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matt duss
Analyst Calls for Smashing the US Network That Paved Way for Trump’s Iran War
"This stupid war isn’t just an indictment of the Trump administration, it’s an indictment of the entire machinery of DC warmongering."
Mar 11, 2026
While President Donald Trump is the person primarily responsible for launching an unprovoked US war against Iran, one foreign policy expert argued on Wednesday that the president couldn't have done this without help from a large network of war advocates.
Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), noted in a Wednesday social media post that Trump's decision to attack Iran didn't come out of nowhere.
"This stupid war isn’t just an indictment of the Trump administration," he argued, "it’s an indictment of the entire machinery of DC warmongering, think tanks, journalists, lobbyists, Republicans and Democrats, who have spent decades inflating threats. We need to smash that machinery."
Duss didn't name any specific DC foreign policy power players in his post, although less than an hour later he heaped scorn on Samantha Power, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations under former President Barack Obama and as director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under former President Joe Biden.
Duss reposted a video of Power recently being asked why she didn't speak out more against the genocidal assault that Israel waged against Gaza given that she had written an entire book calling out the US for past inaction to stop genocides in foreign lands.
Power responded that she did her very best to get aid to Palestinians while running USAID, but said that ultimately she couldn't "just get up and decide today what US foreign policy is."
Duss, however, argued that this was a cop-out and said that someone of Power's stature could have made a difference by speaking out.
"Sometimes it is better to work inside to make a bad policy better," he wrote. "But Power is different. She had enormous credibility she could’ve used to sound the alarm on the Gaza genocide. She chose status, and ends as a cautionary tale."
"There are hundreds of people who could’ve run USAID just as well as Samantha Power," he added. "There are few who could’ve made as much of an impact by speaking out publicly."
Duss' critique of the US foreign policy establishment was echoed by Ben Rhodes, a former national security official in the Obama administration, who argued on Wednesday that the Iran war is partly the result of "a few dozen well-funded, oft-quoted, DC Blob 'experts' who have maniacally advocated for this outcome for 15 years."
In a Tuesday post, Rhodes noted that he and other foreign policy experts had long foreseen the negative consequences of attacking Iran, such as the energy supply crisis created by Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and that these predictable disasters were ignored by DC war advocates.
"Nearly everyone I know who opposes this war has predicted these exact consequences for over a decade. Trump decided to listen to Bibi and the most insular, hawkish, dead-enders imaginable," he wrote, using Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's nickname.
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'Stupidity' of Iran War Becoming Increasingly 'Undeniable Even to Its Supporters,' Says Analyst
"We’re entering an even more dangerous moment," said foreign policy expert Matt Duss.
Mar 10, 2026
President Donald Trump may believe that his unprovoked and unconstitutional war with Iran is "very complete, pretty much," but one foreign policy expert thinks that is highly wishful thinking.
Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), argued in a Tuesday social media post that the negative consequences of Trump's attack on Iran are just starting to be felt, with no option for a quick ending.
"We’re entering an even more dangerous moment," Duss wrote, "as the stupidity of this war becomes undeniable even to its supporters, who realize they’re about to be revealed as morons yet again and are desperate to turn this into something they can spin as a win. Their only option is escalation."
Shortly before Duss offered his analysis of the situation, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a news conference in which he dialed up belligerent rhetoric against Iran while declaring the war "a laser-focused, maximum-authority mission, delivered with overwhelming and unrelenting precision."
Hegseth is serving a buzzword salad this morning: "Overwhelming and unrelenting precision. No hesitation. No half measures. As President Trump declared yesterday, we're crushing the enemy is an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force" pic.twitter.com/WQ19jkPpJB
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 10, 2026
"No hesitation, no half measures," Hegseth continued. "As President Trump declared yesterday, we're crushing the enemy in an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force."
Hegseth's bluster did not impress Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who vowed on Tuesday to drag Hegseth before the Senate to answer questions about the war, which the president launched early on a Saturday morning without any authorization from the US Congress.
"I'm joining together with my allies in the United States Senate to use the leverage we have to force a debate and a vote in the Senate on the authorization of war," Murphy said. "I think if the Senate took that vote, it would fail, and that would allow us to stop this illegal, disastrous war in Iran."
Murphy went on to note that "the Constitution is crystal clear" that Trump does not have the power to unilaterally declare war, even though that is precisely what he did less than two weeks ago.
"You should be furious about that," Murphy said, "because this is maybe the most dangerous thing a president can do: Send your sons and daughters to die overseas without your consent."
A group of us in the Senate are demanding public hearings on Trump's disastrous war with Iran with Secretary Hegseth and Rubio. And we've introduced a half dozen war powers resolutions to force the Senate to vote every day on the war if the hearings don't happen. pic.twitter.com/UayrSfoJEb
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) March 10, 2026
Murphy's statement earned kudos from Duss, who promoted his message on social media.
"This is the way," wrote Duss. "No business as usual."
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Trump CIA Intervention in Venezuela Risks Another US War of Choice, Experts Warn
“Using covert or military measures to destabilize or overthrow regimes reminds us of some of the most notorious episodes in American foreign policy," said a former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Oct 17, 2025
President Donald Trump's authorization this week of Central Intelligence Agency operations aimed at toppling Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro prompted warnings from foreign policy experts of yet another US war of choice and the introduction of a bipartisan Senate resolution aimed at blocking unauthorized military action against the South American country.
“Reports that the Trump administration has authorized covert efforts seeking to foment regime change in Venezuela are deeply concerning," Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, a Washington, DC-based think tank, said Thursday in a statement.
