The U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28 to change the current regime and take down the Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile program. Soldiers and other active participants in the regime were not the only ones affected; 1,701 civilians were killed.
With 3,000 people dead, Iran responded with strikes on Israel and U.S. military bases. Unfortunately, both military and civilian locations in Arab countries with U.S forces were targets for Iran’s counterstrikes. In the United Arab Emirates, 13 service members were killed and 300 were wounded; Qatar and Kuwait saw seven killed, while Saudi Arabia saw two killed and 12 injured. The West Bank, Syria, Bahrain, Oman and France shared similar numbers of killed and wounded people. The official death toll is undetermined.
Lives across the world are on the line because of this war. Gulf nations have cut total oil production by 10 million barrels per day and the supply of oil is set to decrease. Lower and middle income Southeast Asian countries like Myanmar, Vietnam and the Philippines have a month’s supply worth of oil before they run out.
As the world’s biggest natural gas and oil producer, the U.S. was in a privileged position to not face severe consequences and be protected from the devastating economic shocks of war.
Iran and the U.S. agreed to a two-week ceasefire on April 7 to negotiate. Vice President JD Vance and other Trump administration staffers claimed they were negotiating in good faith, but talks stalled over Iran’s unwillingness to not develop nuclear weapons. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz was another key issue for the Trump administration. President Donald Trump demanded the strait be reopened for the sake of the global economy, as 20% of the world’s oil passes through the strait.
Beyond White House legalese about good faith negotiations is the desire for war; Trump wants to bomb Iran back to the “stone ages.”
Bombing Iran until its infrastructure is primitive, needlessly cruel, but more importantly, unnecessary. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called Trump’s war a tactic to manufacture enemies to cover up domestic failings.
“Portraying Iran as a threat is neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts,” Pezeshkian wrote in an open letter to Americans. “Such a perception is the product of political and economic whims of the powerful—the need to manufacture an enemy in order to justify pressure, maintain military dominance, sustain the arms industry, and control strategic markets. In such an environment, if a threat does not exist, it is invented.”
A president who is not interested in engaging in honest diplomacy with foreign nations is a threat to their own. Trump refuses to coordinate a realistic path to peace with Iran. Coercing a country that is cut off from the world and surrounded by U.S.-aligned and hostile nations to give up weapons that give it security and give up its leverage by reopening the strait will lead to, at best, endless negotiations.
“There isn’t any tool in the toolbox in terms of the military lever that he [Donald Trump] could use to get his way,” Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer in security studies at King’s College London, told PBS News.
Trump needs to make concessions to progress toward ending the war. Still, the administration insists on not backing down.
Vance implored that the U.S. needs “an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon.” Iran has managed to be a self-sufficient country, withstanding sanctions.
It’s unlikely that new pressures from the U.S. will be different. Gissou Nia, director of the Atlantic City Council’s Strategic Litigation Project, said something similar in response to questions about how the Iranian opposition is responding to the conflict.
“The thinking was that there was no other way to dislodge a violent regime that over forty-seven years had resisted international pressure, sanctions, and multiple internal nationwide anti-regime protests,” Nia said in an Atlantic Council report.
A world without nuclear weapons is ideal, but peace agreements should be made regardless of Iran’s nuclear program, especially since the U.S. has nuclear weapons as well and would not surrender them if asked. Peace is vital, not for the sake of the states, but for people globally. Being the leader of the U.S. should mean being a humanitarian, not a vengeful tyrant.
“The world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism proved utterly incapable of defending itself, its people or its territory,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told Pentagon News. “We united just a fraction of our strength, and Iran suffered a devastating military defeat.”
Of every group affected by this war, U.S. citizens have a unique opportunity: the ability to stay content. Being indifferent implies sameness and normalcy, but Trump’s war mongering is so far removed from humanity, his constituents need to be the people in his face who say no, to combat the yes-men who have allowed this war to take place and continue on this path.
