Trump to Tucker, Iran doves: I define ‘America First’
Plus, Persian Jews on what’s happening in Iran
Good Monday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on the latest developments in Israel’s war with Iran and cover reactions on the Hill to Israel’s preemptive strikes on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities. We talk to foreign policy experts about how the military action might impact diplomacy efforts, and interview Persian Jews in the U.S. about their response to the war. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Anne Wojcicki, Leonard Lauder and Tracy-Ann Oberman
What We’re Watching
- We’re continuing to follow and report on the ongoing military conflict between Israel and Iran. Sign up for email alerts and WhatsApp updates to stay up to date with the latest news.
- A bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) is in the Middle East this week for an Abraham Accords-focused trip that is slated to include stops in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Israel. Read more here.
- President Donald Trump is in Alberta, Canada, today, where he will meet with world leaders at a G7 summit. We expect the president to address questions about potential U.S. involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict.
- A France-led conference on Palestinian statehood and the two-state solution, slated to take place this week, was postponed following Israel’s strikes on Iran late last week. Read more here.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH ji’s MELISSA WEISS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has staked everything — his legacy, his global standing, his relationships with world powers — on defending Israel against the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
The topic has dominated nearly every major address the prime minister has given, from U.N. General Assembly speeches to addresses to Congress, for the last 15 years. And over the last four days, Israel has been forced to put into action a plan that was years in the making — one that could profoundly reshape the Middle East in the days and months to come.
The writer Douglas Murray forecasted exactly this situation 13 years ago, speaking at the Cambridge Union: “When Israel is pushed to the situation it will be pushed to of having to believe [Iran] mean[s] it, and when every bit of jiggery pokery behind the scenes runs out, and when the U.N. and distinguished figures have run out of time, and Iran is about to produce its first bomb,” Murray said at the time, “Israel will strike.”
Israel’s Friday morning strikes came as the Trump administration’s announced 60-day deadline for negotiations expired, and following intelligence reports indicating that Iran was weeks away from nuclear capabilities — as Murray predicted.
What has ensued is the deadliest and most destructive direct conflict between Israel and Iran in history.
war with iran
Eight Israelis killed overnight in five Iranian missile strikes
Eight Israelis were killed by Iranian missile strikes in five locations that occurred Sunday night and early Monday morning. In the central Israeli city of Petach Tikva, five people were killed in a residential building, and in adjacent Bnei Brak, an 80-year-old man was found dead at the site of a missile strike. Two of the people killed in Petach Tikva were inside their safe room, which was directly hit by a missile. Petach Tikva Mayor Rami Grinberg said that the residence was struck by a ballistic missile carrying hundreds of kilograms of explosives, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.
Additional hits: Tel Aviv sustained two direct missile strikes, one of which lightly damaged the U.S. Embassy Branch Office. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee clarified that “the minor damage to the property were from the shock waves … from the nearby blast … No injuries, thank God!” Among the residents evacuated from buildings in Tel Aviv was a 6-day-old baby, whose mother was found alive minutes later. In Haifa, three people were found dead under the rubble of a burning building where a missile hit, and about 300 people were evacuated. The Israel Electric Corporation said that the strike damaged its power grid, and that “teams are working on the ground to neutralize safety hazards, in particular the risk of electrocution ” Maritime risk assessment company Ambrey reported a fire at the Haifa Port.
TUCKER’S TIRADE
Tucker Carlson splits from Trump, advocates ‘dropping Israel’
Talk show host Tucker Carlson broke with President Donald Trump on Iran on Friday, writing in a scathing commentary in his daily newsletter that the United States should “drop Israel” and “let them fight their own wars.” Carlson wrote of Israel’s preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, “If Israel wants to wage this war, it has every right to do so. It is a sovereign country, and it can do as it pleases. But not with America’s backing.” Trump, for his part, has endorsed Israel’s attacks, which he called “very successful,” and underscored in an interview with Fox News on Thursday night that the U.S. would defend Israel if Iran retaliates. He also warned that the situation “will only get worse” if Iran does not agree to a nuclear deal “before there is nothing left,” Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Tucker talk: In recent days, Carlson has argued that fears of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon in the near future are unfounded and said that a war with the Islamic Republic would not only result in “thousands” of American casualties in the Middle East but “amount to a profound betrayal of” Trump’s base and effectively “end his presidency.” Carlson reiterated that claim in his newsletter, accusing Trump of “being complicit in the act of war” through “years of funding and sending weapons to Israel.”
