukraine, and against American forces across the region. Now, a version of that same weapon has been turned against the factories that produce it.

As of today, the Islamic Republic is in unprecedented internal chaos. Leadership is scrambling, and the regime’s command-and-control picture is unclear even to those inside it. That uncertainty creates both opportunity and risk. Precision matters more — not less — in these moments.

This conflict will be decided by the side that adapts fastest, identifying problems and finding solutions on a compressed timeline. Though the U.S. drone industry isn’t where it needs to be, real-world, battle-tested deployment is how capability gaps get closed. What we learn here will shape doctrine, acquisition and industrial strategy for the next decade.

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America just delivered one of the most significant demonstrations of adaptive military capability in modern history. The question isn’t whether we can innovate — it’s whether we’re prepared to build the industrial and defensive infrastructure at the scale and speed this new era demands. 

The answer to that question isn’t decided on a battlefield. It’s decided here at home — where we invest and how seriously we take the threat. The conflict with Iran has made that choice unavoidable.

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Trump suddenly seems anxious to end the war as American casualties mount and Iran finds ways to hit back

It was Mike Tyson who famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

In terms of sheer firepower, the greatest military machine in human history has totally overwhelmed Iran and is decimating the country.

But the Iranians are finding ways to fight back, as American officials acknowledge, and those who envisioned a cakewalk are finding a rockier road.

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The Trump administration’s disclosure that 140 U.S. service members were wounded in the initial attack that killed Ayatollah Ali Khameini and other top leaders highlights the ability of even an overwhelmed enemy to inflict pain. 

As President Donald Trump sends decidedly mixed messages about the duration of the war, the question hovers in the air: What amounts to winning?

There are some, including Republicans, who want Trump to declare victory and get out. He can boast that he disrupted the terror state’s latest attempt to develop a nuclear weapon.

Yesterday, in fact, the president told Axios that the war will end “soon” because there is “practically nothing left to target … Little this and that … Any time I want it to end, it will end.”

Trump’s explanation: “We have done more damage than we thought possible.”

Just days ago, the president said the military campaign against Tehran would take four to six weeks.

More important than the timing, Trump had insisted that Iran must undergo regime change. He proclaimed that he had to approve the country’s next leader. Well, with the Iranians anointing the ayatollah’s son, who Trump had specifically deemed unacceptable, that obviously didn’t happen.

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The almost seamless quality of the U.S. kidnapping of Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro and takeover of that country’s oil may have given the Trump team a sense of overconfidence when it comes to Iran, which has 90 million people.

There’s no mistaking the fact that Trump, allied with Israel, has made other dire threats against an Iranian regime that has bedeviled a succession of American presidents since the 1979 hostage crisis.

“If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz,” he posted, “they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”

But that’s exactly what the Iranians are doing, with reports that they are booby-trapping the strait, a major chokepoint for world oil shipments, with land mines.

Among other things, according to officials and experts cited by the New York Times, militias backed by Iran have attacked hotels utilized by American troops.

There was a series of drones launched at an affluent hotel in the Iraqi city of Erbil.

An Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University told the paper that the Iranians learned from the initial U.S. attack last June that the Pentagon is lacking certain missiles and defensive weapons that can intercept drones. 

Another Times story, assessing the first 12 days, concluded that Trump and his advisers “misjudged how Iran would respond to a conflict that Tehran sees as an existential threat.”

MICHAEL OREN: IRAN HAS WAGED WAR ON AMERICA FOR 47 YEARS — TIME TO END IT

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, however, told reporters that “I can’t say that we anticipated necessarily that’s exactly how they would react, but we knew it was a possibility. I think it was a demonstration of the desperation of the regime.”

Beyond weaponry, the war launched by Trump has had a more predictable financial impact, creating economic uncertainty around the world.

Americans have been hit with soaring gas prices and shrinking retirement plans. The market volatility and oil prices have bounced around, but this has clearly fueled feelings of anxiety.

What’s more, unemployment has ticked up and tens of thousands of jobs have been lost, which predates the war but also may be linked to the Supreme Court ruling rejecting Trump’s tariffs.

America has punched Iran in the mouth. But the theocratic dictatorship can declare a victory of sorts simply by surviving. 

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Trump, for his part, can boost his party’s uphill chances in the midterms by bringing this war to an early conclusion.

That would also end a different war, the acrimonious debate within his MAGA coalition between those who defend the assault on Iran and those who believe he betrayed his base by abandoning his America First pledge to stay out of foreign wars.