“Mossad agents” and “warmongers” are pushing the US into a conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Those lines aren’t coming from state-run news agencies in Tehran, but some of US President Donald Trump’s closest media allies and supporters.
Last week, conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson featured a senior Department of Defence official who he claimed was ousted because he was seen as an obstacle to the US bombing Iran.
Dan Caldwell, a top advisor to Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, was removed from the Pentagon earlier this month on charges that he allegedly leaked classified information about Hegseth’s use of a Signal chat, according to several media outlets.
Not so by Carlson’s telling, who has unparalleled access to Trump.
“You did make maybe one career mistake by giving on-the-record interviews describing your foreign policy views…that are out of the mainstream among warmongers in Washington,” Carlson said to Caldwell, adding, “Then I read all of a sudden that you are a traitor.”
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On Sunday, another conservative podcaster, Clayton Morris, a former Fox News anchor, said pro-Israel voices were “working overtime” to destroy the “anti-war team” that Trump has assembled at the Pentagon.
“We’ve learned here at Redacted that former Israeli Mossad agents are working overtime on social media and behind the scenes trying to discredit Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth,” Morris said, referring to his show. He didn’t name the so-called former agents.
Trump’s administration is divided between more traditional Republicans like US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security advisor Mike Waltz, and “America First” isolationists like White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Some of Trump’s most vocal defenders in the media, who exercise unprecedented influence in communicating his worldview, are media figures like Carlson and former advisor Steve Bannon.
The firing of Caldwell and two other senior Pentagon officials appears to have energised America First isolationists. Their slamming of the pro-Israel voices and former Mossad agents is unprecedented within the Republican Party. It reflects just how far Trump has taken the party from its traditionally hawkish worldview.
Pro-Trump media personalities have singled out Merav Ceren, who was nominated to head Iran and Israel at the White House National Security Council, for criticism.
Ceren was born in Haifa, Israel, and worked in the Israeli Ministry of Defence. On his show, Morris, who co-hosted a Fox morning news show with Hegseth, said that, “Neo-con Mike Waltz has now hired basically a dual citizen and former IDF official to work under him.”
The coverage reflects a growing trend in the US to view Israel with scepticism, which has intensified since the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attacks on southern Israel, which sparked the Israeli invasion of Gaza and a simmering Middle East war.
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According to a Pew Poll published in April, 53 percent of Americans now express an unfavourable opinion of Israel, up from 42 percent in March 2022.
The shift in negative sentiment has been notable among young Republicans under 50, who are more likely to tune into podcasts like Morris’s Redacted and Carlson’s show.
The criticism comes as Trump tries to square his muscular foreign policy instincts with his pledge to refrain from starting new Middle East wars. On Iran, Trump’s closest envoys have been left contradicting themselves.
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy who has emerged as his go-to global troubleshooter, suggested earlier this month that Washington would allow Iran to enrich uranium at low levels. After backlash from pro-Israel voices, he flipped, saying that Tehran “must stop and eliminate” its nuclear enrichment programme fully.
This week, Secretary Rubio said the US could re-enter a deal that sees Iran keep a civilian nuclear programme – so long as it halts enrichment, and instead ships it in from abroad.
American and Iranian technical teams met in Oman on Saturday for their third round of talks. Trump told reporters on Monday that the talks are going “very well” and that “a deal is going to be made there”.
“We’ll have something without having to start dropping bombs all over the place,” he said.
