“America First” does not mean retreat. It means confronting real threats to American lives, American power, and American security, and that is exactly why President Trump’s hard line on Iran is not a betrayal of the doctrine but a defense of it.
This article is a lightly edited transcript of the “Here’s the Point” podcast by Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center.
If you have been paying attention like we all have, a rift is taking shape on the right, and it has been growing for some time. This isn’t just in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the conspiracy mill podcasting that has ensued since then. It has been going on a long time before that even when Elon was in disagreement with Trump on the DOGEing of American government.
But there is also a forgetfulness on the right. Many advocates of America First are opposing the Trump administration’s military campaign against the Iranian regime. Their argument, stripped to its core, is basic: old-school isolationism.
“We shouldn’t be involved in foreign theaters, especially in the Middle East.”
“We’ve seen this song and dance — we know it doesn’t end well.”
“It will just be another Iraq.”
Some have convinced themselves that the only true American foreign policy is one of non-intervention, non-leadership, and inaction. They have convinced themselves that patriotism is a commitment only to what is happening on American soil. While that is certainly correct in many cases, it can become dangerously wrong when applied to every global scenario.
Make no mistake: Iran is closer to the United States as a threat than we think.
Their proxy terror network, including training camps in the Western Hemisphere and some who may have entered the United States in order to conduct operations, is a threat 24/7.
We must remember that the United States is not Switzerland. We are not a second-tier nation, nor are we tucked away enclave in a hard-to-reach destination. insulated from the world by geography and political irrelevance. We are the most powerful nation on earth — economically, militarily, and culturally — and that reality comes with many obligations that cannot be wished away by feigning indifference.
American citizens may not recognize most of the threats that are pointed at them on a daily basis.
America First has always meant putting American interests at the center of foreign policy decisions. It has never meant pretending that international threats to those interests don’t exist. A nation that refuses to confront its enemies is not practicing restraint — it is practicing surrender. And for far too long many American presidents refused to confront Iran.
Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979. Iranian-backed forces have killed American soldiers in Iraq, Syria, and across the Middle East for decades.
Iranian proxies planted the bombs that killed hundreds of American servicemen in Lebanon. Iran funded, trained, and directed the militias that targeted U.S. troops with rockets and drones throughout the last 20 years. This is not a theory, this is reality. An honest accounting of America’s enemies and the threat levels of those enemies would place the Iranian regime near the top of the list — not because of Israel’s interests but because of American lives lost to state-sponsored terror.
Iran is the keystone of America’s most dangerous adversarial network.
The critics who frame opposition to Iran as a neoconservative fever dream have missed the geopolitical picture entirely. Iran is not a standalone rogue state. It is a keystone piece in an interlocking network of nations that are actively working to undermine American power.
Tehran’s energy exports prop up the BRICS coalition, the economic bloc that Russia and China are assembling specifically to challenge the U.S.-led global order.
Iran trains and supplies terrorist proxies from Yemen to Lebanon to Gaza to South America. It shares military technology with Russia and coordinates with North Korea on weapons development.
It is the cornerstone of the anti-American axis. Remove Iran, and the entire arch weakens with Russia and China.
This is not a war primarily about Israel. This is a war about whether the Sino-Russian-Iranian axis will be allowed to consolidate its grip on global energy markets, proxy warfare networks, and build the financial architecture that competes with the American dollar and American global power.
To reduce it merely to a regional conflict is to fundamentally misread the strategic stakes. At least that is how the Trump administration and reality every presidential administration has seen it since 1979.
There is a version of America First that is serious, strategic, and grounded in genuine national interest.
It understands that targeted action to eliminate a regime that has been killing Americans and destabilizing the world for 47 years is not an adventure in nation-building. It is not the Iraq War. It is not Afghanistan.
The biggest reason for this operation is the destruction of a regime’s capacity to export terror, destabilize its neighbors, and serve as an energy backbone of an axis of power aligned against the United States.
That is not interventionism. That is direct deterrence. And that is strength. If America First means anything, it means that America is strong enough to confront the nations that want to destroy America.
Proverbs 22 reminds us that a wise man sees danger and takes refuge, while the simple keep going and suffer for it. The danger posed by the Iranian regime is not theoretical. It is real and ongoing. Those on the right who are opposing this moment in the name of America First have confused the issue. Many are allowing the anti-Israel cabal to live rent-free in their heads. They have lost the plot.
America First does not mean America retreats from every fight that isn’t immediately on our soil. It means America fights decisively for its own interests and does not apologize for being a global power that confronts evil.
Iran has qualified for this fight for decades — and it is finally happening. And those who understand what is actually at stake have been clear-eyed throughout this conflict and completely unsurprised by President Trump’s consistency in taking the fight directly to the enemy.
Pray for President Trump and for all our troops in harm’s way. It is the most important thing we can do.
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