The United States is at war with Iran. On Saturday night, President Donald Trump announced that U.S. warplanes had struck three nuclear sites in Iran and suggested more strikes might be ahead. The next day, he began calling for “regime change.” Despite Trump’s attempts to posture as a peacemaker, it was an escalation many of us knew was coming. Neoconservatives have been chasing the holy grail of war with Iran for decades, and at long last they got Trump to reach out his sweaty orange mitts and grab it for them. The most unsettling part is that it felt as if this outcome was always inevitable.

In recent weeks, there have been many comparisons made between the lead-up to this war and George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. In many ways, that comparison is apt. Iran is another oil-rich Middle Eastern country we’ve accused of building weapons of mass destruction based on flimsy or nonexistent evidence. And yet there is one key difference. In order to carry out the Iraq War—which ended up being the worst crime of the 21st century, leaving the region in tatters and more than half a million dead—the Bush administration undertook a mammoth effort to manufacture consent from the public. Despite tens of millions still marching in protest, it worked. At the dawn of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 72 percent of Americans supported the invasion, according to a Gallup poll. Trump’s war, on the other hand, is deeply unpopular, but he has made far less of an effort to persuade skeptics. Without strong anti-war institutions to oppose him, he may believe he doesn’t need to.

It took the Bush administration a lot of work to get to the point where most Americans approved of invading another country. They obviously had the massive assist of 9/11 to whip up existential horror about another attack. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was already putting the wheels in motion for an attack on Saddam Hussein within hours of the towers collapsing. He’d long wanted to attack Iraq, and only needed “some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor” as an excuse. Capitalizing on the public’s fear of terrorism, the administration would spend the next year and a half weaving an intricate tapestry of lies to promote the narrative that Saddam was on the verge of building a weapon of mass destruction. The culmination of this campaign came in 2003, just over a month before the first salvo of the war was launched. Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke before the U.N. to make his case to the world. He came prepared with murky satellite images of supposed Iraqi weapons depots, intelligence that Iraq was importing “aluminum tubes” that could only be used for nuclear weapons, and sketches from Iraqi defector “Curveball” of supposed mobile biological weapons labs. Powell even brought a vial he said could theoretically contain anthrax to emphasize the threat.

Of course, none of it was remotely true. But the Iraqi WMD narrative had a veneer of credibility and rigor that made many who were beginning to have second thoughts about the war effort quell their doubts. At the time, that seemed necessary.

Since then, the consent factory seems to have closed down. Trump is now leading us into war with Iran, one that stands a good chance of being even more catastrophic than Iraq. And yet, compared to Bush, his administration barely seems to be trying to convince Americans that this war is necessary. The Trump administration’s justification for this war is that Iran is supposedly “very close” to constructing a nuclear weapon. This flatly contradicted the statements of his own top intelligence officials. In March, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said before Congress that: 

The [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.

According to a CNN report on Tuesday, which quoted four other unnamed intelligence officials: 

Not only was Iran not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, it was also up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one to a target of its choosing.

And yet, when reporters have informed Trump that his own intelligence officials do not support the central justification for war, his response has been little more than nuh-uh! On Tuesday, when asked aboard Air Force One about Gabbard’s March assessment, he told reporters, “I don’t care.” On Friday, when a reporter asked “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? Your intelligence community said they have no evidence.” Trump replied, “Then my intelligence community is wrong. Who in the intelligence community said that?” At no point did he offer any evidence to the contrary. 

Vice President JD Vance has attempted to put out the flames by claiming “a lot has changed” since Gabbard made her assessment in March, but offered no details on what exactly those changes were. But Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said he and his colleagues were briefed on the intelligence again as recently as Monday, and “we got reconfirmed … Monday of this week, that the intelligence hasn’t changed,” and that “Iran had taken no action towards, moving towards a bomb.” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) who said he’d also been briefed on the most recent intelligence, wrote on X that “Iran was not close to building a deliverable nuclear weapon. The negotiations Israel scuttled with their strikes held the potential for success.”

We don’t know if Trump actually believes Iran is building a nuke. Benjamin Netanyahu supposedly has evidence of a secret nuclear program being pursued by Iran, and has claimed the country “would achieve a test device, and possibly an initial device, within months, and certainly less than a year.” He has reportedly shown his evidence to U.S. officials. But American intelligence officials found his account unconvincing, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, an independent watchdog organization, said in a June 13 report that there is “no credible indications of an ongoing, undeclared structured nuclear program.” It’s certainly possible Israel knows something we don’t. But Netanyahu has made no effort to present his underlying evidence to the public. For this reason, we should assume it’s bullshit. If Israel had compelling evidence of an Iranian nuclear program, they’d have every incentive to blast it far and wide, especially at a time when it is rapidly being denounced as a pariah by its Western allies. At the very least, if he believed that input from the public mattered, he’d show us his evidence so we could decide for ourselves.

