The NPR Politics Podcast - How Iran Is Dividing the MAGA Base

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

As tensions continue to escalate between Israel and Iran, President Trump is now signaling an openness for more U.S. military involvement. We discuss what that might look like and how it is dividing the MAGA faithful. This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, national security correspondent Greg Myre, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson. This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Lexie Schapitl. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

As conflicts spread across the Middle East, it can be hard to keep up with important developments. Stay on top of the world with the State of the World podcast from NPR. With journalists across the Middle East and around the globe, we get you caught up on what matters in just a few minutes. Listen to State of the World from NPR every weekday. Hi, this is Deirdre in Pipersville, Pennsylvania. I'm at the barn sitting inside, just brought in 10 horses from the big heat we're having today and I'm listening to them munching and settling and birds chirping and it's

wonderful and I wouldn't want to spend my summers any other way. Nice. This podcast was recorded at 1209 PM on Wednesday, June 18th, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll probably be back at the barn. What a nice life. Very nice. Very sweaty today to be doing that, but a very nice life indeed.

Hey there, it's the MPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Greg Meyry. I cover national security. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, Iran, where the Middle East conflict goes from here and what United States involvement could look like. So Greg, this is a rapidly evolving situation in the Middle East. Where do things stand right now? Greg Foss Yeah, Miles, we've had a six straight night of bombing going back and forth between Israel and Iran. The Israeli airstrikes have continued

in Iran. Iranian missiles fired at Israel. So I think a couple developments though are becoming more clear as this goes on. Israel now says it controls the skies over Tehran, the capital, and seemingly much of the western part of the country, and Israel says it hasn't lost a single aircraft. Israel is hitting a wide range of targets, but two in particular are important. One is Iran's nuclear facilities. Israel keeps's nuclear facilities. Israel keeps striking nuclear sites. It's hit several of them. It's hard to get a clear picture of how much damage they're causing. Is this damage that can be repaired relatively quickly and Iran could resume its program? Or does it set

the nuclear program back substantially? We don't quite know at this point. The second key target is Iran's mobile launchers that it uses to fire these missiles at Israel. Israel says Iran has about a hundred of them. A couple days ago Israel said it had knocked out a third. We have seen the number of missiles coming out of Iran going down. It was a hundred or more the first couple days. It seems to be less than 50 the last couple days. So in terms of big trend lines, they do seem to be pointing in Israel's favor. And we're going to get more into what US involvement could look like in the future. But I know President Trump, Maura, was asked about all of this this morning. What did he say?

Yeah, he was asked whether the United States is moving closer to a decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities. That would basically be providing Israel with help with these giant bunker busting bombs that only America has. And Trump said, I may do it, I may not do it. Nobody knows what I'm going to do, unquote. And I think maybe even he doesn't know what he's going to do because he has been moving very rapidly back and forth on this issue.

He started out asking Bibi Netanyahu not to attack Iran because he was negotiating with Iran on a nuclear deal. Then once Israel did start bombing Iran, he said the bombs were excellent. He's now talked about, we have control over the skies. We are doing this as if he is involved with Israel. So he's gone back and forth on this. And we don't know where he's going to end up. Remember, he ran against foreign wars. He ran pretty much as an isolationist, thought that foreign entanglements were stupid, but he also is a bellicose, sometimes imperial sounding foreign policy president.

And you know, this is another example where he sees Israel having some success, looking strong and tough, and he wants to be on board with that, run up to the front of the parade and grab the flag. I mean, Greg, the central question here is whether Iran actually is close to producing a nuclear weapon. Israel has said for decades that they were, and President Trump seems to be echoing some of that language now. What do we actually know about how close Iran is?

Well, we do know a fair bit about Iran's nuclear program. U.S. and Israeli intelligence have followed this closely for many, many years. International inspectors go to Iran with regularity. Now Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has been the leading voice for many, many years saying that Iran was on the cusp of a nuclear weapon, and he said he ordered the attack on Iran last week because, he says, it was making a new push for the bomb. Now the US intelligence community says Iran suspended its nuclear weapon program back in 2003 and has never ended that suspension. Director of National

Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reiterated this US position when she testified in March before the Senate Intelligence Committee, but now we have President Trump contradicting Gabbard. He said, quote, I don't care what she said, I think they, meaning the Iranians, were very close to having it. So Trump has now thrown this this new US position, or his position, into the mix, and so he seems to be much closer to the Israeli position. And there's no sign that Trump is saying this based on anything coming from the US military or US intelligence community. And I'd add that the US and Israel tend to agree on the facts regarding Iran's nuclear program, but their

interpretations differ. And Israel, and Netanyahu in particular, tended to see new developments as movement toward a bomb that would directly threaten Israel. The U.S. national security officials have always acknowledged that the Iranian program is evolving, but they say the country's leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stopped short of authorizing the building of a nuclear weapon. And Greg, is it clear what the Israeli and or US goal is? Maybe they're two different goals. Is it regime change or is it just to stop them from

getting a nuclear weapon? Netanyahu has been very clear on this. He set two goals. First and foremost, greatly damage or destroy Iran's nuclear program. And that's been his big issue for years and years. Second is to stop these missiles, the ballistic missiles that Iran is clearly capable of firing in large numbers at Israel. Those are the two big things which Israel, and perhaps with help from the U.S., have some control over. Now, Israel would love to see the Iranian regime weakened or overthrown, but that's not really something they can control and they're not expressing it as a primary goal. And again, there's really no prospect that troops from Israel or

the US would go into Iranian territory. So regime change would have to come from within, with Iranians rising up and finding a way to oust the clerical regime that's been in power for 46 years. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. When we get back, we're going to talk about how this issue is dividing the Republican Party. Pop Culture Happy Hour, NPR's easy breezy laid back pop culture podcast has brought you the best in culture for the past 15 years. That means we spent the last 15 years talking about what exactly? Bad reality TV, actually good Marvel movies. Actually awful Marvel movies.

