The past seven days have witnessed a state of intense confusion and chaotic contradictions due to the nature of the composition of the US National Security Council in the administration of US President Donald Trump, which begins on January 20, 2025.

If President-elect Trump succeeds in achieving his goals (because of the nature of his cabinet and his National Security Council), the National Security Council will become a place of disagreement and controversy. Michael Waltz, who will head the council as National Security Advisor, has declared that “a peaceful solution in Syria will not be possible as long as [Bashar] Assad is in power,” because Assad “has been using poison gas against his own people for years.” But Tulsi Gabbard, who will attend the meetings as Director of National Intelligence (and responsible for all intelligence agencies, including the CIA), has met with the Syrian president in person and claimed that “Assad is not an enemy of the United States, because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States.”

According to experts, this is just one of the stark contradictions that are evident in the foreign policy team of the incoming second Trump administration. Trump has flirted with very hawkish positions and very dovish positions. In fact, his team is similarly divided.

Indeed, many of Trump’s nominees are traditional war hawks, experts say. But at the same time, Trump seems unwilling to give up his authority and his judgment. His nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is open to regime-change wars in Latin America. Brian Hook, who is managing the State Department transition, is obsessed with regime change in the Middle East. Elise Stefanik, nominated for U.N. ambassador, and John Ratcliffe, nominated to run the CIA, want more intervention there. Waltz, perhaps the most extreme of them all, has gone on record supporting a U.S. military presence on the ground in Ukraine and a re-invasion of Afghanistan.

But on Wednesday, November 13, Trump surprisingly nominated two anti-establishment figures: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) for attorney general and former Rep. Gabbard (D-Hawaii) for director of national intelligence, which oversees the U.S. government’s 18 intelligence agencies. Gaetz has pushed to rein in the president’s war powers under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Gabbard has been an outspoken opponent of U.S. efforts to bring about regime change—whether through military force or economic sanctions—in the Middle East. In 2018, when Trump was considering attacking Iran to defend Saudi oil fields, Gabbard urged him not to be “Saudi Arabia’s mercenary.”

Both Gabbard and Gabbard will face a tough Senate confirmation battle. Many Republican senators have expressed skepticism about Gaetz for reasons unrelated to foreign policy: He was investigated for sexual misconduct and sparked a Republican civil war over his successful effort to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Meanwhile, Gabbard has gone further than most other foreign policy critics might, such as defending Bashar al-Assad. Personally.

At first glance, Trump’s choice for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, seems like another neoconservative. He rose to political prominence as a leader of Veterans for Freedom, a veterans’ organization that wanted the Iraq War to continue. At a rally for John McCain during the 2008 presidential election, Hegseth praised McCain for being “willing to risk an unpopular war” and argued that “Iraq is the central front in a larger battle against radical Islam.”

When Trump ordered the assassination of an Iranian general in 2020, Hegseth was cheering all-out war with Iran. “None of this changes the calculus of this regime, which is an evil regime,” he fumed on Fox News, arguing that the United States needed to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, military headquarters and industrial infrastructure. “We can’t put it off any longer,” Hegseth warned.

But recently, Hegseth claimed his views have changed.

“Maybe keeping Saddam Hussein in power was a better idea than upsetting the whole apple cart and welcoming Iran into Iraq,” Hegseth said in a November 7 interview with The Sean Ryan Show. “I’ve heard people make those arguments, and I didn’t like them, and I didn’t like those people. I had to reject them at the time because I believed in the mission that was before us at the time, but in light of what has happened now, we’ve wasted two decades of money, effort, goodwill, military capabilities, and strategic drift in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Like others in the “peace through strength” camp, Hegseth has no problem saying this time is different. “I understand that [attacking Iran] is not a popular idea. I don’t want boots on the ground. I don’t want an endless war. I don’t want an occupation. But Iran has been at an endless war with us for 40 years,” Hegseth claimed in a 2020 interview with Fox News.

Gates and Gabbard have both carved out their own niches in the Middle East. Gabbard, who told The Intercept in 2018 that she supports “very limited” counterterrorism campaigns, has come out in full support of Israel’s war in the Palestinian territories, accusing anti-war protesters in America of being “puppets” of an “extremist Islamic organization.” Gates has backed President Joe Biden’s deployment of U.S. combat troops to Israel, telling Reason magazine that since “our troops are already there,” the new deployment is simply a matter of “force protection.”

Another figure has emerged as a potential foreign policy racehorse. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, whom Trump brought to the White House as a government efficiency adviser, met secretly with an Iranian diplomat on Monday, according to The New York Times. The Iranians told the paper the meeting was “positive” about how to reduce tensions in the Middle East. This is not unprecedented; the Obama administration’s diplomacy with Iran began with an Omani businessman who wanted to take an “outside-the-box approach” to preventing war.