Here’s what you should know: Our mainstream media has kept too many ignorant about U.S.-Iran relations and what we have done overseas for too long. Americans must begin the path to critical thinking.
US v Iran note.
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Summary
President Trump’s sudden “Operation Midnight Hammer” strike on three Iranian nuclear sites marks the latest chapter in a long history of U.S. wars launched on shaky pretexts. Intelligence assessments still find no active Iranian bomb program, yet the administration insists the raids were indispensable. Progressive critics argue the attack endangers U.S. troops, ignores far deadlier Western-led wars, and deflects attention from diplomatic solutions.
- Trump acted without congressional authorization, repeating the Vietnam-to-Iraq pattern of “bomb first, justify later.”
- U.S. intelligence continues to assess that Tehran halted its weapons program in 2003 and has not restarted it.
- The Costs of War project records over 500,000 Iraqi deaths alongside 4,400 U.S. fatalities—figures dwarfing any violence linked to Iran.
- Israel, the region’s only (undeclared) nuclear-armed state, retains an estimated 80-200 warheads and remains outside the NPT, highlighting Washington’s double standard.
- Sen. Bernie Sanders has introduced legislation to deny funds for Trump’s raids, calling the official narrative “another mountain of lies.”
The strike advances no security goal; instead, it emboldens hard-liners in Tehran, risks regional conflagration, and squanders resources needed at home. A movement that values diplomacy over domination must stop this reckless march to war.
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Trump’s latest bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities dramatizes everything broken in America’s national-security playbook. Administration spokespeople label “Operation Midnight Hammer” a surgical success, yet the bragging obscures the raid’s flimsy legal basis, its dubious strategic value, and its predictable geopolitical blowback. As in Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, and countless covert wars, Washington again decides that exploding ordnance abroad is easier than persuading Congress, allies, or domestic constituents that peace can work.
A history of deception
Bernie Sanders cut through the chest-thumping. The Vermont independent reminded us that every disastrous U.S. war—from the Gulf of Tonkin to the mythical Iraqi WMD stockpiles—was greased by official lies later exposed as carnage mounted. Today’s pretext—that Iran sprinted for a bomb—collides with the Intelligence Community’s own March 2025 threat assessment, which repeats the finding first reached in 2007: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not ordered a weapons program since it was shelved in 2003. In other words, Washington bombed sites that U.S. analysts already believed were not producing warheads.
Casualties-by-the-numbers
Costs matter. The Pentagon’s casualty ledger shows 4,419 American service members dead and nearly 32,000 wounded in Iraq alone; Brown University documents place total Iraqi deaths above half a million. These statistics eclipse every conflict Iran has fought since 1979. When pundits hype an existential Persian menace, progressives counter with arithmetic: the United States and its partners pull the trigger far more often and with far deadlier results.
The nuclear double standard
Mainstream coverage rarely notes that Israel—cheered by Trump as an indispensable ally—possesses an undeclared stockpile estimated at 80-200 warheads and, unlike Iran, refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Tel Aviv’s clandestine arsenal, paired with American conventional power, leaves Iran encircled and rationally wary. When a weaker state witnesses North Korea’s survival logic—build a bomb and avoid invasion—it has incentives to hedge. Instead of acknowledging that imbalance, U.S. officials lecture Tehran on obligations already met under the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspections regime.
Legal and constitutional fault-lines
Trump’s order also tramples Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which vests war-making authority in Congress. Bipartisan resolutions from Sen. Tim Kaine and Rep. Thomas Massie demand explicit authorization; Sanders’s bill goes further, cutting off funding for unsanctioned hostilities. Progressives argue that reclaiming congressional oversight is no mere procedural quibble: public deliberation forces televised hearings, expert testimony, and a sober cost-benefit analysis before missiles are launched.
Strategic costs and predictable blowback
Militarily, the raid solves little. Hard-target munitions can crater centrifuge halls at Fordow, but nuclear expertise is intangible—it lies in scientists’ notebooks and server backups dispersed nationwide. Iranian engineers can rebuild for far less than the billions spent on bunker-busters and stealth bombers, just as Iraq reconstituted rocket production after 1991 and Serbia restored bridges NATO demolished in 1999. The likelier consequence is asymmetric retaliation: cyber-intrusions on U.S. infrastructure or proxy rocket fire on Gulf bases, calibrated to bleed but not invite regime-change invasion.
Politically, the strikes hand Tehran’s hard-liners a propaganda bonanza. Reformist voices who pushed for the 2015 JCPOA now watch their credibility crumble; why compromise if Washington reneges and bombs anyway? Each American warplane over Persian skies consolidates the Revolutionary Guard’s narrative that only a deterrent force can guarantee sovereignty.
Opportunity costs at home.
Every laser-guided bomb detonated in the Zagros Mountains vaporizes not just concrete but also domestic investment. It would not be a surprise if these operations will eventually be north of $1 billion, money that could modernize collapsing bridges in Pittsburgh or replace the lead pipes still poisoning Flint’s children. Conservatives dismiss such comparisons as naïve bookkeeping, yet progressive economics insists budgets reflect moral priorities. When the wealthiest nation can mobilize bombers overnight but pleads poverty on student debt relief, it exposes a policy architecture tilted toward defense contractors, not working families.
Media complicity and the civic vacuum
Corporate outlets amplify the Pentagon’s framing, recycling graphics of precision strikes while glossing over the human terrain underneath. The result is a population struggling to locate Iran on a map, much less grasp its complex revolutionary history, the Green Movement’s thwarted democratic aspirations, or its demographic realities, including a tech-savvy, under-30 majority. That ignorance is not an accident; it is manufactured consent, cultivated by cable networks that privilege spectacle over substance.
A progressive alternative
Stopping the next quagmire demands a three-track strategy:
- Legislate War Powers: Pass Sanders’s funding ban and Kaine-Massie’s authorization requirement, closing post-9/11 loopholes that presidents exploit.
- Revive Diplomacy: Re-enter an expanded JCPOA that swaps verifiable enrichment caps for phased sanctions relief, while negotiating a regional non-aggression pact covering Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf monarchies.
- Invest in Peace Dividends: Redirect at least 10% of the Pentagon budget to climate mitigation, public health, and renewable infrastructure sectors, generating far more jobs per dollar than weapons procurement.
Conclusion
Trump’s Iran strike is less a bold strategic gambit than a rerun of a grim American ritual: flog a foreign threat, bomb first, and invent the rationale later. Progressives view this pattern as morally bankrupt and strategically self-defeating. Real security springs from international law, equitable diplomacy, and a national budget that prioritizes human flourishing—not arms industry profits—as its primary directive. By exposing the lies, tallying the costs, and demanding congressional accountability, the movement can halt the drift toward perpetual war and build a foreign policy worthy of a democratic republic.
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