Trump hits back: Trump defended his “America First” worldview as in line with his support for Israel’s strikes, telling The Atlantic in regards to his critics: “Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that. For those people who say they want peace — you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon.”
Envoy response: U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee noted on X that “700,000 AMERICANS live in Israel. That is equivalent to a full House District. More Americans here than in any other country except Mexico! Iran isn’t just attacking Israel but your fellow Americans who live here.”
hope prevails
Persian Jews in the U.S. watch Israeli strikes on Iran and dare to hope
As grainy videos of Israel’s strikes on Iran spread in WhatsApp groups and Telegram channels used by the Iranian diaspora, Persian Jews in the U.S. are viewing this moment with a mix of trepidation and excitement — the first time in decades, some say, that the Iranian regime truly appears vulnerable. That has prompted cautious optimism about a future in which Iranians might live free from the oppression of the Ayatollah, several activists in the Persian Jewish community told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch on Friday, and where they might be able to bring their children to visit their native land. But the escalation has also brought fear about what comes next, and that even an Israeli military success might not effect change on the ground for Iranians.
Mixed emotions: Sharon Nazarian, a philanthropist and Jewish communal leader in Los Angeles who left Tehran with her family in 1978, said she has felt “two striking, opposing feelings” since Israel’s attacks began. “One of utter hope and the possibility that maybe one day we can go back to our country of birth to bring our children,” Nazarian said. “We are [also] very fearful that this regime, although it’s at its weakest point it’s been since 1979, it will survive, and it will, yet again, find a mechanism both to manipulate and to force its way into maintaining the stranglehold it has on the Iranian people and the country of Iran.”
ON THE HILL
Successful Israeli strikes on Iran elicit divided response from Senate Democrats
Israel’s strikes on Iranian military and nuclear targets are prompting fractured responses from Senate Democrats, with a few offering full support for Israel and others forcefully condemning the strikes, while some have sought to carve out a path somewhere in the middle, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What they’re saying: “The Iranian regime and its proxies have been very public about their commitment to the destruction of Israel and Jewish communities around the world. We should take them at their word,” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) said. “Israel acted in self-defense against an attack from Iran, and the U.S. must continue to stand with Israel, as it has for decades, at this dangerous moment.” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the strikes are “an escalation that is deeply concerning and will inevitably invite counterattacks.” She added that they endanger nuclear talks and U.S. servicemembers. Read the full story here with additional comments from Chris Murphy (D-CT), Mark Warner (D-VA) and Chris Coons (D-DE).
Schumer’s support: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stood strongly behind Israel in his first public comments on its strikes on Iran and its nuclear program on Friday afternoon — a response that was notably more forceful in its support for Israel than those of many prominent members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
Straight talk: Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) criticized his Democratic colleagues in Congress who have spoken out against Israel’s attack on Iran, telling JI’s Emily Jacobs it was “astonishing” to see members of his party treat Israel’s actions as escalatory.
Republican voice: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told JI’s Emily Jacobs that he’s urging U.S. support for Israel’s campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear program as a means of “substantially undoing the damage caused by the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal” during the Biden administration.
Pressure push: A bipartisan group of nine House members wrote to the Trump administration on Friday emphasizing — as the administration continues to push for a nuclear deal — that U.S. negotiators must not allow Iran to maintain any nuclear enrichment capacity if a deal is reached, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
OUT IN LEFT FIELD
Tim Walz: Maybe China can negotiate a Middle East peace deal
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, criticizing Israel’s strikes on Iran and the Trump administration’s global posture, suggested on Friday that China might be better positioned than the United States to broker peace in the Middle East, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
China First: “Who is the voice in the world that can negotiate some type of agreement in this, who holds the moral authority? Who holds the ability to do that? Because we are not seen as a neutral actor, and maybe we never were, I don’t want to tell anybody that … but I think there was at least an attempt to be somewhat of an arbitrator in this,” Walz said at a Center for American Progress event. “Consistently, over and over again, we’re going to have to face the reality, it might be the Chinese and that goes against everything [the Trump administration] say they’re trying to do in terms of the balance of power.”
