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WASHINGTON — <\/span>President Donald Trump has taken the United States into war<\/a> with Iran despite decades of self-professed aversion to foreign entanglements, particularly in the Middle East, and repeated pledges to focus primarily on the Western Hemisphere with an \u201cAmerica first\u201d agenda.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s predicate for joining Israel in attacks on Iran\u2019s leadership, military and critical infrastructure this weekend was that Iran posed unacceptable and imminent risks to U.S. and allied interests. <\/p>\n Similar arguments were made in the aftermath of Trump\u2019s action last month to remove former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power in a military strike<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet even his closest advisers have been unable to point to any specific threat to the U.S. from Iran that required urgent action. Trump had said a previous strike<\/a> on Iran had \u201cobliterated\u201d its nuclear capability and the Defense Intelligence Agency said in a report last year that Iran was probably 10 years away from having a missile that could reach the U.S.<\/p>\n With the top ranks of the Iranian government killed<\/a> in the first hours of the attacks, a leadership vacuum in Tehran coupled with bitterly divided Iranian diaspora opposition groups could pull the United States into exactly the kind of prolonged conflict that Trump has said he wants to avoid.<\/p>\n Less than two days after the Operation Epic Fury began, U.S. lawmakers and Middle East diplomats and experts offered conflicting assessments of the road ahead.<\/p>\n One Middle Eastern diplomat said Arab nations were particularly disappointed that the U.S. and Israel chose to move ahead with the military option while diplomacy remained possible and are \u201cvery concerned\u201d about potential escalation. \u201cThis is precisely what we did not want,\u201d the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.<\/p>\n The diplomat said de-escalation is of \u201cparamount\u201d importance because the longer the strikes go on \u201cthe worse it will be not only for the region but it will be felt around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump supporters, though, disagreed.<\/p>\n \u201cAmerica First is not isolationism,\u201d<\/a> said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump ally who has long supported military action against Iran. \u201cAmerica First is not head in the sand. America First is not to get entangled. We\u2019re not going to have any boots on the ground in Iran. But America First is to kill people who wish us ill with a record of trying to destroy us in the region, to take them off the table.\u201d<\/p>\n Graham and other Trump defenders have argued that the president acts swiftly when necessary and not before exhausting non-military options. They point to his order to eliminate the head of Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guards Corps during his first term, his strikes last June on several of Iran\u2019s most important nuclear facilities and the Maduro operation.<\/p>\n Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, predicted that Republican lawmakers and more importantly voters will back Trump even though they support the president\u2019s America First policy.<\/p>\n \u201cI suspect you\u2019ll see overwhelming support from elected Republicans in the Congress, who are answerable to our voters in places like Arkansas and states all across the country when we\u2019re back in the Capitol later this week,\u201d Cotton said.<\/p>\n