Why we must say no to war with Iran

In late February 2026, the United States, along­side Israel, launched a mas­sive mil­i­tary oper­a­tion against Iran, strik­ing hun­dreds of tar­gets, includ­ing mil­i­tary infra­struc­ture and lead­er­ship. The ini­tial assault killed Iran’s supreme leader and trig­gered wide­spread retal­i­a­tion in the form of mis­sile strikes, drone attacks, and a rapid­ly expand­ing region­al conflict.

This dis­pute has already spread across bor­ders, drawn in neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, dis­rupt­ed glob­al oil sup­plies, and desta­bi­lized entire regions. Iran has tar­get­ed ship­ping routes, includ­ing the Strait of Hormuz, through which rough­ly 20% of the world’s oil flows. 

And the human cost is stag­ger­ing. Thousands are already dead, includ­ing civilians. 

Wars are often jus­ti­fied with lan­guage that makes them feel unavoid­able (though I strong­ly sus­pect this one was a con­ve­nient way to dis­tract the mass­es from the Epstein files). But war rarely deliv­ers the clar­i­ty it promis­es. The decades-old ten­sions between the U.S. and Iran are root­ed in mis­trust, nuclear fears, and com­pet­ing influ­ence in the Middle East. But those ten­sions have tra­di­tion­al­ly exist­ed along­side diplo­ma­cy, nego­ti­a­tion, and (imper­fect) but real attempts at peace. War is what hap­pens when those path­ways are aban­doned, sim­ply because it is the most force­ful one. And force has con­se­quences that can­not always be controlled.

War spreads through mar­kets, through alliances, and through human lives. Already, this con­flict is dri­ving glob­al insta­bil­i­ty by spik­ing oil prices, threat­en­ing infla­tion, and strain­ing economies around the world. 

In just the first days of this war, bil­lions of dol­lars were spent. Projections sug­gest this could become one of the most expen­sive wars since Iraq and Afghanistan, with a request for $200 bil­lion more already, because, accord­ing to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, “It takes mon­ey to kill bad guys.” That is not abstract mon­ey, but the mea­sure of what we are choos­ing not to fund here at home.

War asks us to accept scarci­ty at home while financ­ing dev­as­ta­tion else­where. Imagine what even a frac­tion of that fund­ing request could do in mod­ern­iz­ing U.S. schools, expand­ing health­care access, or address­ing cli­mate resilience.

According to Senator Bernie Sanders, $22 bil­lion (that’s less than ⅛ of Hesgeth’s request) could pro­vide Medicaid to 6.8 mil­lion chil­dren. It could fund Head Start for 1.3 mil­lion chil­dren. It could hire $240,000 teach­ers. And it could can­cel $20,000 in stu­dent debt for one mil­lion borrowers. 

We can’t afford SNAP ben­e­fits to feed our own cit­i­zens, but we can fund bil­lions to get in an actu­al war with a coun­try that posed no immi­nent threat to us? The math just ain’t mathin’for me. Every dol­lar spent on war is a dec­la­ra­tion of pri­or­i­ty, choos­ing destruc­tion abroad over invest­ment at home. Over pay­ing our teach­ers a liv­ing wage. Over offer­ing our cit­i­zens access to health­care. Over cre­at­ing strong com­mu­ni­ties with infra­struc­ture and afford­able housing.

Beyond strat­e­gy and eco­nom­ics, there is a deep­er moral quandary. What does it mean to par­tic­i­pate in war? War traps real human beings in forces they did not choose. When bombs fall, they do not dis­tin­guish between ide­ol­o­gy and inno­cence. Due to “out­dat­ed coor­di­nates,” at least 175 peo­ple were killed when a U.S. Tomahawk mis­sile inad­ver­tent­ly bombed an Iranian school. Most of these casu­al­ties were chil­dren. Are we sup­posed to believe chil­dren of any coun­try are “bad guys” or are we just to blithe­ly accept these deaths as col­lat­er­al damage? 

There is no ver­sion of war that does not leave trau­ma that echoes across gen­er­a­tions. War nor­mal­izes vio­lence as a solu­tion, nar­rows empa­thy, and teach­es us to see entire pop­u­la­tions as ene­mies rather than as people.

I am often tempt­ed to feel like geopol­i­tics are too com­plex or inevitable, that under­stand­ing all the nuances of war are just beyond me. But I also believe that democ­ra­cy is not passive.

To oppose this war is not to ignore threats or deny com­plex­i­ty. It is to insist that vio­lence should nev­er be the default answer and that diplo­ma­cy, restraint, and account­abil­i­ty mat­ter. President Trump claims that the desired out­come of this war is vic­to­ry, but what does vic­to­ry even mean? What are we will­ing to sac­ri­fice and for how long?

We can con­tin­ue down a path that leads to deep­er con­flict, greater spend­ing, and more loss of life. Or we can choose restraint, diplo­ma­cy, and invest­ment in life rather than death.

War is a choice. But so is peace.