Gabbard herself has also since been reeled back in to push the party line, presumably to keep her job. On Friday, she tweeted that her March testimony was “taken out of context” and that she’s actually been on the same page with Trump the entire time. But the video of that testimony, which she posted herself, shows her clearly stating that although Iran has ballistic missiles, it is not pursuing a nuke. The closest she got is the statement that Iran is increasing its stockpiles of enriched uranium, something IAEA investigators found to be the case last month. Not even the Iranians deny doing this, but they contend that it’s entirely for peaceful reasons. Gabbard provided no evidence to the contrary, though she did say that their enrichment of uranium to 60 percent is “unprecedented” for a state without nuclear weapons. Even if we grant that fact, the IAEA says Iran was complying with limits on its enrichment put in place by the nuclear deal brokered by President Obama, which were far below what they reportedly have now. They only began high-level enrichment after Trump tore that deal up in 2018. 

In the same tweet, Gabbard re-iterated the party line that “America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months.” However, her claim is slightly, but critically, different from the one the war hawks are making. The question is not whether Iran has enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon if it wanted to. Trump’s contention is that they are making one and that they are weeks away from being able to use it. Gabbard has shown herself willing to take any position so long as it benefits her political career, and yet she still isn’t fully willing to embrace such an obvious lie.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has continuously claimed that Iran started the latest tradeoff of airstrikes with Israel, insisting that America’s threats to strike Iran and kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei will come to an end if they are willing to “make a deal.” But Iran was negotiating with the Trump administration, with the latest round being described as “constructive” by both sides. However, the major sticking point was that the Trump side was demanding Iran commit to “zero enrichment” of uranium, which would go far beyond stopping them from making a nuke, but would forbid them using any sort of nuclear power at all. (Something they are well within their right to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.) Israel launched a surprise attack that blew those negotiations up, literally: one of the people severely wounded, and initially reported dead, was a top negotiator, Ali Shamkhani. The expectation here seems to be that everyone in America was simultaneously kicked in the head by a mule and doesn’t remember what happened just over a week ago. (Perhaps this is not an unreasonable assumption.)

American officials tried to play off the Israeli attacks as a surprise, a bit of theater to treat the war as a fait accompli that the U.S. was simply being dragged into. Marco Rubio insisted that the U.S. was “not involved” in Israel’s military actions. But Trump and his backers were too stupid to not immediately give the game away, with Trump tweeting out that “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.” Senator Ted Cruz, meanwhile, blurted out to a flummoxed Tucker Carlson that “we're carrying out military strikes today,” later admitting that “Israel is leading them, but we’re supporting them,” which directly contradicted the White House’s messaging.

And on Sunday, less than a day after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth publicly stated that the previous night’s “mission was not and has not been about regime change,” Trump hopped on Truth Social to say:

It's not politically correct to use the term,"Regime Change," but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!

This entire effort is, in a word, shambolic. And despite the mainstream press—including the New York Times and CNN—running with many of Trump’s claims uncritically, very few Americans are buying it. Unlike with Iraq, there is very little public support for this war. As of June 19, 60 percent of Americans—even a majority of Republicans—said they outright oppose American military involvement in Iran, according to a poll from The Economist/YouGov. Just 16 percent said they approved of it. Even many of Trump’s most loyal media acolytes, like Carlson and Steve Bannon, have hesitated to get on board.

By contrast, the lead-up to the Iraq war was a coordinated multi-year psy-op in which the Bush administration, its intelligence apparatus, and the media worked in tandem to convince the public of an imminent threat to their safety. Their evidence was not particularly convincing, and many people (though not enough) saw through it at the time. But they at least went to the trouble to make us a PowerPoint presentation and have Colin Powell wave that vial around. They went through the trouble to pretend that our opinions mattered.

Team Trump doesn't seem to believe they need to attempt to persuade us. More importantly, they don’t seem to believe public opinion matters one way or the other. This could be chalked up to Trump simply not caring about democracy. But it’s a problem that predates him.

