'Unconditional Surrender'
Plus: How many Iranians are there anyway, polling shows minimal support for a war with Iran, and more...
Israel says it struck more Iranian nuclear sites Wednesday morning. The Israeli military has said that 50 of its warplanes struck targets across the Iranian capital of Tehran, including factories that assemble nuclear centrifuges and missiles. Iran responded by launching missiles and drones at Israel, most of which Israel said were intercepted.
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These latest actions follow U.S. President Donald Trump saying in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was "an easy target" but that "we are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now." In a separate post, the president appeared to call for Iran's "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 17, 2025
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 17, 2025
Khamenei, unsurprisingly, declined to surrender. In his own string of threatening posts on X, the Iranian leader said that the U.S. would suffer "irreparable" harm if it entered the war.
The harm the US will suffer will definitely be irreparable if they enter this conflict militarily.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 18, 2025
In another post, Khamenei said Iran's "suspicion" that the U.S. was already supporting Israeli strikes was "growing stronger day by day."
It was already suspected that the US was involved in the malicious move carried out by the Zionist regime, but considering their recent remarks, this suspicion is growing stronger day by day.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 18, 2025
On Tuesday evening, Trump spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the phone after meeting with his national security team. Three administration officials told Axios ahead of that meeting that the president was seriously considering entering the war and launching U.S. attacks on Iranian nuclear sites.
Trump administration officials have offered equivocal comments on whether the U.S. will enter Israel's war with Iran and what U.S. goals in such a war might be.
In a Tuesday briefing, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce declined to directly answer reporters' questions about whether Trump sought regime change in Iran, saying instead that it was a "dynamic" situation and Trump wanted a "durable end" to forever wars.
Vice President J.D. Vance struck a similarly muddled note in a long X post in which he said that "the president has shown remarkable restraint in keeping our military's focus on protecting our troops and protecting our citizens," but that "he may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment."
Look, I'm seeing this from the inside, and am admittedly biased towards our president (and my friend), but there's a lot of crazy stuff on social media, so I wanted to address some things directly on the Iran issue:
First, POTUS has been amazingly consistent, over 10 years, that…
— JD Vance (@JDVance) June 17, 2025
"I can assure you that [Trump] is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people's goals. Whatever he does, that is his focus," concluded Vance.
The American people will have to wait and see what Trump does then.
How many Iranians are there anyway? In a now-viral clip from The Tucker Carlson Show, Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) fails to answer Tucker Carlson's question about how many people live in Iran.
Ted Cruz on Iran. Full interview tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/hJNwAHAnxZ
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 18, 2025
Anti-interventionists, including Carlson during the interview, leaped on Cruz's ignorance as an example of how ill-thought the push for regime change in Iran (which Cruz supports) is.
As someone who lived through 2016 Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson's "What is Aleppo?" gaffe, I confess I'm not super invested in whether or not Cruz knows the population of Iran.
(In the interview, Carlson says it's 92 million, although some estimates put it at only 85 million.)
It is somewhat embarrassing that Cruz can't even offer a plausible ballpark estimate. Nevertheless, him answering that question accurately wouldn't (and shouldn't) convince people that a regime-change war in Iran is a wise and well-considered idea.
What's more interesting in the Cruz interview is what the senator said next, when he declared that "we're carrying out military strikes today" in Iran.
After some follow-up questions from Carlson, Cruz says that Israel was carrying out strikes "with our help. I said we. Israel is leading them, but we're supporting them."
Cruz and other Republican Iran hawks clearly already see Israel's war in Iran as our war too. Whether or not the U.S. starts bombing the country directly is a more minor tactical question, not a major strategic decision to enter the war. According to the hawks, we already have.
No one wants this. Some early polling from YouGov conducted over the weekend found that 60 percent of Americans, and a majority of Republicans, do not want the U.S. to enter the war on the side of Israel.
Our latest poll with @YouGov, conducted over the weekend, asked Americans if the US military should get involved in the war in Iran.
Overall:
60% no
16% yesRepublicans:
53% no
23% yesTrump voters in 2024:
53% no
19% yes pic.twitter.com/pk6UV8bTWD— Gregg Carlstrom (@glcarlstrom) June 17, 2025
Some 53 percent of Republicans, alongside 61 percent of independents and 65 percent of Democrats, said the U.S. should not get involved in the Iran-Israel conflict.
Much smaller minorities (23 percent of Republicans, 15 percent of Democrats, 11 percent of independents) proactively support U.S. intervention. The remaining balance of respondents is unsure.
Scenes from Washington, D.C.: On Monday night, a 39-year-old woman was struck and killed by a truck carrying one of the tanks that participated in Trump's military parade on the National Mall.
Per NBC Washington, a preliminary investigation found that the woman ran into the road, fell, and was hit and dragged by the truck for several blocks.
QUICK HITS
- The Cato Institute's Brandan Buck on why a war with Iran is a bad idea
- The Quincy Institute's Trita Parsi on why war with Iran is a bad idea
- John Allen Gay of the John Quincy Adams Society on why war with Iran is a bad idea
- Donald Trump on why war with Iran is a bad idea.
