Last week over two-hundred Republicans, including every GOP senator except Rand Paul (R-KY), signed a letter urging President Donald Trump to insist that Iran give up all enrichment capabilities in any nuclear deal with that country.

In other words, they don’t want a new Iran deal.

But most Republicans do want a deal. As Responsible Statecraft’s Stavroula Pabst reported on May 12, “As U.S.-Iran talks continue, new polling finds that nearly two-thirds of Republicans support a negotiated deal on Iran’s nuclear program over military action intended to destroy it.”

Pabst explained:

“Indeed, polling published by the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll program and conducted by the SSRS Opinion Panel Omnibus from May 2 through 5, surveying over 1,000 respondents over 18, showed that a majority of Americans, 69%—including 64% percent of Republicans—view a negotiated agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program, with monitoring, as the best way to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

It seems that on Iran, the Republican members of Congress are out of sync with the voters who put them there.

Stavroula would add of President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, “Witkoff shared one thing in common with the Iranians—that ‘no enrichment’ is a red line, for the Americans who don’t want any enrichment, and for the Iranians, who say they must have it for their civilian nuclear program.”

The Republicans who signed that letter know this. Again, they don’t want a deal.

So many of them want a U.S. war with Iran and have said so many times. President Trump seeking diplomacy over military action wrecks their war plans.

So they play games, like issuing this phony, dishonest letter.

The gap between the majority of Republican voters who want a deal and the nearly two-hundred Republicans in Congress who don’t appears to reflect a difference in the culture of the GOP’s voting base vs. the Washington establishment.

However imperfectly, Donald Trump has imposed an ‘America First’ ethos on Republican identity, something so many of his supporters eagerly embraced. A major part of that identity is no more wars and overseas nation-building. Neoconservative Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were eventually pushed out of their own party, feigning over alleged MAGA threats to democracy, but in reality with an understanding that their zeal for war and empire ran counter to what Trump represented.

So they bailed. Republican voters didn’t want them anymore. Still, the remaining congressional Republicans of their mindset continue to have to operate in a party that Trump has reshaped, but that doesn’t mean so many have changed from being the reflexively war-happy, Bush-Cheney neocons they’ve been for most of their careers.

The primary difference between neocon Lindsey Graham and neocon Liz Cheney is that Graham has accepted doing what it takes to remain withing Trump’s movement and good graces. On foreign policy, Graham and Cheney don’t differ one bit.

Neocons are what they are. The Republican base is what it is, in 2025.

Regardless, Trump shouldn’t listen to Washington Republicans. He has no reason to.

Responsible Statecraft’s Ben Armbruster laid out why on Monday:

“Neocons and their allies in Washington, Israel, and beyond are making unrealistic demands about the outcome of U.S. talks with Iran on limiting its nuclear program. But President Trump has absolutely no reason to listen to them and should not take them seriously.”

He continued:

“The anti-Iran deal campaign kicked into overdrive last week when Republicans on Capitol Hill sent a letter to the White House calling on Trump to refuse any agreement that doesn’t include the complete dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program.”

The neocons are very worried that successful diplomacy could prevent war.

“Every Republican senator except Rand Paul signed a letter to President Trump urging the administration to push for an end to Iran’s enrichment capacity,” Andrew Day, senior editor of The American Conservative, told RS. “They know that this demand is unacceptable to the Iranian regime and are clearly hoping to sabotage Trump’s diplomatic efforts.”

Exactly.

Neocons are going to neocon and will eagerly work for the next war, especially with Iran, for the rest of their lives. It’s how they’re built. “Warmonger” is a pejorative, but it’s also an accurate description of so many of these Beltway creatures.

If MAGA Republicans believe that what makes America great is the actual Americans who inhabit it, neocons measure national greatness by the willingness and ability of the United States to spread its empire to every inch of the globe, with any potential wars being a bonus, not a deterrent.

Neocons and MAGA are oil and water. When Trump said that George W. Bush “lied” the American people into war with Iraq on a Republican primary debate stage in South Carolina in 2016, some said his campaign was DOA for the unpardonable crime of questioning the war in “Bush country.”

We all the know what actually happened: the exact opposite. Trump’s MAGA movement now is the GOP. Bush-Cheney neoconservatism is mostly a faded memory for the base.

Now it the time to kick the neocons when they’re down.

So, to hell with them. Ignore their stupid letters. Deny and denounce their reaching rationales for committing the U.S. to yet another nonsensical tragedy abroad.

Call them on their bullshit.

Instead, make the peace and pursue the diplomacy that most Republican voters currently want and more importantly, would actually put America first, for the first time in a long time.

Republican senators might want war, but the people—Trump’s people—don’t. It’s time for populism on steroids. A robust antiwar conservatism for the twenty-first century. Give the great Smedley Butler his due.

If there was ever a time to give the people what they want, it’s now.