‘Ambivalence’ or ‘strategic ambiguity’? Washington congressmen have different takes on Trump’s approach to Israel-Iran war

WASHINGTON – As a candidate, President Donald Trump promised to end wars around the world – or at least end U.S. involvement in them – but the war between Israel and Iran that began last week has prompted a more complicated response from the American leader.

After Trump pushed for a deal with Iran to stop it from building nuclear weapons and reportedly urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to start a war, Israel pre-empted those diplomatic efforts with strikes on Friday, prompting counterattacks by Iran over the weekend. Trump signaled greater U.S. involvement in a series of social media posts on Tuesday, writing that “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran” and calling for “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”

“Nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Trump said at the White House on Wednesday, after a reporter asked if he would authorize U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, including one buried deep under a mountain that Israeli bombs can’t penetrate.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dismissed Trump’s demand to surrender as “absurd rhetoric” in a social media post on Wednesday and said his nation isn’t afraid.

The prospect of the United States getting involved in another war in the Middle East has unsettled even some of Trump’s closest allies, especially as Israel’s escalating attacks suggest that Netanyahu intends to dismantle Iran’s government, not just its nuclear program.

But Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Spokane Republican who was involved in U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan after the George W. Bush administration invaded the two countries, said Trump is right to leave “all options on the table.”

“It’s extremely important to U.S. interests that Iran not have a nuclear weapon,” Baumgartner said in an interview, explaining that a nuclear-armed regime in Tehran would not only be a direct threat to the United States and its allies but would “almost certainly” lead other countries in the Middle East and North Africa to pursue their own nuclear arms.

If countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt acquired nuclear weapons, he said, it would further destabilize what is already “an extremely unstable part of the world,” partly because those countries wouldn’t have the “second-strike” capability to launch a counterattack that helped the United States and the Soviet Union avoid nuclear Armageddon during the Cold War.

“This is more than just about Israel’s security,” Baumgartner said. “Being that it’s the Middle East, it’s a series of a lot of bad options and trying to figure out what is the least worst option there. So I think President Trump has displayed impressive leadership throughout the situation.”

The Eastern Washington congressman said the “most impressive” foreign policy decision of Trump’s first term was ordering the 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian commander who led clandestine military operations outside the country’s borders. Trump also withdrew in 2018 from an international agreement reached under his predecessor, Barack Obama, intended to prevent Iran from enriching uranium to the grade needed to produce a bomb.

That record, Baumgartner said, gives Trump leverage in his negotiations with Iran.

“I think President Trump has a lot of credibility on the issue and there’s a lot of strategic ambiguity with the way the president has approached the situation,” he said. “And so far, I think he’s doing a good job.”

Baumgartner declined to answer directly when asked if he would support the United States providing the “bunker-buster” bomb Israel needs to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facility at Fordo, saying he doesn’t want to “get out in front of the president” in his role as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The congressman said he supports “all options being on the table,” but the ideal outcome would be a negotiated deal in which Iran gives up its nuclear program and allows verifiable inspections to confirm it isn’t restarting, in exchange for sanctions relief to let Iranians rejoin the world’s economy.

The U.S. role in the Israel-Iran war has exposed a rift in Trump’s political coalition between those who want the country to stay out of global events and those who favor more intervention to protect the interests of the United States or allies like Israel. Baumgartner said he understands the concern about getting bogged down in another war but dismissed “straw men” that he said have been created in the wake of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“There’s just an unrealistic and naive view that, somehow if the U.S. comes completely home and doesn’t engage on anything on the international stage, that all the world’s problems will go away – or at least not impact us – and we’ll be safer and wealthier here at home,” he said. “We cannot be the world’s policeman, but by the same token, we can’t be naive.”

Rep. Adam Smith of Bellevue, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, traveled with Baumgartner to Iraq and other Mideast countries in April. In an interview Wednesday, he said the U.S. military had helped Israel with “defensive efforts” but so far hadn’t been fully “engaged” in a way that could prompt Iranian attacks on Americans in the region.