The Biden administration’s efforts to justify its support for Israel’s actions in Gaza were barely more convincing. Biden’s spokespeople were willing to go out every day and make ludicrous claims, like that Israel had never violated international law or that the hospitals it bombed were actually fronts for Hamas’ supervillain lairs, or that pro-Palestine college students were on the verge of doing Kristallnacht 2.0. They knew they’d be exposed as liars. They didn’t care. They knew that continuing to give Israel unwavering military support might cost them the next election. They didn’t care. 

It’s important to note that even when our politicians make efforts to manipulate public opinion in favor of wars—as they did in the lead-up to Iraq—they don’t tend to care much if a war is unpopular, a theory political scientist Benjamin Page and international relations scholar Marshall Bouton describe as the “foreign policy disconnect.” The Iraq War’s public relations honeymoon did not last forever, with supermajorities of Americans eventually coming to oppose it by 2008. But instead of taking responsibility or changing course in response—something that would have been extremely wise in an election year where anger at the war was a major issue—Vice President Dick Cheney expressed open contempt for the public:

MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC:

Two thirds of Americans say [the Iraq War is] not worth fighting. 

DICK CHENEY:

So? 

RADDATZ:

So? You don’t care what the American people think? 

CHENEY:

No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. 

Opposing war with Iran, likewise, is the obvious moral choice and the politically popular one, especially for Democrats as the party in opposition to the one pushing us to war. And yet, when Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a bill that would require funds for a war with Iran to be approved by Congress, just seven other Democratic senators backed it. A measure put forth in the House by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) that would require Congressional approval for direct war with Iran got just 15 Democratic supporters, plus anti-war libertarian Thomas Massie (R-KY). Party leaders like Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have instead essentially accepted all of Trump’s nonsense claims, and even tried to attack him for “chickening out” on Iran by engaging in diplomacy with its leaders earlier in the month. And on Friday, with war appearing increasingly inevitable, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) issued a statement saying that Trump should not take action without the approval of Congress, but not before echoing all of his justifications for war, including the amnesia about who is responsible for launching the latest round of hostilities. 

“Iran is a sworn enemy of the United States, and it can never be permitted to become a nuclear-capable power,” Jeffries said. “Israel has a right to defend itself against Iranian aggression.” He added that Trump should engage in “aggressive diplomacy” that “permanently halts Iran’s nuclear aspirations.” These are, remember, “aspirations” that even Trump’s own intelligence officials suggest Iran does not have. (And you could certainly call Trump’s threats to kill the Ayatollah unless he comes to the negotiating table a form of “aggressive diplomacy,” if not the actions of a terrorist state.)

This moment is screaming out for a coherent, principled anti-war opposition. But outside of an isolated few legislators, there is none. There is plenty of anti-war sentiment in this country, and the past two years of pro-Palestine demonstrations have shown that many Americans are incredibly brave, and willing to risk their livelihoods, their freedom, and even their lives to oppose the slaughter of innocent people they have never met. But it’s overwhelmingly clear that street protests—even huge numbers of them—are not enough, on their own, to form a formidable political movement, at least not one that makes the people in charge quake in fear. That energy needs to be backed up by a movement prepared to wield political power.

The Democrats could be that movement. It would probably do them wonders electorally. Exhibit A is Zohran Mamdani, who—despite running for mayor of New York City, of all things—has been questioned and smeared incessantly about his anti-war views. He’s refused to condemn pro-Palestine protesters or back down in his support for peaceful resistance to Israel, like the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Movement. And his support has only grown stronger, especially among young voters in search of a Democrat who actually represents them. But rather than embrace one of the few high-profile politicians who actually excite their voter base, they prefer to circle the wagons around a business-friendly sex pest who wants to criminalize opposition to Israel. 

The current Democratic leadership is unwilling and unable to change, and it seems that the Republicans currently marching us into the abyss are very aware of that. Especially after the Biden administration self-immolated to avoid having to change its Israel policy one iota, it’s clear that no matter which party is in power, the project of destabilizing the Middle East will continue. The Trump administration does not need to persuade the public because the public does not have a seat at the table where these decisions are made. We may make a lot of noise, but we don’t have representation where it actually matters. And people can only scream and yell for so long before it starts to feel futile.

I wish there were a simple answer to the question of how to pressure a Democratic party that doesn’t care about losing. But there isn’t one. As long as their positions in the party are secure—something they ensure through their continued loyalty to their corporate donors—they do not care if that party wields any power. That is not somebody who can be negotiated with, only defeated. The only feasible solution is to push them out of power. So keep a list of every Democrat who comes out in support of war, and primary them all. Annoy the shit out of them with protests outside their homes and places of work. Join a union that can grind the businesses that support them to a halt. Use whatever nonviolent means you can to get these worthless husks out of power.