Washington, D.C. | www.mpac.org | June 16, 2025 — The same war lobby that orchestrated the campaign to invade Iraq is now deploying the very same script to send the United States barreling toward conflict. If we allow these interests to manipulate our nation again, the American people will pay a heavy price—economically, morally, and strategically. As we witness the destruction of yet another nation, we know the aggression, this time in the name of "Israel's security," is a facade for Israel's expansion over sovereign land and peoples.
This dangerous agenda carries both foreign and domestic consequences for the United States. Across the globe, the deterioration of the United States' standing as a global superpower is a near certainty. At home, America's ethos as a free and democratic society will be further eroded.
The Iraq War should have taught us that dissent against war is not only necessary but patriotic. Yet we learned that challenging the administration's narrative and standing for justice —particularly if you belong to the "wrong" race or religion—can be framed as treason. Foreign resistance will be labeled terrorism, even if it is nonviolent and political. American dissent will be smeared as material support for terrorism. And American tax dollars will once again be funneled into Israel—an entity that offers no strategic value to the United States and, in fact, increasingly serves as a strategic liability.
In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the pro-war lobby made its case to both the American public and lawmakers on Capitol Hill— relying on falsified and manipulated intelligence while claiming that invading was in the United States’ best interest for the safety and security of all Americans. However, those who opposed the war were smeared as agents of Saddam Hussein's regime or as "terrorist sympathizers." In striking similarity, as Israel intensifies its abuse of American taxpayer dollars and exploitation of our military, dissent is increasingly met with accusations of supporting terrorism. All while these malicious entities repeat their rehearsed script, no one is credibly arguing that this serves the American people or the best interests of the United States.
Rising global anti-American sentiment will be accepted as a tolerable cost to arrogant national security elites who are more concerned with geopolitical "control" rather than what benefits the United States. Meanwhile, American troops stationed across the Middle East will face heightened vulnerability, global oil supplies will be disrupted, and in the end, adversaries like Russia and China—who pose credible strategic challenges to the United States—will reap the geopolitical rewards.
The truth is that there already existed a viable agreement that addressed Iran's nuclear ambitions: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). President Trump recklessly abandoned that deal and, in doing so, he handed Israel an informal veto over any future negotiations with Iran. Perhaps in honest pursuit of an America-first foreign policy, President Trump realized the only way forward was through diplomacy, and his Administration was in the midst of negotiating a compromise when Israel flexed its informal veto power by launching its most recent unprovoked attack and assassinating Iranian negotiators and scientists. Israel has not only opposed diplomacy but has actively sabotaged it and continues to convey that it will take any means necessary to drag the United States into its geopolitical extremism. Through Israel's assassinations of scientists, negotiators, and civilians, the United States' opportunity to be seen as a "partner in peace" to Iran or any other nation looking to work with the U.S. continues to be directly undermined.
This path would mark another blow to the rule of humanitarian law. Israel has already demonstrated a willingness to ignore internationally-recognized regulations through its actions in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon through continuous violations of the U.S.-based Leahy Laws and direct defiance of warrants for war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court of Justice. This path is also reminiscent of 1953, when the United States engineered a regime change in Iran, with the ousting of the first popular, democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mossadegh, that led to the Iranian revolution in 1979. In other words, yes, the U.S. has the military and technological ability to force rulers out, but it will always backfire against American interests. It is the right of the Iranian people to self-determination and to elect their representation in government, not for Tel Aviv to determine and Washington to carry out.
There are, however, many American Jewish voices courageously speaking out against this dangerous war, warning that it is being waged in the name of protecting Jews and will only instead endanger them. As Thomas Friedman wrote in The New York Times in a piece titled This Israeli Government Is a Danger to Jews Everywhere, Israel today is a major producer of antisemitism.
Above all, it is imperative that we uphold the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, which places the will of the American people—not the interests of another country—at the heart of American governance and the driver of policy-making. Unlike in the run-up to the Iraq war and despite Israel's stranglehold over Washington, we hope the American people this time will reject the financial and political sponsorship of Israel's destructive military agenda.
Much of this fight depends on how effectively civil society organizations can mobilize and demand accountability from our own government—beginning with the enforcement of President Trump's once-touted promise to end "endless wars." MPAC stands committed to being a partner in peace to finally break the cycle of forever wars.
