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iran nuclear deal
'Would You Rather Go Back to War?' Critics Ask Democrats Fuming Over Trump's Iran Deal
"Trump currently owns this failed war," said one expert, "but if the Democrats help torpedo the MOU and war resumes, then they will co-own the next war."
Jun 18, 2026
Supporters of a diplomatic resolution to the illegal war that US President Donald Trump launched against Iran earlier this year are pushing back against Democratic critics of the interim peace agreement signed on Wednesday, warning it is politically and morally foolish to attack efforts to end a conflict that has killed thousands and plunged the global economy into chaos.
"Would you rather go back to war?" Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), asked Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), one of several Democrats joining war-hawk Republicans in openly decrying the new memorandum of understanding (MOU).
In a series of social media posts on Wednesday, Blumenthal pointed to "bipartisan condemnation" of what he called "a disgraceful deal" and "unconditional surrender" on the part of the US. The senator added that "anything like this deal will be dead on arrival in the Senate" and declared, "It must be approved here to have enforceable effect."
Other prominent Democrats offered similar critiques. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said it is "hard to imagine a more thorough capitulation," while Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) called the deal a "dangerous giveaway" to "this enemy," referring to Iran.
"His war proved only one thing: that diplomacy was the answer all along."
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, warned Thursday that such criticisms of the interim peace deal imply that "a war should not be brought to an end until it has produced better terms—even when the war itself is failing."
"Taken seriously, that logic leads to a dangerous conclusion: that a failed war must continue until the battlefield fortunes somehow improve and a more favorable outcome becomes attainable. Perhaps that day will come. Perhaps it never will. In the meantime, the costs—in lives, treasure, regional stability, and strategic credibility—are treated as secondary considerations," Parsi wrote. "This is how endless wars are born."
Parsi expressed disappointment at the rhetoric of some Democrats "because it echoes the same bad-faith tactics Republicans deployed" against the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Trump ripped up in 2018, setting the stage for war.
"To be sure, Trump has invited some of this treatment. He spent years attacking Obama’s agreement with a barrage of misleading arguments and exaggerated claims," Parsi noted. "But that does not make it wise for Democrats to return the favor. Trump currently owns this failed war, but if the Democrats help torpedo the MOU and war resumes, then they will co-own the next war. Trump’s disaster will become theirs as well."
Many Democrats appear to understand that risk and are welcoming diplomatic progress—while also condemning the illegal war and its consequences for the US and the world.
"Matters of war and peace must rise above partisan politics," said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas). "Democrats must not replicate Republicans’ irresponsible opposition to the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear agreement, which placed real constraints on Iran’s nuclear program before President Trump foolishly tore it up, setting the stage for this disastrous war."
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), in a Thursday morning appearance on Fox News, said the emerging deal between the US and Iran "is not as good as the JCPOA was," while also expressing support for efforts to end the war.
Watch:
Ro Khanna on Maria Bartiromo's show makes the case for why Trump's deal with Iran is far inferior to the JCPOA (Note that Bartiromo acknowledges he's making "important points, and good ones") pic.twitter.com/n1nm3LyBcd
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 18, 2026
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) wrote in a social media post on Thursday that "any move toward diplomacy and away from violence is welcome news," calling Trump's Iran war "reckless" and "illegal."
"This war should be a lesson. The push for military adventurism and regime change by neocon war hawks was, unsurprisingly, an unmitigated disaster," said McGovern. "After three months of death and destruction, the rest of us are now left paying the price. His war proved only one thing: that diplomacy was the answer all along."
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5 Things to Know About Trump's Illegal War on Iran
Whatever criticisms one may have of Iran’s government, they do not justify this deadly act of aggression.
Mar 05, 2026
The Trump administration has joined Israel in launching large-scale attacks across Iran. The strikes mark the beginning of “major combat operations,” according to President Donald Trump, and in response Tehran has reportedly launched retaliatory attacks in Middle Eastern countries that host US military bases.
With hundreds of Iranians already killed and the war threatening to spiral out of control, here are five things Americans need to know.
