Tucker Carlson, one of the most influential conservative media figures in the United States, said Israel pushed President Donald Trump into a regime-change war with Iran and argued that the conflict proved the need for a new political party, according to an interview with Columbia Journalism Review.
Carlson, a former Fox News host and once a close Trump ally, said he has not spoken to the president since the war began and accused him of betraying the “America first” principles that helped return him to the White House. “I’m going to help build a third party,” Carlson told the magazine. “There should be a good-faith effort to figure out what benefits the country.”
The interview placed Carlson’s break with Trump squarely around Israel and Iran. Carlson said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s early visit to the White House after Trump’s inauguration in 2025 made him believe Israel was trying to steer the administration toward war with Tehran.
“This is a little early to be siphoning off the energy from this campaign and this election for the benefit of another country,” Carlson recalled thinking. “And I resented it.” He said he quickly concluded that the purpose of those contacts was “a regime-change effort in Iran.”
Carlson described the June 2025 Twelve-Day War as the moment that transformed his political life. “The breaking point and the huge change in my life came in June of 2025, with the Twelve-Day War, which was not about Iran’s nuclear program,” he said. “It was the first salvo in a regime-change effort led by Israel. And that’s just antithetical to everything Trump ran on.”
Carlson said he had repeatedly warned Trump not to attack Iran, including in private meetings at the White House. “I visited him three times at the White House in the month before the Twelve-Day War, and I told him the same thing all three times: ‘You’re not gonna see the rise of a democratic, pro-Western government in Tehran,’” he said.
Asked whether he still speaks to Trump, Carlson replied: “I haven’t spoken to him since the regime-change war began. I’m not interested in talking to him. I feel sorry for him. He’s not a man in charge of his own life at this point.”
Carlson, who hosts The Tucker Carlson Show from his barn studio in Maine, said he had long avoided talking publicly about Israel despite having visited the country several times. He said he believed criticism of Israel was often treated as criticism of all Jews, a dynamic he said made the subject feel too personal and politically dangerous.
“I certainly did not anticipate talking about Israel,” Carlson said. “I had been on TV for thirty years. I don’t think I had ever really talked about Israel. From my perspective, I got pushed into it.”
He said the Iran war changed that calculation. “I’ve been to Israel several times, both for work and as a visitor. I love Jerusalem, amazing city, but I’m not interested in Israel,” he said. “But once you start taking over my political system and destroying my country, then I have a right to care. So now I do care.”
Carlson described the U.S. memorandum of understanding with Iran as “a humiliating defeat for the United States,” but said it was still better than continuing the war. He also argued that Israel had overestimated its power in the conflict. “Imagine it from Israel’s perspective: you think you’re gonna be the regional hegemon, and then, three months later, Iran becomes a global power. It’s a freaking nightmare,” he said.
His criticism of Trump has grown more forceful since the war began. Carlson had been a frequent presence around Trump during the 2024 campaign and urged him to choose JD Vance as his running mate. But in the interview, Carlson said the Iran war showed that voters who backed Trump to avoid foreign entanglements had still ended up with regime change.
“If you vote for Trump and you still wind up in a regime-change war, if Chuck Schumer is strongly behind Trump’s foreign policy, which he is, then we need options,” Carlson said. “We need a third party.”
(Photo: SAUL LOEB / AFP)
Carlson argued that Republicans and Democrats offer no meaningful difference on the issues he sees as most important: war and finance. “Where does the money come from? Where does it go? And who gets killed? And on those questions, the parties are in lockstep solidarity with each other,” he said.
“That’s not a democracy,” Carlson added. “That’s a one-party state posing as a democracy, and it needs to be broken, and there’s going to be a third party, and I’m going to do everything I can to bring that about.”
Carlson said he does not want to be the party’s candidate. “I don’t want to be a candidate,” he said. Elsewhere in the interview, he added: “I’m not a politician, that’s for sure. I’m not a rival to Trump for power. I have no power.”
The interview also touched on Carlson’s hard-line views on immigration, abortion and transgender rights, as well as his growing appeal to some anti-war voices on the left. Carlson said he supports “ending all immigration today,” arguing that artificial intelligence will eliminate large numbers of white-collar jobs and make additional immigration economically unjustifiable.
But his central argument returned to the Iran war and what he described as Israel’s influence over U.S. policy. Carlson said the conflict had exposed the failure of both major parties to defend ordinary Americans from wars they did not vote for.
“The US government should have, as its first priority, the welfare of its own people,” he said.
Carlson, who was fired by Fox News in 2023, said losing his job allowed him to move from television to the internet and speak more freely. “I’m so grateful every single day that I got fired,” he said. “I probably wouldn’t have left, knowing me. I’d just be increasingly unhappy.”
Despite his large audience and continued influence in conservative politics, Carlson downplayed his power, saying he had failed to stop Trump from attacking Iran. “What matters is the ability to affect outcomes,” he said. “And I have no demonstrated ability to do that. None.”
Asked why he now speaks to outlets outside his usual audience, Carlson said public argument is the only tool he has. “I don’t have any institutional power. I don’t control a military,” he said. “So all I have is the power to talk and be heard.”