The ongoing joint U.S.-Israel strike against Iran, dubbed Operation Epic Fury, launched suddenly over the weekend, seemingly caught many Americans off guard. That was despite the fact that the U.S. military buildup in the region was ongoing for weeks ahead of time, and the Trump administration and Iran’s leadership were engaged in negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear weapons development efforts — negotiations that clearly went south in a hurry.

President Donald Trump explained that the rationale for the timing of the launch of the attack was to preempt an attack by Iran on U.S. personnel and forces in the region. He also said the primary reason for the decision to attack Iran was that he would not allow Tehran’s radical Islamist regime to get a nuclear weapon. He warned, “If we didn’t hit within two weeks, they would’ve had a nuclear weapon.” On this, Trump has been consistent about his views, going all the way back to 1980.

This, in a nutshell, is the main reason the U.S. and Israel are attacking Iran. The goal is to eliminate the decades-long global terror threat posed by the Islamic Republic once and for all.

Trump vehemently denied the recent narrative that Israel “forced” America’s hand. (To some folks, “the Jews” are always nefariously steering American foreign policy.) “If anything,” he argued, “I might have forced Israel’s hand. But Israel was ready, and we were ready.”

The trouble is that a number of talkingheads and social media influencers on the Right have interpreted Trump’s America First policy as one of isolationism and noninterventionism, at least when it comes to the use of the U.S. military. Tucker Carlson, for example, once again expressing his increasingly troubling anti-Israel views, complained, “This is Israel’s war. This is not the United States’ war.” It is not surprising that Carlson has taken this position. What is frustrating is how he continues to spin a false historical narrative regarding the whole situation, as if Iran weren’t really a threat and a menace that is responsible for thousands of American deaths going back nearly 50 years.

Worse, from Carlson’s perspective, Israel, not Iran, is the biggest destabilizing agent in the region. He was spinning conspiracy claims that Israel was to blame for a number of bombings in Qatar, until Qatar authorities set the record straight, noting that the strikes were due to Iranian attacks.

Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly went even more shrill, condemning the strike and stating, “No one should have to die for a foreign country.” Does Kelly not understand that American military personnel most often fight for their own country in places outside their country?

If Trump is successful in this operation against Iran and eliminates its Islamic regime, the benefits for not just the region but for the U.S. are tremendous. Not only would it remove the world’s leading sponsor of global terrorism, but it would also further weaken and isolate America’s biggest geopolitical foe, China. From a strategic standpoint, the U.S. is reestablishing itself as the world’s leading superpower. This is the very essence of the America First policy Trump campaigned on.

The narrative that Trump has gotten the U.S. into another “forever war” is a disingenuous view of the facts on the ground and of Trump himself. The president has made it clear that he’s not interested in engaging in nation-building, which is the primary issue that mired the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan for nearly two decades. What he is doing is showing the world who’s boss. Either you negotiate in good faith with the U.S. as we make deals according to our own strategic and economic interests, or you don’t and face the real prospect of getting a sternly worded missile at your doorstep.

Trump is showing the genuine strength of America First. It’s not some fanciful isolationist, utopian vision of the world in which the U.S. can go about our own business, leave the rest of the world to its own devices, and avoid all conflict unless it hits our shores.

The president defines his America First vision and what his Make America Great Again movement is.

When it comes to the right-wing naysayers like Carlson and Kelly, Trump opined that Kelly “was opposed to me for years when I ran the first time, and nothing stopped me.” He added, “They always come back.”