BARUCH DAYAN EMET
Leonard Lauder, who supercharged his family’s cosmetics firm and became an arts patron, dies at 92
Leonard Lauder, arts patron and billionaire heir of Estée Lauder Companies, died on Saturday at 92. Remembered as an innovative thinker and a connoisseur of the arts, Lauder was born in 1933 to Joseph Lauter and Josephine Esther Mentzer, the founders of the Estée Lauder Companies cosmetic firm, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim reports.
A giant in philanthropy: The descendant of Jewish immigrants to New York, the first-born Lauder grew up alongside the budding business. He earned his bachelor’s degree from University of Pennsylvania and served in the U.S. Navy before eventually joining Estée Lauder Companies in 1958. Alongside his parents, he helped scale the company from making under $1 million in sales annually to a multibillion-dollar prestige brand. Lauder went on to become a giant in American philanthropy — gifting over $2 billion throughout his lifetime — particularly focused on science, education and the arts. As an influential art collector and patron, in 2013, Lauder famously gifted over $1 billion in Cubist paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art — one of the most significant gifts in the museum’s history, according to The New York Times. In 2008, Lauder, a longtime chairman and chairman emeritus of the Whitney Museum of American Art, donated $131 million to support the museum’s endowment.
Read the full story here and sign up for eJewshPhilanthropy’s Your Daily Phil newsletter here.
Worthy Reads
What’s at Stake In Iran: In Politico, Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner pens an op-ed titled “Iran’s Target Isn’t Just Israel. It’s Us,” in which he warns that Iran, alongside China and Russia, has global ambitions that extend beyond its war with Israel. “It is therefore surprising that Israel is not being celebrated worldwide for its historic, extremely precise and necessary strike against Iranian nuclear weapons facilities and for the targeted killing of leading terrorists, but that the public response is dominated by anti-Israel propaganda. The intelligence and precision of Israel’s actions are not admired but are instead used here and there to perpetuate blatantly antisemitic stereotypes. This attitude is characterized not only by racist undertones, but also by a strange self-forgetfulness.” [Politico]
Oldest Hate, Renewed: The New York Times editorial board warns against the country’s “worst surge of anti-Jewish hate in many decades,” citing agitators on both the left and right that have stoked tensions. “Americans should be able to recognize the nuanced nature of many political debates while also recognizing that antisemitism has become an urgent problem. It is a different problem — and in many ways, a narrower one — than racism. Antisemitism has not produced shocking gaps in income, wealth and life expectancy in today’s America. Yet the new antisemitism has left Jewish Americans at a greater risk of being victimized by a hate crime than any other group. Many Jews live with fears that they never expected to experience in this country.” [NYTimes]
Iran on the Ropes: In The Wall Street Journal, former National Security Advisor John Bolton considers how Israel, the U.S. and Arab allies could potentially deal a death knell to the Iranian regime. “Despite outward appearances of solid authoritarianism, the regime in Tehran faces widening discontent. The opposition extends across Iran, in the smaller cities and countryside, far beyond Tehran, where the few Western journalists congregate. Iran’s economy has been parlous for decades, and Israeli strikes on oil refineries may weaken it further. Citizen protests in 2018-19 provoked heightened nationwide repression. International antiproliferation and antiterrorism sanctions caused part of the distress, but the fundamental lesson is plain: Never trust your economy to medieval religious fanatics.” [WSJ]
The Rising Lion Inside Iran: In The Free Press, Masih Alinejad reacts to Israel’s military campaign against Iran, which has conducted numerous attempts in recent years to kill or kidnap the Iranian dissident and writer. “Now, the world faces a choice. It can focus solely on missiles and maps, treating this as another geopolitical chess move. Or it can recognize the human story unfolding beneath the surface, the story of a nation rising from the shadow of its captors. The story of a rising lion. Israel’s strike may have taken out top military figures. But the real victory is still ahead: the day the Islamic Republic falls under the weight of its own crimes and the strength of the people it has tried so hard to suffocate and silence.” [FreePress]
What else we’re reading: “Israel Had the Courage to Do What Needed to Be Done” by The New York Times’ Bret Stephens… “Israel’s Nuclear Good Deed Against Iran” by The Wall Street Journal editorial board… “Bombs Rain Down — and a Divided Israel Unites Behind the War” by The Free Press’ Matti Friedman… “We’re witnessing a historic test of two assumptions about Israel” by Natan Sharansky in The Washington Post… “Zionism Has Been Vindicated” by Commentary’s John Podhoretz…
