Israeli air defense systems intercepted and destroyed missiles. (Photo by Gazi Samad/Anadolu via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump and top surrogates of his 2024 campaign — people like JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard — said “America First” means sidestepping the quicksand of foreign intervention and stanching the flow of Americans’ blood and money to faraway conflicts in which they have no obvious stake. Or did it actually signify a Great Power willing to exert influence for itself and its ally Israel by dispensing with all-but-imaginary international law and the pearl clutching of academics and middle powers about a rules-based international order?

Prescribing what to think about the U.S.-Israel mission would violate our own. But you should have all the facts.

Some may dispute the choice to begin this timeline in February 2025, rather than in 2024 when the Department of Justice revealed a plot by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to assassinate Trump; or in 2018, when the first Trump administration ripped up the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA); or in 490 BC, when the Persians battled the Athenians. But every timeline must have some discrete start date, and ours was chosen for simple practicality. Trump’s announcement of the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei provides the other bookend. - Emily Kopp, Editor-In-Chief