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And we're back. So, Greg, we've talked about the possibility of the United States' involvement expanding here. Can you explain what that would actually look like? Right. So the US has been helping Israel play defense with ships in the region and planes and air defense systems on the ground that are helping shoot down the incoming Iranian missiles. The big line that Trump may cross here

is helping Israel play offense, and Israel in particular wants the US to do something it can't, which is unleash a huge bunker busting bomb to hit the most important Iranian nuclear facility, Fordow, which is built into the side of a mountain a little over a hundred miles south of Tehran. Now the US bomb that would be used in this operation is called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator or GBU-57. It weighs 30,000 pounds. It's so heavy, only one US warplane is configured to carry it, the B-2 stealth bomber. Now, the US provides Israel with a wide range of US planes and bombs, which Israel is

currently employing, but Israel doesn't have this plane or this bomb. Israel has repeatedly made this request to the US, but it's always been denied. There's no guarantee that this US bomb would work, even if President Trump decides to go ahead with this. We've been talking to a lot of experts. They say it would likely take more than one hit. It might take waves of bombers. It could also be hard to judge the extent of damage since this Iranian facility is perhaps 300 feet or so underground. And as Mara said, Trump hasn't made up his mind whether he will or won't do this.

Well, I mean, switching to the politics for a second, Mara, in the past few days, since Israel began these strikes against Iran, we have seen real divisions within the Republican Party and even among the most loyal MAGA supporters. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, you know, there've been divisions before over the tax bill, over Musk, over immigration, but this is a really profound split because you have people like Tucker Carlson,

people like Steve Bannon, who believed Trump when he ran as an isolationist. For them, America first meant no more involvement in forever wars, stupid foreign entanglements. And here's what Tucker Carlson had to say about that on The War Room with Steve Bannon. My interest is really simple. I don't want the United States enmeshed in another Middle Eastern war that doesn't serve our interests. I saw that last time.

Yeah, and there you have it. That is what a lot of the MAGA base believes, and they believe Trump ran on that. I think that this is a pretty deep split, so deep that Vice President Vance had to mediate. He posted that he thought Trump has earned some trust on this. And of course he sees his role as a successor to Trump. He certainly hopes to inherit the MAGA mantle. But I think that if the American involvement is confined to dropping some bombs, no American boots on the ground, and the effort is successful,

then I think the split gets papered over and healed. I mean, as you mentioned, Mara, Trump campaigned against this idea of forever wars, and it's impossible, I feel like, not to see the developments this week and think of the past 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq. Greg, can you dig into that a little bit? I mean, is this a different beast

than that sort of forever conflict that America weathered over the last two decades? Yeah, Miles. Well, and of course, that's the really big question here. Is this a 20-year war with an open-ended commitment, or is this a relatively brief bombing campaign? And I think that Trump, if he decides to go forward with it, certainly thinks it's something that's quick, that this is still Israel's fight, and Israel is asking the U.S. to do something that Israel can't do by itself because of

the special, massive weapon that the U.S. has. There's really no prospect that either Israel or the U.S. would put troops on the ground in Iran. It's a country of 90 million people. It would require, I'm not even sure, the combined they could generate enough force to maintain some sort of occupation or regime change there. So that's just not realistic. But again, the question is, could a short airstrike or series of

airstrikes by the US have a significant impact on the course of this conflict and then could the US withdraw from the involvement? That's still not a clear easy question. And you know the other example of why this is so different than Iraq or Afghanistan is look at the reaction of Europe. Europe has been extremely critical of Bibi Netanyahu's conduct of the conflict in Gaza but they are behind him on this. Most of the world sees Iran as a destabilizing force in the region. It doesn't want Iran to have a bomb, and it's having a much different reaction to Israel than it did in Gaza.

I mean, this is literally a story that is changing every few minutes or every hour. What are you both going to be watching in the next day or two? Well clearly, does Trump decide to provide the bunker busting bombs and help to Israel? And does it work? Does it actually get rid of that Fordo nuclear facility? And I'll be looking at that certainly, but also to see if Iran can sustain missile strikes on Israel. If they can't do that, then Israel will have complete dominance of the sky and ability to bomb Iran at will. And it will be hard for Iran to keep fighting if it can't unleash a regular missile barrage at Israel, because this is very much an air war, not a land war.

All right. Well, we can leave it there for today. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the MPR Politics Podcast. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore it when big, even world-changing events are happening. That's where the Up First podcast comes in. Every morning and under 15 minutes, we take the news and pick three essential stories

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