1: Trump says he’s trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. But it’s the United States and its allies that are the greatest nuclear threat.
The United States, not Iran, is the country setting the worst example in promoting nuclear weapons in the world today.
It was Trump who pulled out of the US-Iran nuclear deal during his first term—even though the United Nations certified that Iran was in compliance—and resumed harsh sanctions, deployed more troops to the region, and even assassinated an Iranian general.
How could Iran—or any country—now take the US seriously at the negotiating table after Trump blew up the Iran nuclear deal?
Trump’s hostility despite Iran’s earlier compliance only bolsters the claim of Iranian leaders who believe the country needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent against aggression.
Meanwhile, Trump just let the last existing nuclear agreement between the US and Russia, the two countries with the most warheads, expire. Trump is also giving unconditional backing to Israel—the only country in the Middle East that actually has nuclear weapons—and is now supporting the launch of a nuclear program in Saudi Arabia.
2: Trump is contributing to the suffering of ordinary Iranians, not rescuing them.
The Iranian government recently carried out a brutal crackdown on protesters and critics. Trump has claimed that the US is “coming to the rescue” of Iranians who’ve challenged their government.
But in reality, his actions have put countless Iranians in harm’s way. Hundreds of civilians have already been killed in the strikes so far—including 165 in an appalling strike on a girl’s school.
Even before the latest violence, US sanctions had devastated Iran’s population—especially women, children, the sick, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable people—leading to countless preventable deaths.
3: The United States is an unreliable negotiator.
How could Iran—or any country—now take the US seriously at the negotiating table after Trump blew up the Iran nuclear deal?
Attacking Iran is not popular, and Trump definitely does not have a mandate to do it.
Moreover, US demands keep changing. In recent negotiations, the US kept moving the goal posts, going from the demand that Iran not develop nuclear weapons to saying that the country’s civilian nuclear program, its treatment of dissidents, its relationship with regional allies, and its ballistic missile arsenal would all be on the negotiating table.
As Trump put it bizarrely on Fox News, the deal he wants should have “no nuclear weapons, no missiles, no this, no that, all the different things that you want.”
4: The United States has been threatening Iran, not the other way around.
Even before the war, US military bases across the region surrounded Iran with troops and weapons. But there are no Iranian troops or military assets anywhere near the United States.
There is also no question that the most aggressive Middle Eastern power at the moment is Washington’s ally Israel—which continues its genocide in Gaza and attacked six other countries in the last year alone—all enabled through military assistance, arms transfers, and political protection by the United States.
5: Trump’s war with Iran—and his aggressive foreign policy generally—are unpopular with Americans.
The majority of Americans—61%—disapprove of Trump’s aggressive foreign policy in general. And in a recent Reuters poll, just one-quarter said they approved of Trump’s decision to strike Iran—and that was before the announcement that US servicemembers had been killed.
Attacking Iran is not popular, and Trump definitely does not have a mandate to do it. Whatever criticisms one may have of Iran’s government, they do not justify this illegal war.
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US Warship Downs Iranian Drone, Heightening Risk of 'Illegal and Catastrophic War'
"Demanding talks while surrounding the other side with a massive armada of warships and F-35s is not diplomacy, it is piracy," Phyllis Bennis of Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams.
Feb 03, 2026
Amid recent reports that war is "imminent," the US military shot down an Iranian drone on Tuesday as it approached the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, according to a US official who spoke with Reuters.
Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins told the Associated Press that the drone “aggressively approached” the Lincoln with “unclear intent," and kept flying toward the aircraft carrier “despite de-escalatory measures taken by US forces operating in international waters."
It came after another tense encounter earlier in the day, during which the US military said Iranian forces "harassed" a US merchant vessel sailing in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Lincoln is part of an "armada" that President Donald Trump on Friday said he'd deployed to the region in advance of a possible strike against Iran, which he said would be "far worse" than the one the US conducted in June, when it bombed three Iranian nuclear sites.
