The first political demonstration I ever attended was against the Iraq War. I was in middle school when the invasion started, and I still have trouble wrapping my head around its costs. The medical journal Lancet estimated in 2006 that this war caused the deaths of 655,000 Iraqis. Around 4,500 U.S. service members were also killed in Iraq; more than 32,000 were wounded. And that only accounts for physical injuries. The mental injuries were also tragic: Four times more veterans from Iraq have died by suicide than were killed in active operations. These are the consequences of morally injurious wars.
The political fallout from this catastrophic conflict may have been equally significant. The vast majority of Americans eventually came to believe that the war was not worth fighting. This dynamic has had a huge impact on U.S. elections. Barack Obama’s opposition to the Iraq War arguably won him the 2008 Democratic nomination and absolutely contributed to his huge general election victory that year. The issue also played an outsize role in Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party; in 2016 Trump used Iraq as a sledgehammer to dispatch Jeb Bush before weaponizing it again to attack Hillary Clinton.
Lesson learned: Clearly, unpopular wars have enormous potential to profoundly remake American politics—to shatter a staid status quo and elevate change agents above political insiders. The world-shaping impact of a military mishap is something that should be on the forefront of every Democratic elected official’s mind as the Trump administration moves closer to enmeshing itself in Trump’s own disastrous misadventure by joining Israel’s recently launched war on Iran.
Putting aside the moral and geostrategic considerations that cry out against such an entanglement, it is clear that American participation in this conflict has the potential to be a massive political boondoggle for Donald Trump. Asked in a recent poll if the U.S. military should get involved in Israel’s war with Iran, 60 percent of Americans said no, to just 16 percent who answered yes. Among Trump 2024 voters, those numbers were 53 percent to 19 percent, respectively. Trump is stumbling toward a military engagement that a supermajority of the country, and even a clear majority of his own voters, oppose.
War with Iran will be the wedge issue of all wedge issues—in fact, it’s already splintering the president’s own coalition. There is no upside for Democrats who rally with Trump. To ally oneself with the president in this matter is to court self-destruction. In 2024, Democrats allowed themselves to be outmaneuvered by Republicans on the peace front, and Trump was able to claim the anti-war lane to great effect, particularly among demographics—like the young men deceived by Trump into believing they would be at risk of being drafted in a Kamala Harris presidency—that the party most needs to win back. Democrats now have an opportunity to seize the peace mantle and draw viscerally potent contrast with the Trump regime that could pay massive dividends both in 2026 and 2028.
But Democrats could also just absolutely blow it. They could fail to get on the right side of both history and public opinion, refuse to oppose this catastrophic war, and squander the political gift Trump is handing them.
Maddeningly, party leadership doesn’t seem to be on the correct path, despite copious evidence and incentives pointing in the direction of firm opposition to Trump’s designs. With bloodthirsty bigots like Senator John Fetterman—who said, “I really hope the president finally does bomb and destroy the Iranians”—grabbing attention, there is a need to stake out a saner point of view.
But neither House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries nor Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has done much to tear Trump’s flirtations with war down. In fact, Schumer made a video—posted before Israel’s attacks—criticizing “TACO Trump” for engaging in negotiations with Iran. He also refused to sponsor a bill that Senator Bernie Sanders introduced this week barring funding for military force against Iran.
With Trump seemingly on the cusp of bringing the U.S. military into the conflict, Schumer did, just last night, sign onto a letter telling Trump that “we will not rubberstamp military intervention that puts the United States at risk” and stating that Congress needs “a clear, detailed plan outlining the goals, risks, cost, and timeline for any proposed mission.”
This is better than nothing. But it still suggests that the problems with escalating a conflict with Iran are mostly managerial. And to the extent that this draws any sort of contrast with Trump’s recklessness, such milquetoast proceduralism is largely drowned out by the bellicose rhetoric from many other congressional Democrats who’ve released statements like, “Iran’s nuclear program isn’t just an existential threat to Israel and the Middle East, it’s a threat to the world. Diplomacy has been given every opportunity, but the Iranian regime refuses to give up their nuclear ambitions. I stand with Israel and the rest of the West as we confront this threat together.”
This is the same kind of rhetoric that was used to manufacture consent in the lead-up to the Iraq War. Many of the players are the same too. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a prominent voice urging the United States to invade Iraq in 2002, when he assured Congress, “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is working, is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons.” He also predicted, “If you take out Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.”
Netanyahu has been pushing the same arguments about Iran for 25 years. That’s not an exaggeration. Check out this video that CNN made with clips of Netanyahu continuously claiming—beginning all the way back in 1996 and continuing to the present—that Iran is just months away from developing nuclear weapons.
This claim is not supported by U.S. intelligence. Recent reporting from the infamously leftist peacenik rag The Wall Street Journal—in an article entitled “Israel Built Its Case for War With Iran on New Intelligence. The U.S. Didn’t Buy It”—described the situation like so: “The consensus view among U.S. intelligence agencies is that Iran hasn’t made a decision to move forward on building a bomb.”
As various Western analysts have stressed, Israel assaulted Iran primarily to undermine its diplomacy and derail its negotiations toward a nuclear deal. To put it another way, Israel is attacking Iran not because Netanyahu fears Iran won’t sign a deal restricting the country from pursuing nuclear weapons, but because he fears it will.
Fortunately, there are many Democrats who understand this reality, and who have been speaking out against U.S. entanglement in Israel’s war. And it’s not just the usual progressive suspects; moderate senators like Jack Reed and Tim Kaine have also been vocal. But this limited opposition isn’t nearly enough to create the kind of clear contrast necessary to demonstrate to the supermajority of Americans who oppose war with Iran that Democrats are the party they should support.
It seems, once again, that it’s up to “the resistance” to pressure Democrats into doing what is not just right but politically necessary. This weekend’s “No Kings” demonstrations were the largest single-day political protest in U.S. history. In fact, No Kings began to approach the ballpark of the “3.5 percent rule”—the (admittedly, credibly disputed) principle, proposed by social scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, that once a national protest movement engages 3.5 percent of a country’s population, it becomes increasingly likely to achieve its political goals. With turnout estimates ranging from four to six million, No Kings was not quite there yet. But if the anti-Trump movement can expand to include all those who strongly oppose Trump’s catastrophic embrace of war with Iran, the resistance could really start cooking.
There are many reasons to oppose a war with Iran. But for those of us who want to stop Trump’s fascist takeover of America, this one is as good as any. A supermajority of Americans hate the idea of another forever war in the Middle East. If Trump allows Israel to drag our country into such a war, a significant number of these voters will be up for grabs—but only if they’re offered a compelling alternative. Democrats won’t offer that alternative unless they’re forced to do so by their grassroots. That means it’s on the anti-Trump resistance movement to become an antiwar movement, as well. Fortunately, when it comes to large scale political demonstrations, the anti-war movement in the United States is no slouch—and birds of a feather dissent together.
