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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. As the war in Iran drags on and escalates, let's look at a divide that's opening up inside the Republican Party and inside Trump's own circles over where this is headed. Yesterday you've probably heard this. Joe Kent, the man Donald Trump appointed to run the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned and posted his letter of resignation on X for all of us to read. Here are a few excerpts from that letter. "I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."

Further down, "As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel," he wrote, "I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives." This letter is drawing sharp criticism, as you might imagine, for language that furthers anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, blaming Israel in the way that he does in "its powerful American lobby" for a war that critics at Vox and many other news organizations say Trump chose to start himself.

We'll get into that. The underlying anxiety the letter reflects is real and spreading inside Trump's own circle, that this war had no clear purpose in terms of an imminent threat and is pulling Trump away from his America First brand, especially as there continues to be no clear off ramp. We are going to talk in just a minute with Megan Messerly, White House reporter at Politico, covering the Trump administration and the future of the GOP, but a little more on Joe Kent's resignation in political context first. I might put it as the politics of the Iran war just got a little bit weirder.

Kent was Trump's own hand-picked right-wing chief of counterterrorism, and now he resigns in protest of the war. This breaks more into the open, the split among the MAGA, no military adventurism in the Middle East base, but the way he did it, as I already referenced, also further raised the issue of antisemitism in that wing of the party. Joe Kent didn't just oppose the war or even just oppose US and Israeli policy. You can criticize Israeli policy without being antisemitic, but he seemed to play into the trope of Jews controlling everything. Again, he wrote, "It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.

High-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform, wholly undermined, and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran." He accuses Israel of misinformation as a campaign. He says, "This echo chamber was used to deceive you, not to convince you, to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States and that you should strike now." He also wrote that he "Lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel." Sounds like code words to so many people, right?

She was killed by an ISIS suicide bomb-- this is my background. She was killed by an ISIS suicide bomber in Syria during a US Special Forces operation against ISIS there during the first Trump administration in 2019. Joe Kent himself did see 11 combat tours of duty. He also wrote this yesterday about Trump's claim that Iran was an imminent threat to the US and we could win a war quickly. "This was a lie and the same tactics the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women." He pinned the Iraq war on Israeli deception, too.

This didn't come out of the blue for Joe Kent. We'll get into a little bit of his past association with known antisemites like Nick Fuentes. Kent did, however, previously support Israel's war in Gaza after October 7th. Some defenders of Kent note that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, early in this war, had said something about Israel telling Trump they were going to strike Iran that Rubio later retracted. Even that statement, and I'm going to play it to make this distinction. Even the statement that Rubio originally made is not the kind of Israeli deception conspiracy theory that Joe Kent is alleging. Here's the original Rubio statement.

Reporter: Yesterday, you told us that Israel was going to strike Iran and that that's why we needed to get involved. Today, the President said that Iran was going to get striked.

Marco Rubio: Your statement is false. I was asked very specifically-- were you there yesterday?

Reporter: Yes, I asked the question.

Marco Rubio: Somebody asked me a question, did we go in because of Israel? You asked me that follow-up, and I said, "No." I told you this had to happen anyway.

Brian Lehrer: That was Rubio trying to clean it up the next day. Here's what he originally said.

Marco Rubio: We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed.

Brian Lehrer: There's all of that. He was saying Israel was going to strike for its own national security reasons, and Trump thought that would put US interests in the region at risk of Iranian retaliation, so Trump decided to strike Iran first to prevent that. Controversial, but not the same as what Joe Kent wrote in yesterday's letter, by any means. There's all of that, but there is also a genuine split in the MAGA movement about whether Iran posed enough of a threat. Imminent is the word that's being debated to risk American lives. More than a dozen US Service people have been killed in this war so far, and to spend so much taxpayer money that could be used for other things to help people at home.

That's part of MAGA philosophy as well. Critics on the MAGA right and some on the political left are now in agreement. Yes, the politics of the Iran war just got weirder and more complicated with the resignation of Joe Kent as Trump's chief of counterterrorism. With us now, Politico White House correspondent Megan Messerly, who also covers the Republican Party's politics generally. Her article on the growing divide among Trump supporters is called 'They hold the cards now': Trump allies fear Iran is slipping beyond the president's control. Megan, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Megan Messerly: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: 'They hold the cards now': Trump allies fear Iran is slipping beyond the president's control. That came from someone you interviewed who you described as close to the White House. They hold the cards now. Can you put that quote in context?