After initially stating his goal of protecting protesters from a government crackdown, Trump has pivoted to express his intentions of using the threat of military force to coerce Iran into negotiating a new nuclear agreement that would severely limit its ability to pursue nuclear enrichment, which it has the right to do for peaceful means.
"Shifting justifications for a war are never a good sign, and they strongly suggest that the war in question was not warranted," Paul R. Pillar, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University, said in a piece published by Responsible Statecraft on Tuesday.
Other international relations scholars have said the US has no grounds, either strategically or legally, to pursue a war, even to stop Iran's nuclear development.
For one thing, said Dylan Williams, vice president of the Center for International Policy, Trump himself is responsible for ripping up the old agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which required Iran to limit its enrichment of uranium well below the levels required to build a nuclear weapon in exchange for relief from crippling US sanctions.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which was tasked with regularly inspecting Iran's nuclear facilities, the country was cooperating with all aspects of the deal until Trump withdrew from it, after which Iran began to once again accelerate its nuclear enrichment.
"There was 24/7 monitoring and no [highly enriched uranium] in Iran before Trump broke the JCPOA," Williams said. "Iran’s missile program and human rights abuses surged after he broke the deal."
Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities, marveled that "there is an amazing amount of folks who still think bombing Iran's nuclear program every eight months or so is a better result for the United States than the JCPOA, which capped Tehran's nuclear progress by 15-20 years."
With the Lincoln ominously looming off his nation's shores, Iran's embattled supreme leader, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned on Sunday that "the Americans must be aware that if they wage a war this time, it will be a regional war."
Trump responded to the ayatollah by saying that if “we don’t make a deal, then we’ll find out whether or not he was right.”
Despite stating their unwillingness to give up their nuclear energy program, which they say is legal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Iranian envoys have expressed an openness to a meeting with US diplomats mediated by other Middle Eastern nations in Turkey this week.
On Monday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on social media that he had instructed diplomats "to pursue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence, and expediency."
Trump is also pushing other demands—including that Iran must also limit its long-range ballistic missile program and stop arming its allies in the region, such as the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, and the Yemeni group Ansar Allah, often referred to as the "Houthis."
Pillar pointed out that Iran's missile program and its arming of so-called "proxies" have primarily been used as deterrents against other nations in the region—namely, US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia. With these demands, he said, "Iran is being told it cannot have a full regional policy while others do. It is unrealistic to expect any Iranian leader to agree to that."
That said, Pillar wrote that "President Trump is correct when he says that Iran wants a deal, given that Iran’s bad economic situation is an incentive to negotiate agreements that would provide at least partial relief from sanctions," which played a notable role in heightening the economic instability that fueled Iran's protests in the first place.
But any optimism that appeared to have arisen may have been dashed by Tuesday's exchange of fire. According to Axios, Iran is now asking to move the talks from Turkey to Oman and has called for a meeting with the US alone rather than with other nations present.
Eric Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, said: "This is exactly the kind of miscalculation—or intentional escalation, by hawkish bureaucrats aiming to scuttle talks—that can drag us into an illegal and catastrophic war in Iran."
Under the United Nations charter, countries are required to believe they are under imminent attack in order to carry out a strike against another sovereign nation.
In a comment to Common Dreams, Phyllis Bennis, the director of the New International Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, emphasized the massive difference between the US and Iran's military capabilities and actions.
"There is no question of Iran having equal military capacity to that of the US," she said. "Its military has never been anywhere close to the size, financing, or power; its own military capacity, and that of most of its allies in the region, were severely damaged in the Israeli-US attack last June. However the Iranian drone was 'acting,' the real escalation has been that of the United States."
"Sending what Trump called his 'massive armada' to threaten Iran stands in complete violation of the UN Charter’s prohibition on the threat or use of force," she continued. "That is the real 'escalatory' action. The US needs to pull back its warships, warplanes, and troops, and engage in serious diplomacy. Demanding talks while surrounding the other side with a massive armada of warships and F-35s is not diplomacy, it is piracy."
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