It’s Tuesday, June 17. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Matthew Continetti looks back at Trump’s ride down that escalator exactly a decade ago; Tyler Cowen on the future of MAGA and the tech right; and much more.
But first: Another day in the war between Israel and Iran raises even more questions about what the U.S.’s role will be—and what it has been preparing for.
On Monday evening, Donald Trump ghosted the G7 summit in Canada and refused to sign a resolution calling for the de-escalation of tensions in the Israel-Iran war. And that wasn’t even the most bellicose thing that he did. He also urged everyone in Iran’s capital to evacuate Tehran on Truth Social.
Then he declared war on Tucker Carlson. “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” said the president in a post on Truth Social.
Does this mean the U.S. is about to get more involved in Israel’s war on Iran’s nuclear program? With Trump, you never know. It might be a head fake, another threat to get Iran back to the nuclear negotiations that Trump began a little over two months ago. As I reported on Sunday evening, Iran’s foreign minister has been telling European and Gulf Arab diplomats that Iran would return to the talks that he officially left on Monday. Iran now is threatening to leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The big issue right now is the crown jewel of Iran’s nuclear program, Fordow, a fortified centrifuge cascade buried deep under a mountain. As of late Monday night, Trump had not indicated whether he would join Israel and order the Air Force to drop bombs capable of burrowing deep underground. To understand the backstory of Fordow and what the U.S. and Israel have been planning for that facility, read my colleague Jay Solomon’s new story for The Free Press.
As Jay reports, U.S. officials have been planning for this war for quite some time. He brings us the exclusive background on the Washington war games in preparation for the present moment.
—Eli Lake
Debate: Should the U.S. Intervene in Iran? |
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Five days into Israel’s campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear arsenal, President Trump told reporters at the G7 summit that “a deal will be signed” with Iran. But later that day, he took to the Situation Room to weigh options for military intervention. So which path will he choose? We brought together two former national security officials with very different perspectives—Dan Caldwell and Simone Ledeen—to debate America’s role in the escalating conflict. | | |
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WATCH: Niall Ferguson and Dexter Filkins: The Iran-Israel War |
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Israeli attacks on Iran have killed more than 200 people and injured more than 1,400. In Israel, at least 24 people have been killed since the conflict began. To help make sense of the escalating violence, Bari Weiss spoke with historian Niall Ferguson and war correspondent Dexter Filkins about how to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, whether or not Israel can win the war on its own, and how the conflict fits into a twenty-first-century cold war between the U.S. and China. | | |
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A Decade of Donald Trump |
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Ten years ago yesterday, Donald Trump debuted the slogan “Make America Great Again” as he announced he was running for president. In his latest column, Matthew Continetti takes us back to that seminal speech at Trump Tower in 2015 and traces how Trump’s ideas and rhetoric became the new political normal, despite being dismissed at first by politicians and pundits alike. “The world that dismissed Trump as an aberrant interloper is gone,” writes Continetti. “He demolished it.” | | |
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The MAGA-Tech Partnership Was Never Meant to Last |
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To date, the tech right and MAGA have been held together by opposition to DEI and wokeness, and by a desire to see the Democrats lose the 2024 election. But now that Trump is in office and DEI ideology is in retreat, tension between the two groups is bubbling up over other issues. First, Elon Musk and Trump fell out. What will happen next? The weaker this alliance becomes, argues Tyler Cowen in his latest column, “the more that the best of the tech right will reallocate their attention and energies away from government.” | | |
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