Megan Messerly: Yes. As folks know, there is this significant chunk of the president's base that has been highly skeptical of foreign intervention, and especially foreign intervention in the Middle East. They feel like that is a separate sphere of influence and not one that the US should be involved in. Of course, as soon as conversations started growing that the US might be planning some sort of strike on Iran, obviously, as the Gerald Ford and other naval forces massed off the shores of Iran, this crowd of folks was getting increasingly nervous about what a strike might look like and how protracted it might be, and were warning against it in the weeks and days leading up to the action that the US and Israel ultimately took.

Now, of course, when that strike happened, they a lot of these folks were saying, "Okay, we're behind our troops. We don't love that this is happening, but we are hoping this will be a relatively short campaign. Maybe not quite as short as the strikes that the US conducted on Iranian nuclear facilities last summer, but we're still hoping for something shorter and not protracted." Now, what those folks are telling me is they are very concerned that we are heading into a situation now where the only way to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and to allow the flow of oil tankers through to stabilize global energy markets will be to put US boots on the ground.

Which for this segment of the Republican Party, this segment of the president's base, really is a red line here. That's what they mean when they say they hold the cards now. They're saying that Iran now, because of the control it has over the Strait of Hormuz and because the president has shown that he is responsive to the pressure of rising oil prices, means that the cards really now are in Iran's hands. It's not going to be as easy for the president to declare the war over when he wants it to be.

Brian Lehrer: Another quote from another person familiar with the US Operation in Iran in your article, the off-ramps don't work anymore because Iran is driving the asymmetric action. So what does the administration say the off-ramps look like now, as opposed to a widening war that could drag on and get US Troops more personally involved if they can't resolve the Hormuz closure simply?

Megan Messerly: This is the big question now, and the concerns that I hear from folks near the president, close to the president, is that the set of options is quickly dwindling. There is a segment of folks who are urging him that he can still ratchet up pressure on Iran without ground troops. He can launch cyber attacks, for instance, target Iranian financial assets leaning on allied navies. This is why you see him putting so much pressure this week on US Allies to get involved here in securing the Strait. You can see him looking for options here that will allow the US, and really the world, to reopen the Strait without requiring boots on the ground.

Short of a lot of these countries getting involved, which there obviously has not been a lot of enthusiasm among doing that, especially among European allies who say, "You didn't bother to consider us really on this war in the first place, so why are we coming now to solve a problem that you created?" Without that, the concern is that it is going to take US forces on the ground. I'll say, you can hear even the rhetorical debate happening around this. The argument that if, as we know, the USS Tripoli is headed toward the Gulf right now carrying thousands of Marines.

There's been this argument that some targeted operation by troops that wouldn't really be boots on the ground, that's a more limited effort to secure the shoreline. It does feel like things are heading more in that direction, based on my conversations with people in and around the White House.

Brian Lehrer: Some of the criticism surrounds Trump asking NATO countries and even China and others to send their own warships to help escort oil tankers and other commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. The critique is Trump didn't even try to build a coalition of allies against Iran before the war out of hubris and underestimating the challenge. Now he has to come crawling back to other countries to ask them to help bail him out of being in a stalemate. Are they trying to counter that narrative of very flawed planning?

Megan Messerly: Yes. I think we've heard pushback from the White House on this, saying that they-- and I think we have seen the president try to make the objectives of the war more clear, but it's hard for them to respond to this accusation that other countries weren't involved because, as far as we know, they really weren't involved. This was a US-Israel operation, and so part of the challenge here, and I think this gets to the way the president views the relationships with other countries as transactional, but this is why we see him railing on true social, against the US's NATO allies.

Worth noting, he puts allies in quotes because he sees this as a transactional alliance and not this one based on shared values and support of democracy and the free world and all of that. He sees this as, "We spend so much money on this organization. Now we're asking you for help. Why are you not helping?" It's worth noting that is not why NATO was formed. NATO is a defensive alliance focused on defending NATO countries, not getting involved in the Middle East or things of that nature. This is, I think, why you see this frustration from the president, because he feels like the US has put X money into NATO over the years. He should be able to call on NATO for assistance whenever he feels.