Word on the Street
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave his first interview since Israel began its operation in Iran on Fox News’ “Special Report” with Bret Baier on Sunday. He confirmed Iran had actively tried to assassinate President Donald Trump, calling Trump Iran’s “enemy No. 1,” and said Israel had shared intelligence with the U.S. that Iran was working to weaponize its enriched uranium: “They would achieve a test device and possibly an initial device within months, and certainly less than a year. That was the intel we shared with the United States”…
U.S. officials told Reutersthat Trump vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi denied the reports outright, calling it “fake news of the highest order”…
Israel’s leadership is concerned that international pressure may force the IDF to stop striking Iran before its mission is complete, an Israeli security source told Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov on Sunday…
Jewish Insider spoke to Jason Brodsky, the policy director for United Against Nuclear Iran; Daniel Shapiro, a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Biden administration, U.S. ambassador to Israel in the Obama administration and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council; and former Kamala Harris Middle East advisors Phil Gordon and Ilan Goldenberg about their views on Israel’s military strikes against Iran…
International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said on Monday that no additional damage had been done to the Natanz or Fordow nuclear enrichment sites in Iran since Israel’s initial strikes on Friday…
Police in Minnesota arrested the man alleged to have shot two state lawmakers last week, killing one of them as well as her husband…
The Christian Science Monitor interviews Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, formerly the chair of the board of trustees of the Illinois Holocaust Museum, about rising antisemitism and his personal connection to Judaism as he emerges as one of the most vocal public figures opposing the Trump administration…
The U.S. Agency for Global Media instructed employees of Voice of America’s Persian-language service, who had been placed on administrative leave amid the Trump administration’s degradation of the agency, to return to their positions to provide programming to counter Iranian state-run media…
Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta was reelected as a Democratic National Committee vice chair after the DNC revoked the results of an earlier election in which Kenyatta and activist David Hogg had been elected; Hogg, who opted not to run again, had riled DNC officials with his super PAC’s plans to back challengers to sitting Democrats, prompting calls for a new election based on concerns over the demographics of the newly elected leadership…
New York City Mayor Eric Adams c0-hosted a livestream with Sneako, a far-right internet personality who has a history of making offensive and antisemitic comments; last spring, the livestreamer said “Down with the yahud [Jews]” and had previously appeared on livestreams with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and Ye…
Police in Brookline, Mass., are investigating after a brick painted with “Free Palestine” was thrown through the window of a kosher grocery store in the city…
Anne Wojcicki’s nonprofit TTAM Research Institute won a bid to purchase 23andMe, which Wojcicki had co-founded and led until earlier this year, when the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Wojcicki tendered her resignation…
The Wall Street Journal spotlights Simon Property Group CEO David Simon, the country’s largest mall operator, who is continuing to work as he battles pancreatic cancer…
Former Hillary Clinton political aide Huma Abedin and Alex Soros were married at Soros’ Water Mill, N.Y., estate on Saturday…
Two French teenagers convicted of raping a Jewish girl in 2024 were sentenced to seven and nine years in prison; a third teenager, who was 12 at the time of the assault, was sentenced to five years in foster care due to his age…
Israeli officials confirmed that the IDF had recovered the body of hostage Aviv Atzili from Khan Younis, Gaza, last week; Atzili, a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, was killed battling terrorists who had overrun the kibbutz and his body taken to Gaza…
The Wall Street Journal looks at how the Mossad smuggled drone parts into Iran for use in its preemptive attack on Iranian military and nuclear sites last week…
Elon Musk said he activated his Starlink internet service in Iran after the government cut off civilian internet access across the country…
A former senior Syrian general told U.S. investigators in Beirut that American journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared in Syria in 2012, was dead, and provided a possible location of Tice’s body…
Saudi Arabia executed a journalist who had been convicted of treason for his alleged running of a social media account that accused members of the Saudi royal family of corruption…
“Eastenders” actress Tracy-Ann Oberman was awarded an MBE for her services to Holocaust education and combating antisemitism in the U.K….
