No boots on the ground. No blood and treasure. Not even a lost B-2 bomber, thank you.

Sentiments like these have been the lifeblood of The National Pulse’s broadly non-interventionist foreign policy stance since our inception almost a decade ago.

However, we are not naive or dogmatic. Nor are we isolationists. A philosophy of rugged realism runs through our body of work: we acknowledge the ideal, pursue it to its most potent, but maintain an old Tory realism. An understanding that power should only be exercised with restraint, precision, and cultural literacy. You cannot talk someone out of their history. But you can play a part in starving a hostile regime. As long as you’re not trying to play savior.

Hostile regimes like the Islamic barbarians in Tehran should be weakened and not legitimized, as per the previous Obama and Biden governments. At one point, the 44th and 46th presidents even had Iranian agents with security clearances working in their administrations.

The post-Cold War establishment’s morally-hectoring foreign policy, beyond just Iraq and Afghanistan, has been an outstanding failure. A farce of humiliating proportions for America, emboldening and enriching competitors like the Chinese Communist Party along the way. Iran doesn’t need to work out the same way.

In Trump’s America, little rests solely on abstract universal moral purposes. Policy isn’t made with the fulminations of a Davos-world public philosopher in mind. Plus, you don’t need to publicly claim goodness if you have good motivations. And good motivations for political leadership, as indeed the Persian people might tell you, find their grounding in the will of the people.

Rugged realists are foreign policy populists.

Absolutist non-interventionists would dismiss all of this as a mere excuse to maraud, albeit occasionally, overseas. But absolutism has as much place in a foreign policy conversation as Absolut vodka does in a gin martini: none. It is a denial of reality, as much as neoconservatism is. They are two sides of a dirty penny, which is fitting as both sides usually have some financial incentive attached to their claims, as motivation.

Take, for instance, a poll released by YouGov in June 2025, which declared: “a majority of Iranian Americans oppose U.S. military action against Iran.”

There are two problems here. Firstly, I’m not certain the views of 53% of 585 “Iranian Americans” polled (i.e., 310 people) should be informing U.S. foreign policy. Secondly, the poll was commissioned by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a pro-Tehran lobby shop which operates freely in Washington, D.C. under the tutelage of Trita Parsi, who also heads the Quincy Institute.

The Quincy Institute was named for John Quincy Adams, America’s sixth president, who declared, “America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

He was, of course, correct. But the Islamic Republic is a monster that needs no seeking out, and which is in the process of destroying itself, or at least being destroyed by the Persian people. America’s job is not to deploy troops, boots, bombs, or boats. It aims to reflect the will of the American people on the matter, a subject that the Reagan Presidential Foundation explored in its 2025 National Defense Survey. That’s an American poll of over 2,500 American people, by the way.

In that survey, nearly 80 percent of respondents called the regimes in Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing “enemies.” Seventy-nine percent of self-described “MAGA Republicans” said so, as did 78 percent of Democrats. In the same survey, 73 percent supported instituting economic sanctions, 70 percent said the U.S. should use cyber capabilities, and 54 percent said using military force was justified to stop the Islamic regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Eighty-three percent of Republicans and 39 percent of Democrats supported the “US military’s targeted airstrike against Iran’s nuclear facilities this past summer.”

Folks often speak of “regime change” in places like Iran as if a nation, its leaders, or its people expressing a preference of leadership in another country is the same as the violent overthrow of a legitimate government. However, the Trump administration is not pursuing “regime change,” even though the Iranian regime is believed to have been behind at least one of his assassination attempts. It was certainly behind the hack and distribution of Trump campaign documents.

Instead, it is willing to facilitate the hostile regime’s collapse using softer tools to aid the nation’s people.

In the summer of 2025, Elon Musk’s Starlink soared in popularity despite the regime threatening the death penalty for those caught using it. With technology like this, opposition groups and activists on the ground can coordinate even when the government shuts off the internet, as it does routinely.

The same sort of pressure has been used by the Trump administration when negotiating trade deals. Tariffs have not shaken out as “a weapon of economic war,” as Trump’s detractors suggested. Instead, they have been effectively used to neutralize those taking advantage of the United States and to shift control back in favor of the American people.

Similarly, realists and non-interventionists are not required to participate in a hostile regime’s continuance so as not to appear as neocons or warmongers. This is precisely the moral turpitude exercised under Obama and Biden.

Pressure must remain limited in scope, targeting ruling elites rather than civilian populations, and be grounded in an understanding of a society’s internal traditions, grievances, and sources of legitimacy. Influence can be exerted indirectly, through the erosion of a regime’s control over information, patronage, and coercion. This allows organic forces within a nation to determine their own political futures.

This is not passivity, but disciplined realism: moral clarity without crusading, strength without occupation, and pressure without ownership. This is rugged realism. This is the Trump doctrine.

This is a doctrine that eschews unnecessary loss of life or long-term international entanglements, pursues peace and partnership, and sticks it to America’s adversaries – especially China – whenever sensible. Trump’s attitude and approach to Iran are archetypal of a new and successful America First foreign policy.