This War Can Still Be Stopped
What Congress—and our movements—must do now
TAKE ACTION to stop US/Israeli imperial aggression and support the Iranian people’s struggle against brutal state repression. Call your lawmakers now, join a mass call TONIGHT (March 2), and sign and distribute a petition from Iranian-Americans for Peace and Democracy.
On Saturday, February 28, the Trump regime launched an unprovoked and unconscionable war on Iran, joining Israel’s military in large-scale air and missile strikes across the country. Iran has responded with missile and drone attacks on Israeli targets and US bases across the Middle East. Civilian and US military casualties are already being reported, including more than 100 at a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran. The risk of rapid escalation is extremely high.
This is a reckless, destabilizing act of imperial aggression that threatens millions of people in Iran and across the region. It also poses serious political dangers here in the United States: foreign wars are a classic tool authoritarians use to consolidate power at home, distract from domestic crises, and further erode democratic accountability.
Congress has not authorized the use of force against Iran, nor has the Trump administration made any serious effort to justify this war to the public. Instead, emboldened by earlier attacks on Iran and Venezuela, Trump has once again acted unilaterally, ignoring the War Powers Act, designed to check the president’s power to commit armed forces to hostile action without congressional approval.
Congress has the power to stop this criminal war on Iran. The House and Senate will both vote on war powers resolutions, possibly as early as Tuesday this week. We must demand that Congress act now to stop this from becoming another endless war.
TAKE ACTION: Call your lawmakers now to tell them to stop war with Iran. Demand Progress has a simple tool you can use. Dial this phone number: 1-833-STOP-WAR.
They’ll connect you to your lawmakers one after another. Please make as many calls as you can. You can press star to move from call to call or if there’s no answer. Once you’re connected to an office or an answering machine, you can say:
“I’m calling as a constituent to urge you to support an Iran War Powers Resolution to stop war with Iran.”
TAKE ACTION: Join a mass movement-wide call TONIGHT, Monday, March 2, 7 PM ET/4 PM PT.
Join Liberation Road and our partners for an emergency movement call hosted by MoveOn, 50501, and Win Without War to get context on what is unfolding and discuss a concrete plan for collective action. Click here to register now.
Congressional action is both winnable and critical. Democratic House and Senate leadership have signalled support for a war powers resolution, and MAGA is split on this issue. With concerted public pressure, we have a strong chance to win a vote in the House, and a real shot in the Senate.
Even if Trump ultimately vetoes such a measure, one or both chambers going on record against this war would change the political balance—raising the political cost for the administration, putting legislators on record opposing unauthorized war, and visibly broadening opposition across the political spectrum. In recent conflicts, war powers resolutions have acted as a brake on further escalation even when they have not passed, as a risk-averse and image-conscious Trump has pulled back from the threat of losing face, support, and votes. In this moment, every vote and every call can help save lives.
Stand for BOTH peace abroad and freedom for the Iranian people
Nothing about opposing US war requires minimizing or excusing the crimes of the Iranian regime, an authoritarian state that consolidated power through mass violence and has since repeatedly crushed popular uprisings. From the execution of tens of thousands of leftists in the 1980s to the brutal suppression of the Women, Life, Freedom movement, the Islamic Republic has responded to demands for democracy, women’s liberation, and social justice with imprisonment, torture, and mass killing. Yet Iranians have continued to resist. Their fight for dignity, democratic rights, and self-determination is legitimate, courageous, and deserving of international solidarity.
But war will not liberate Iran. US airstrikes will not advance democracy, women’s rights, or labor struggles; they will deepen suffering, strengthen the forces of reaction, and shrink the space for popular resistance. From Iraq to Libya to Afghanistan, US regime-change wars have produced chaos, mass death, and reaction—not freedom.
The US left must reject a false choice that has repeatedly weakened anti-war politics: the idea that opposing US imperialism requires silence about authoritarian repression by states targeted by Washington, or that condemning repression justifies foreign intervention. We can and must be anti-imperialist and anti-authoritarian at the same time.
This false choice also divides the Iranian diaspora, pitting those who look to US power for salvation against those who defend the regime. But there are also many—inside Iran and across the diaspora—who reject both imperial aggression and domestic authoritarianism. We align with those forces, who insist that Iran’s future belongs neither to Washington nor to Tehran’s rulers, but to the Iranian people themselves.
TAKE ACTION: Sign and distribute the petition by Iranian-Americans for Peace and Democracy (IAPD) for peace abroad and freedom for the Iranian people, here.
Iranian-Americans for Peace and Democracy (IAPD) is an organization of Iranian-Americans who, as members of both the American people and the Iranian diaspora, commit to building both unequivocal opposition to the joint US/Israeli war, and support for establishing secular, multiethnic, multireligious democracy in Iran. Please circulate their online petition far and wide to unite all Iranian-Americans who believe in peace and democracy.
The most meaningful solidarity the US left can offer the Iranian people is to stop this war and confront the authoritarian project driving it, while supporting the Iranian people’s struggle against foreign domination and domestic tyranny. We can exercise solidarity by using every tool available to restrain Trump’s power to wage war and to defeat the political forces that make endless war possible. It is our duty to struggle against imperial aggression, to stand with people resisting repression everywhere, and to help build a future grounded in peace, self-determination, and democracy—for Iran and for ourselves.