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As a Republican who was broadly onboard with toppling Iran well before the most recent flare up, I would like to offer an alternate narrative to the one about Trump is a Joe-Biden-esqe meat puppet being controlled by a zionist cabal, that seems to be the popular consensus here.
First off what does winning look like, in the eyes of team Trump?
Ideally, Iran makes a credible and verifiable commitment to dismantling their nuclear weapons program and stop supplying arms to HAMAS, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Russian Federation, Et Al. Less Ideally, we turn them into a failed state that wouldn't be able to muster up a nuclear weapons program even if they wanted one. If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.
Importantly we are not going to do the Clinton or Obama thing where we give them a whole bunch of cash and trade concessions in exchange for a pinky-promise not to act up again and then sit on our thumbs when they renege on those promises 6-monthes later. While I'm not privy to the specifics my guess is that the plan is to hold Kharg Island hostage to force Iranian compliance.
How is this in American interests? I think it is just as valid to ask as how is it not?
While there is something of an isolationist streak present in the online right the prevailing attitude amongst the wider GOP is that if the US is going to occupy the role of hegemon we must play the role.
First, I think it needs to be pointed out that, with the Biden-era environmental limits removed the US is once again a net petroleum exporter and the US economy is much better situated to weather possible energy-trade disruptions than say China is.
As the global hegemon, international trade flows freely (and for the most part safely) largely thanks to guarantees that are enforced by the US Navy. If the US is the world's cop, Iran is not some innocent brown kid who got shot for no reason, they're the habitual bad actor with dozens of prior complaints and arrests.
From my perspective democrats' attitude towards the Iranian regime seems to echo their attitudes towards illegal immigration, violent crime. If you ask them if they want violent schizophrenics on the train they'll answer "no", but at the same time they will vehemently oppose anyone who looks like they might try to stop violent schizophrenics from stabbing people on trains. They seem to view the occasional train stabbing or ballistic missile attack as simply the price of doing business.
Essentially none of the comments like this are worth a dime if they don't contend with the progress in the negotiations, and in Iran's compliance with the former deal that Trump ended. Because you aren't even trying to lay out the case for why the escalation path you proposed is lower-risk than making another deal.
We have people here talking about how "oh we just bomb their desalination plants, and yeah maybe they retaliate against the Gulf desalination plans and oil infrastructure and bring the entire region to chaos, mass regional humanitarian crisis, likely mass refugee crisis, risk the global economy, but it's worth it." The fact is, if you are an American, the risk equation is UNAMIBUGOUSLY AGAINST this escalation path. It's only Israel that stands to benefit from this escalation path, nobody else in the world does so. There is no universe in which this escalation path is worth the alternative "risk" of continuing negotiations that, by all accounts other than Kushner and Witkoff, two Zionist Jews who were regarded as Israeli assets by diplomats involved in the negotiation, were proceeding very well.
This is why the Zionist element is the only explanation for why an American would accept this risk to their own interests and the global economy to scuttle those negotiations. This is also why, when someone like you lays out the case for this escalation path, you basically ignore the alternative and much lower-risk path that all parties agreed was alive and progressing well, but then was sabotaged by Witkoff and Kushner at the very moment they made the greatest progress by all accounts.
You also ignore the fact that Iran's hostility towards the US is downstream from our alliance with Israel. So that hostility and the risks associated with it are another cost of the Zionist integration in America. So every step of the way, from the first step to "bomb their desalination plants" is being influenced by Jewish interests, not American interests.
Because it's not. It's downstream of the US supporting the Shah over the current government, which is not about Israel.
Grudges that long are pretty odd in American history. We were in a decade long shooting war in Vietnam in between the overthrow of Mossadeq and the Islamic Revolution, and now Vietnam is practically an ally and a major trading partner despite being run by the same people who killed 50,000 Americans.
This could probably be better framed as a conflict between traditional values and Globohomo than as about the Shah or the hostages or Israel.
The grudge is about Iran's hostility towards the US, not the US's hostility towards Iran; it's not America's history that matters there, it's Iran's. US hostility towards Iran does in some way derive from the embassy hostage crisis, but likely wouldn't have lasted if Iran hadn't remained hostile the whole time. Vietnam hasn't spent the time since trying to overthrow Thailand or had its proxies attack Singapore. Nor did it make "Death to America" a slogan, nor refer to the US as "The Great Satan".
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