That's ultimately not how other countries view this.

Brian Lehrer: Talk about Joe Kent and this letter of resignation. Who is this guy? Tell us more. I just gave you some, and tell us about this faction inside the Republican Party that's against the war with Iran.

Megan Messerly: I really do see Joe Kent, and obviously head of the National Counterterrorism Center. I see his resignation as indicative of this very deep and perhaps deepening divide within the Republican Party. As you mentioned, very clear concerns about antisemitism there in his remarks. Concerns about Joe Kent when he ran for Congress, he had a political consultant set up a call that was joined by Nick Fuentes, who obviously has espoused his own antisemitic views. There are concerns here that this is being driven by antisemitism, but at the same time, I think this does reflect a deeper divide in the Republican Party about what the US's posture toward Israel should be.

Some of that probably is driven by antisemitism, and other parts of it is probably probably driven just by a different global posture than the one the US has taken in the past, especially the Republican Party has taken in the past. There's a lot of folks who see that the US should be focused on its affairs at home. It should be focused on this Western sphere of influence. This was outlined in the US's National Security Strategy and national defense strategy this year, focused on protecting the US borders, stopping the flow of drug trafficking, containing migration.

These are the things that these folks say that the US should be focused on, and they see affairs in the Middle East as separate from that. They see that as not an issue that should be within the US's purview. This is a fundamental shift for the Republican Party and indeed a really deep divide here, as you obviously have figures like Senator Lindsey Graham, very close to Bibi Netanyahu, very much an advocate of this war, urging the president on in this campaign, even as you have key figures, and indeed as Joe Kent shows members of his own administration saying this is not a war that we should be fighting.

Brian Lehrer: And a little more on Jo Kent from the website, The Bulwark, says, "If you'd never heard of Kent before, you should pause before rushing to crown him." A top fighter of the resistance, a Special Forces veteran and two-time failed Congressional candidate, Kent was notorious early in his political career for rubbing elbows with the white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes, and later, he enthusiastically embraced Trumpy conspiracy theories, like the notion that the FBI was responsible for the Capitol insurrection on January 6th.

His letter mixes understandable dismay over the course of the war and the Trump administration's foreign policy entanglement with Israel with some more broadly questionable anti-Israel tropes, like his claim that the Syrian civil war, a conflict in which Kent's wife died, was also a war "manufactured by Israel". A little more on Joe Kent from The Bulwark. I want to get your take as someone who reports on Republican politics. If you see this as really a deep split in the Republican Party or a fringy split among different parts of the MAGA base, which in and of itself is not the whole Republican Party.

I'm looking at the polls, there's a lot of opposition to the war among Democrats. There's almost as much opposition among independents as there is among Democrats, but a very large majority of people who identify as Republican to pollsters still say they support the war. How deep is this split as opposed to something we might just find interesting to talk about in a smaller MAGA base?

Megan Messerly: Absolutely. No, I think it's a really, really good question and one that we've seen the White House grappling with itself in recent days as it really pushes back using some of the same polling that you're mentioning there, saying that, no, this is a small segment of of sure, Republican MAGA influencers. The White House has really sought to downplay the divide here by pointing to polling showing that the vast majority of Republicans and folks who voted for the president in 2024 are supportive of this war. That certainly has been the argument we've heard from the White House.

Now I'll talk to folks on that MAGA influencer side, people who are concerned about this, and the point that they make is that their own polling shows that people are really concerned about the war. There's some quibbling over methodologies here. The argument that I've heard Republican operatives who are a step removed from this make broadly is that these even if it is the Tucker Carlsons, the Candace Owens making these sorts of arguments, those folks have very significant followings. The argument has been made to me that those folks are leading indicators of where the party, or at least a segment of the party, is headed.

