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John,
The fall of Bashar al-Assad and his authoritarian government in Syria is a historic moment that will have reverberations in the Middle East and worldwide for years to come.
We celebrate the liberation of prisoners and return of many refugees, and hope this brings a brighter future for the Syrian people.
But what comes next is highly uncertain. A power vacuum in Syria risks unleashing further chaos and violence, potentially empowering groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS/Daesh, and their affiliates. Meanwhile, Israel continues to advance from the Golan Heights, illegally seizing Syrian territory and conducting airstrikes across the country alongside the United States.
We hope a democracy can emerge for the people of Syria. But the lessons of Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq serve as stark warnings of what could lie ahead.
War hawks in Washington, driven in part by anti-Iranian sentiment, are seizing on this moment to demand the U.S. put Iran in its crosshairs. They are calling not only to intensify sanctions but to send arms into Iran to fuel a civil war and for the U.S. to launch direct military strikes on Iran.
This is an incredibly dangerous moment. We cannot allow the war machine to draw the U.S. into a new military adventure in Iran that will dash hopes for organic democratization and spread chaos and death. Iran is not Syria, and those who think that the Syrian model could be replicated for Iran are all-too-comfortable with the idea of subjecting ordinary Iranians to a bloody decade or more of brutal civil war as in Syria.
We at NIAC are standing with the Iranian people by opposing war and working against broad sanctions that hurt ordinary Iranians and civil society in Iran. Just this week, we helped advance efforts in Congress to address internet access challenges in Iran compounded by U.S. sanctions. And we surveyed thousands of Iranian Americans who, by a 3:1 margin, say that preventing a war with Iran should be a top priority for the next U.S. President.
We believe there is a new diplomatic opportunity that we will be urging the Trump-Vance administration to seize so that U.S.-Iran tensions can be de-escalated and pressure that hurts ordinary Iranians and prevents them from building power can be lifted.
But we face powerful interests pushing for the U.S. to go down the path of war. We need your help to stand up to them. Can you make an end of year donation today to fuel NIAC’s work to prevent war?
donate: no war with iran
Please see our statement on these recent developments here. We plan to share additional analysis on these turbulent events in the days to come, stay tuned.
Best,
Jamal Abdi
President, NIAC
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