Stage and film actor Harris Yulin, who was often cast in villain roles, died at 87… Marthe Cohn, a Jewish nurse who worked with the French resistance as a spy in Germany, died at 105… Video artist Dara Birnbaum died at 78… Sculptor Joel Shapiro, best known for his life-size stick figures, died at 83… Civil rights litigator Alex Polikoff, who won a landmark Supreme Court housing desegregation case and spent decades advocating to have the ruling enforced, died at 98…
Pic of the Day
Israeli President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog visited the site of an Iranian missile attack in Petach Tikvah earlier today.
Addressing the media, Herzog said, “What I’ve seen upstairs in the destroyed apartment is evil, pure evil in and of itself. It’s evil aimed at innocent civilians all over Israel. But I have news to for the Iranian regime. You think you’re going to tire us or fatigue us, you’re absolutely wrong. We’re a very strong, resilient nation with very strong capabilities in all fields. I think you’re feeling it out there in Iran, and I think the Iranian people are fed up, and they want change. And so, of course, do the entire region, we deserve change.”
Birthdays
Pitcher for Team Israel in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, he is now in the St. Louis Cardinals organization, Zachary D. “Zack” Weiss turns 33…
Professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, Leonard Susskind turns 85… Brigadier-general (ret.) in the IDF, then a member of Knesset, then chairman of Ha’aguda Lema’an Hachayal, a nonprofit IDF veterans group, Avigdor Kahalani turns 81… Former dean of Yeshiva College, U.S. ambassador to Egypt for President Bill Clinton, and U.S. ambassador to Israel for President George W. Bush, Daniel C. Kurtzer turns 76… Professor at Nanjing University and China’s leading professor of Jewish studies, Xu Xin turns 76… Rickey Wolosky Palkovitz turns 76… Investigative reporter who worked for Newsweek, NBC News and then Yahoo News, Michael Isikoff turns 73… UC Berkeley professor and WSJ columnist, Alison Gopnik turns 70… Professor of Jewish studies at the University of Freiburg (Germany), Gabrielle Oberhänsli-Widmer turns 68… Distinguished fellow in Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, in three weeks he will start as a tenured professor at Harvard Divinity School, Shaul Magid turns 67… Southern California resident, Roberta Trachten-Zeve… Senior project executive at Kansas-based Stuart & Associates Commercial Flooring, Matthew Rafael Elyachar… Pulitzer Prize-winning business reporter and bestselling author, he is a past president of Washington Hebrew Congregation, David A. Vise turns 65… Former chair of the Broward County, Fla., JCRC, he is the co-founder of The Alliance of Blacks & Jews, Keith Wasserstrom… Actor, screenwriter, producer and director, Daniel Zelman turns 58… Senior correspondent for military and intelligence affairs for Yedioth Ahronoth and contributor to the NYTimes, Ronen Bergman turns 53… Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, Julie Rikelman turns 53… CEO and founder of NYC-based Marathon Strategies, Philip Keith (“Phil”) Singer… Israeli photographer, digital artist and artificial intelligence researcher, Dina Bova turns 48… Geographer and writer, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro turns 46… Singer and songwriter, Benjamin Lev Kweller turns 44… Comedian, actor and YouTuber with almost 100 million views, Adam Ray turns 43… Portfolio manager on the Jewish life and Israel grantmaking team at One8 Foundation, Alyssa Bogdanow Arens… Head video producer at Ocean One Media, Perry Chencin… Catcher on Israel’s National Baseball Team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, now a business transformation consultant for EY, Tal Erel turns 29… Israeli artistic gymnast who won a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and a silver medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Artem Dolgopyat turns 28…
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