Folks may not be fully persuaded of those arguments yet, but they have very significant audiences, and that has the ability to very much sway public opinion over time. I'll note as well, the big concern when I talk to Republican operatives is that Republicans really can't afford to lose any portion of the 2024 Trump coalition in the midterm elections in these key Senate and House races. The concern being that even if it is a limited segment of the Republican Party that has concerns about this war, Republicans really can't afford to lose anyone in these races. They need the folks that voted for the president in '24 to show up again for these Republican candidates this year in '26.

The concern is that even if it is a sliver of the Republican base, that sliver could be enough to really cost the Republican Party in these closed elections, ultimately hand control of Congress to Democrats, and from President Trump perspective, make a very uncomfortable last two years of his term. Which would likely be field of investigations, impeachment inquiries, and things of that nature.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you've been a Trump supporter or consider yourself MAGA or think the Iraq war was a mistake, are you for this war now, two plus weeks in? Did Trump underestimate what he got the United States into, or anything else, for Politico, White House Correspondent Megan Messerly? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 call or text. We'll continue in a minute.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Megan Messerly, White House correspondent for Politico. Here's a text, and there are a few like this coming in. "It's commentary like this which is trying to link the resignation and antisemitism in the same context. He clearly said the US attacked Iran on demand by Israel. News flash. Everybody in the world knows that," and it goes on from there. I cited some of the language in the Joe Kent resignation letter that is widely perceived as employing antisemitic tropes, not just criticism of Israel or some clear-eyed analysis of the relationship between the United States and Israel.

Megan, as a reporter, as a White House correspondent, what's your best understanding of the timeline of how Trump got convinced to go to this war? How much by people in his administration? How much was it by Netanyahu? There was that Wall Street Journal article about Lindsey Graham wanting this war and coaching Netanyahu on how to convince Trump that it was in the United States interest. That's different than deceiving the United States, but what's the timeline here, as far as you can tell?

Megan Messerly: It's a good question, and there's been a lot of really good reporting that the journal's reporting, as you cited, and from my colleagues at Politico, New York Times, and others, have really done some really good reporting, expounding on a lot of this. I think there's a couple of things at play here. Obviously, yes, Lindsey Graham and Benjamin Netanyahu played very key roles here in making a pitch to the president for war. There were a lot of conversations about would the US and Israel strike at the same time? Would Israel need to go first? There was a period of time where the US very much was hoping that Israel would go first, and then the US would respond to any Iranian response to that.

Again, I think that even more details will emerge with time, but what's clear is that Israel did play a role in pitching the US on this, but as we know, President Trump is very much his own decision maker. He has shown in the past that he does not always accede to Israel's requests or demands. He, in general, is not someone who responds well to that kind of pressure. The question about was the US deceived or anything of that nature? The president very much made this decision again, with consultation with his team and advisors and, yes, talking to Israel and folks who were very much backing some regime change in Iran as well.

This, again, is something that I think we're going to hear a little bit more about in the weeks to come. These kinds of things benefit, I think, from some space and distance, and the postmortems and aftermath of how everything ship out as folks feel more comfortable with time to speak out on some of these things. At the same time, I think we are going to glean more information. We know that Joe Kent has a few appearances scheduled this week. He's supposed to appear with Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. Those interviews should give us more insights from Kent and how Kent views this war having started.

I think that will be really instructive and insightful. Obviously, we're hearing from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is on Capitol Hill today, so I think we're just going to be getting more information as all of this shakes out. I think it will help answer some of these questions, too, about how much of this is legitimate criticism about Israel, about the relationship between Israel and the US, and the extent to which the US is involved in Middle Eastern affairs, and how much of this does come from a more antisemitic posture.

Brian Lehrer: Richard in Miller Place on Long Island, you're on WNYC. Hello, Richard.

Richard: Hi, good morning. I'm curious if all the MAGA right-wing social media stars like Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Joe Rogan are against the war, but the polling tells us that Trump has not lost support among his MAGA supporters. There seems to be an anomaly there. Either that or maybe we oversubscribe to the influence that these so-called influences possess.

Brian Lehrer: It's a good political question. Megan?

Megan Messerly: I think it's a fantastic question, and again, I think this is something that the White House itself is grappling with right now. They again are making this argument that again, those influencers maybe aren't as influential as they seem. At the same time, they are influential over a certain segment of the Republican Party. The question is that is that a small segment, is it a growing segment, is it a dwindling segment. Those are questions that only time will answer, but absolutely right to point out that there is still significant Republican support for this war.

