From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Douthat. And this is Interesting Times.

Today, the United States military continues to carry out large-scale combat operations in Iran

to eliminate the grave threats posed to America by this terrible terrorist regime.

So whatever happened to America first?

It doesn't feel like a war with Iran was quite what Donald Trump campaigned on in

2024.

We put America first.

We're going to end these endless wars, endless wars.

They never stopped.

You ever see these wars?

They're going for 14 years, 20 years?

And my guest this week thinks it's a big betrayal of the voters who put him in the White House.

Kurt Mills is the executive director of the American Conservative, a magazine that champions

foreign policy restraint.

He argues that the Iran War isn't just a foreign policy

blunder. It's a move that could shatter Trump's domestic coalition. Kurt Mills, welcome to

interesting times. Thanks for having me. So I'm going to do some stage setting here for anyone in the audience who doesn't follow

all of the ins and outs of right-wing foreign policy debates.

But you are in charge of the American conservative magazine, which is a magazine founded

by Pat Buchanan, among other people, in opposition to the looming

Iraq War. And for a long time, the American conservative was a pretty lonely voice for foreign

policy restraint, a kind of anti-war, anti-imperial conservatism. But throughout the Trump era,

...