Trump’s Iran strategy has finally won over the ‘Never Trumpers’

As a general rule, neoconservatives and hawkish Republican foreign policy officials don’t respect President Donald Trump’s capacities as commander-in-chief. They view him as impulsive, unwise, short-sighted, and buffoonish—the kind of guy who doesn’t do his homework, spends more time on Twitter than reading briefing books and would rather pull up America’s drawbridge than act as the leader of the free world. This crop of foreign policy intellectuals are quick to refer to Trump as an ‘isolationist’, a favourite pejorative of the Washington policy elite, who is shattering Washington’s superpower status into a million different pieces.

These are the same people who actively worked to thwart Trump’s presidential campaign through a series of highly-covered public letters—the first in March 2016 during the heart of the Republican primary; the second in August 2016, when Trump was preparing for a general election dogfight against Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton. ‘Mr Trump lacks the character, values, and experience to be President,’ the group of 50 GOP foreign policy heavyweights penned in the second letter.