There are a lot of just more traditional Republicans who take a more traditional Republican posture on these kinds of things, who are persuaded by arguments of we need to secure the Middle East, we need to make sure that Iran doesn't get nuclear weapons. We need to ensure that there is leadership there that is-- I'm not adverse to US interests, but as you know, as little adverse to US Interests as possible. I think only time will tell, really, whether again, this is a limited segment of the Republican Party or whether it is a growing segment of the party.

Brian Lehrer: What about the Rubio clip, the original Rubio statement in which he said that, and I'm paraphrasing here, I could look up the exact text, but the argument was, or the explanation which he then walked away from, was that Israel was going to attack Iran one way or another. Since that would probably cause Iran to attack US interests in the area, Trump decided to strike Iran first and get involved in that, so the US could weaken Iran's ability to do that. Why did Rubio walk away from that explanation? Which is not the same as saying the thing that's considered antisemitic in Joe Kent's resignation. Israel is the puppet master pulling Trump's strings and everybody's strings in the world.

It's different than that, but he did nonetheless walk away from it. How much does reporting confirm that that's why Trump decided to pull the trigger?

Megan Messerly: It's a great question, and I think broadly, the thing that stands out to me is the United States continues to not make the justification for this war very clear. I think you see that in Secretary Rubio's statements, saying that the US struck Iran in this proactively defensive way and then downplaying Israel's role in prompting the strikes and saying the president determined we are not going to get her first. He said it's that simple. We're not going to put American troops in harm's way. I see a couple things in this. One, again, the president never wants to be perceived as being forced into something.

The argument that Israel here was the one driving the ship, that the president just historically, whether it's trade negotiations or things in his own government, he always wants to be the one perceived as leading. I think I see a little bit of that in Secretary Rubio's remarks, but I think broadly, again, to me, the thing that jumps out the most is that the messaging from the White House on this just has been muddled since the beginning. Saying, "Why did we go in? What are the goals?" I've talked to some folks close to the White House who tell me that some of this was left purposely vague so that the president could define the objectives and the reasons as the war went along.

Then, to be able to define an endgame is not the traditional way one launches a military operation. Usually, there's a series of set objectives. Again, that's just not how the president approached this situation. He wanted that optionality to be able to say on what terms the war would end. Obviously, significant concerns now with him being able to credibly do so if Iran is continuing to attack oil tankers in the Strait. To me, I think the broader thing this underscores is just that the administration has not been very clear here about the rationale for the war.

Brian Lehrer: On what might happen next, you also reported the allies' concerns have only been heightened by the US moving additional forces into the region, including the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli, which is carrying the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. The deployment places roughly 2,000 Marines and their aircraft within striking distance of the war, capable of seizing ports, protecting shipping lanes, and launching limited ground operations. What does that indicate the US might be headed for?

Megan Messerly: This is from folks I talk to close to the White House. Again, yes, sending the Tripoli into the region isn't a guarantee of anything, but it does look like the US is positioning itself for a situation where you might see these kinds of limited ground operations. Again, I think we've seen the administration and the president already start to lay some of the rhetorical groundwork here for saying a limited ground operation wouldn't be boots on the ground per se. It's not a full invasion. It would be troops to seize ports, to secure the shoreline in a targeted way.

Again, this is a rhetorical battle, and time will tell what action the US decides to take and how the American people view it. Ultimately, it is going to be up to the American people to decide what boots on the ground means and whether they're comfortable with that or not, given the argument the administration has made. Broadly, this just underscores that it seems like, at least at this point in time, things are heading more towards escalation in the name of resolution. Of course, the goal being here to reopen the Strait and get the flow of oil tankers through the Strait started again.

Ultimately, the concern there is that it doesn't lead to de-escalation. That it just leads to some kind of protracted operation on the ground in Iran.

Brian Lehrer: Right. You also reported some of Trump's most vocal America First allies are urging the White House not to rush toward a ground war, arguing the US still has multiple ways to pressure Iran without sending troops ashore. Still, they acknowledge that the president's alternatives narrow with each additional escalatory step the US takes. That's related to what you were just saying. Some of the split in MAGA world appears to be generational. A number of people are saying this or writing about that analysis that older MAGA people tend to be more for the war, younger MAGA people tend to be more against it. Do you see that, or why would that be?

