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I spent the weekend in Dallas, Texas, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and the most striking thing to me was the support of ex-pat Iranians for President Donald Trump and his actions in the Middle East. On Saturday, the Crown Prince in exile, Reza Pahlavi, took the stage to massive applause. It was the first time during the entire convention that I saw the room packed to the back walls, and when he said he wanted to "make Iran great again," the crowd went wild.
I wasn't super on board with the optics of this whole thing. Throughout the convention, the Iranian ex-pats were the most vocal, convening throughout the halls to chant their preference for Pahlavi to take over the now-war-torn country. While I support our troops in the Middle East, there was something odd about having a convention that was for American interests being the most interested in foreign affairs.
I'd been looking forward to a CPAC that would focus on winning the midterms, retaining the GOP control of Congress and the Senate, but there was not much on that. Instead, the focus was on some social stuff, a bunch of Iran stuff, and the need for "unity." The whole podcast punditry was roundly derided by speakers calling for a coalescing of the Republican Party, but it wasn't entirely clear what attendees were being asked to coalesce around other than the war in Iran.
Trump on Monday put out a Truth Social post saying "The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran." He went on to say that if the Strait of Hormuz isn't opened "immediately" the US will "conclude our lovely 'stay' in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet 'touched.'"
Meanwhile, back in Washington, DC, Trump confirmed to the press pool aboard Air Force One that "The military is building a massive complex under the ballroom, and that's under construction, and we're doing very well. We have all bullet-proof glass, we have drone-proof roofs, ceilings. Unfortunately, we’re living in an age when that’s a good thing." This confirms the rumors that the ballroom would be more than just a ballroom, but would contain more intelligence infrastructure for the White House.
Libby