“Personally, I think it’s crucial that we not get engaged in the war,” Smith said. “We have a lot of assets in the region. We have major bases in Bahrain and Qatar, as well as presence in Iraq and Syria that is very vulnerable to attack, either from Iran or from their proxies. We would be placing ourselves at great risk, and at the risk of being dragged into a wider conflict with unpredictable results.”

Smith said Iran is to blame for continuing to enrich uranium when both Trump and former President Joe Biden were trying to negotiate. He said “dragging Iran back to the table” to resume those talks and end the nuclear program, as well as Iran’s support for armed proxy groups in other countries, should be the United States’ priority.

Attacks by the United States and Israel, along with other events across the region, have weakened those Iran-backed proxies, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the now-deposed Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. Combined with those developments, Smith said, the war between Israel and Iran could present an opportunity for “a more peaceful Middle East,” with “legitimate governments in place that are focused on governing their own people instead of exporting conflict and revolution.”

But where Baumgartner sees “strategic ambiguity” in Trump’s approach to the conflict, Smith said he sees “complete ambivalence.” The president wants to end wars by projecting strength and making his adversaries bow before the United States, Smith said, but adversaries tend to interpret those words and actions as cause for conflict.

“I think it’s clearly the ambivalence of Trump wanting to have it both ways, and that potentially could get us in trouble, depending on which way he chooses to go,” he said. “It’s not inconceivable that he, at this point, could still choose to get us involved directly in this conflict, which I think would be a mistake, and it would also politically be a betrayal of what he said he was going to do.”

Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday that Trump is “doing a magnificent job of threading a very difficult needle” by listening to Risch and others who have “different ideas” about how to handle the Israel-Iran conflict.

“I’ve sat across the table from Netanyahu, off and on, for the last 17 years, and he has been incredibly frustrated with Iran refusing to give up its nuclear ambitions,” Risch said. “The Obama administration tried. They got bamboozled. They wound up with a really bad deal and we’re in a worse place now than if we hadn’t had that deal in the first place. I think that the Israelis have finally had it and said, ‘Look, this is an existential question for us. We’re going to do something about it.’ That’s their decision.”

When a reporter asked Risch why Israel would have attacked Iran when it couldn’t destroy the underground nuclear facility without U.S. help, the senator said he rejected the premise that Israel couldn’t “finish the job” on all the Iranian nuclear sites on its own. He declined to elaborate, citing the sensitivity of the information he received as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In a statement immediately after Israel began its attack, Risch said the United States wasn’t part of the strikes but warned that U.S. forces would “undoubtedly answer the call if Iran miscalculates and responds by attacking American interests.”

“President Trump’s efforts to reach a peaceful resolution with Iran to date should be commended, and the Iranians should strongly reconsider their refusal to come to some sort of deal,” Risch said just before midnight Eastern time on June 12.

Washington’s Democratic senators both voiced frustration with Trump’s decision to walk away from the 2018 agreement with Iran but struck different tones toward Israel’s actions in statements released June 13. Sen. Maria Cantwell called Iran’s nuclear program “a real threat to Israel,” while Sen. Patty Murray called Israel’s decision to attack Iran “a dangerous and unprecedented escalation, which endangers American servicemembers and civilians in the region, and puts countless other innocent lives at risk.”

“We are at this crisis today because President Trump foolishly walked away from President Obama’s 2018 Iran nuclear agreement under which Iran had agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program and to open its facilities to international inspections, putting more eyes on the ground,” Cantwell said. “The United States should now lead the international community toward a diplomatic solution to avoid a wider war that would have devastating consequences for our ally Israel, the people of the Middle East, as well as the world economy.”

Murray pledged to closely monitor the situation and keep Americans out of harm’s way.

“I urge the Trump administration and other leaders around the world to de-escalate the situation before it devolves into a prolonged, regional conflict that threatens the safety and security of millions of people and undermines U.S. national security interests,” she said. “Like all Americans, I hope for a peaceful resolution as soon as possible.”