"These reports follow on the administration’s unlawful and unauthorized use of military force against vessels and their crews in the Caribbean—which constitute extrajudicial killings," added Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
🚨New Statement by @mattduss.bsky.social in response to reports that the Trump Administration has authorized covert CIA action in Venezuela. internationalpolicy.org/publications...
[image or embed]
— Center for International Policy (@cipolicy.bsky.social) October 16, 2025 at 10:48 AM
Trump said Wednesday that he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside the South American nation "for two reasons"—at least the first of which is a lie.
“Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,” he said. “And the other thing, the drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.”
There is no credible evidence that the Venezuelan government has systematically or deliberately released prisoners and sent them to the United States. The claim—which has been popularized by Trump and some Republicans—has been repeatedly debunked by experts and US officials.
As for drugs, while Venezuela is a transit point for cocaine—mostly produced in neighboring Colombia—the amount of narcotics entering the United States via the country is relatively insignificant compared with routes via Mexico, Central America, and the Pacific coast.
Approximately 90% of US-bound cocaine enters the country via Mexico, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration and other government agencies. Venezuela is also not a significant source of fentanyl, which is the leading cause of overdoses in the US and is also trafficked primarily through Mexico.
“Using covert or military measures to destabilize or overthrow regimes reminds us of some of the most notorious episodes in American foreign policy, which undermined the human rights and sovereignty of countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean," said Duss.
According to John Coatsworth, a historian specializing in Latin America, the US has launched at least 41 interventions that successfully overthrew governments in the hemisphere since 1898. The number of US military interventions in the region is much higher.
The US has been meddling in Venezuelan affairs since the 19th century, going back to an 1895 boundary dispute between Venezuela and Britain and possibly earlier. Since then, Washington has helped install and prop up brutal dictators and assisted in the subversion of democratic movements, including by training Venezuelan forces in torture and repression at the notorious US Army School of the Americas.
This century, successive US administrations beginning with George W. Bush have worked to thwart the Bolivarian Revolution launched by former President Hugo Chávez and continued under Maduro. Under Trump, the US has deployed a small armada of warships and thousands of troops off the coast of Venezuela, a rattling of proverbial sabers familiar to students of US imperialism in Latin America.
Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have also died as a result of US economic sanctions on Venezuela, according to research from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
“The CIA has been sent to Venezuela for regime change," Maduro said Thursday in Caracas. "Since its creation, no US government has so openly ordered this agency to kill, overthrow, or destroy other countries."
“If Venezuela did not possess oil, gas, gold, fertile land, and water, the imperialists wouldn’t even look at our country," he added.
Duss noted that the United States is "still dealing with many of the harmful consequences of these disastrous interventions in today’s challenges with migration and the drug trade."
"Such interventions rarely lead to democratic or peaceful outcomes," he stressed. "Instead, they exacerbate internal divisions, reinforce authoritarianism, and destabilize societies for generations."
As Tim Weiner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of multiple histories of the CIA, said in a Friday interview with CNN senior politics writer Zachary Wolf, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro "survived covert action under presidents from [Dwight] Eisenhower onward and outlived them all."
Weiner said that even operations considered successes created tremendous problems.
“The successes, for example, in Guatemala, ushered in dictatorships and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people,” he said, referring to the 1954 CIA overthrow of reformist Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz—codenamed PBSUCCESS—which led to decades of bloody repression and a US-backed genocide against Indigenous Mayan peoples.
Writing for Responsible Statecraft on Thursday, Joseph Addington, associate editor and Latin America columnist at The American Conservative, asserted that any US invasion of Venezuela "comes with a number of costs and risks American policymakers should bear in mind and carefully weigh against the potential benefits of intervention."
"There is no free lunch in geopolitics," he argued.
Addington cited an example of the US ousting a drug trafficking leader, who was an erstwhile ally and CIA asset:
The most obvious costs are those of the initial invasion. The American invasion of Panama in 1989, to overthrow the government of Gen. Manuel Noriega, was carried out by a force of some 27,000 US troops, 23 of which were killed and hundreds more wounded. Venezuela is vastly larger than Panama, and while its military is very poorly equipped, it likewise dwarfs the forces that were available to Noriega. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates an invasion of Venezuela would require nearly 50,000 troops, some of which will not return home. Any American government should be extremely conscientious about the causes on which it spends the lives of American soldiers.
"The real risks of such an operation, however, come after the invasion," Addington said. "Toppling Maduro’s government is one thing; there is no real chance that the impoverished and corrupt Venezuelan armed forces can put up a serious fight against the American military. But occupying and rebuilding the country is another, as the US learned to its chagrin in the Middle East."
Duss noted that “Trump ran as an anti-war candidate and casts himself as a Nobel Prize-worthy peacemaker," and that "a majority of Americans oppose US military involvement in Venezuela."
"Lawmakers must make clear that Trump does not have the American people’s support or Congress’ authorization for the use of force against Venezuela or anywhere else in the region," he said.
On Friday, a bipartisan group of US senators—Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)—introduced a war powers resolution that would bar US military action within or against Venezuela.
“I’m extremely troubled that the Trump administration is considering launching illegal military strikes inside Venezuela without a specific authorization by Congress," Kaine said in a statement. "Americans don’t want to send their sons and daughters into more wars—especially wars that carry a serious risk of significant destabilization and massive new waves of migration in our hemisphere."
"If my colleagues disagree and think a war with Venezuela is a good idea," he added, "they need to meet their constitutional obligations by making their case to the American people and passing an authorization for use of military force."
It's the second time Kaine and Schiff have tried to introduce such a measure. Earlier this month, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman joined his GOP colleagues in voting down a Venezuela war powers resolution. Paul joined Democrats and independent Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine) in voting for the legislation.
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