Megan Messerly: Absolutely, I do see that. A lot of this is generational. These are folks who themselves served in Iraq. Vice President J.D. Vance, himself a veteran, many of these folks in the administration or its allies outside the administration are veterans who served in the Middle East, who have that firsthand experience with protracted war and disillusionment with the US and the rationale that it gave for those wars. I talk to a lot of folks who, again, are in that vein, and they ultimately just don't see why this is something the US should be involved in. They have this more narrow scope of where the US sphere of influence should be.

You do see this generational divide between these folks who either went to war themselves, folks who know folks who went to war, or even just grew up watching the war on the nightly news on TV back at home. These are folks for whom war been the backdrop. A lot of folks looking at those efforts in the Middle East and saying, "What did the US get from that? Why is this something the US is involved in?" We absolutely see that generational split, and I see it mirrored in my own country conversations.

Brian Lehrer: What so many people seem to agree about, who are critical of the war, is that there was no imminent threat to the United States. That was part of Joe Kent's letter, too. Whether he's going overboard into antisemitic tropes by saying Israel controls the United States, Israel manufactured the Iraq war. George W. Bush would have a lot to say about the reasons why he fought, even if it was horribly misguided, that the United States got into the Iraq war, started the Iraq war more than 20 years ago.

If we look past that aspect of the Joe Kent letter, the part that says that Iran was not an imminent threat to the United States, there's so much widespread agreement with that long-term threat, maybe. Preventive war, similar to the Iraq war in that way. Maybe someday Saddam Hussein would get nuclear weapons, or someday he would have a relationship with Al Qaeda that would enable them further to attack the United States. That was the argument back then. It looks to me similar now.

You know, Iran, you know what they've done for 47 years, you know, even though Trump said he obliterated with the attacks last year, Iran's nuclear program, he's now afraid that they're going to build it back and use conventional weapons as an intimidating factor to allow them to continue to develop their nuclear program. Maybe all of that is true, but it's a war of choice, a preventive war in that respect. Are they actually trying to make the case that Iran was an imminent threat? Does Anybody even disagree with Joe Kent on that point?

Megan Messerly: No, it's a great question, and again, to me, this is a rhetorical debate or a debate of semantics, is what counts as imminent. Are we saying the next 24 hours, 48 hours, a week, two weeks, months? I think the administration generally has a different view of what counts as emergent or imminent. I was just thinking as you were talking there about some of the trade fights that we've had over the last year and tariffs imposed under this emergency economic authority, saying that it's a threat to national security, that there are these trade imbalances.

I think we've seen maybe what the average person might consider imminent or emergent might differ a little bit from how the administration views it and uses that language as well. To me, I think imminent in this White House can mean quite a few different things. It doesn't necessarily mean that Iran is going to have some ability to strike the US in the next 24 hours.

Brian Lehrer: What would you say if you've reported on this? I realize you're a White House correspondent, you're not a Middle East or foreign policy correspondent, but if you feel comfortable, what would you describe as Israel's goals in the war versus the United States goals in the war?

Megan Messerly: It's a really good question. Israel always has had a different posture when it comes to the Middle East, just because of, obviously, its direct proximity in the Middle East. The fact that it's under a threat of fire nearly constantly from many of its neighbors. I think it always has been in this very vulnerable position, worried about existential threats. For the US, a lot of this has been about positioning itself amongst the global geopolitical powers of the world against Russia and China, Iran's relationship with those countries. Coming in, I think there is overlap in the goals, but obviously, differences in which the two countries approach it.

I will say, now where we are a couple weeks into this war, the US's goal very much now seems to be reopening the Strait, cutting the flow of oil. It is very much limited, and you don't see the president talking about regime change, talking about the Iranian people rising up. Even his own rhetoric has very much shifted from where it was heading into the war.

Brian Lehrer: Megan Messerly, White House correspondent for Politico, thank you very much for coming on today.

Megan Messerly: Thanks for having me.

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