In the words of Gore Vidal, we are the “United States of Amnesia.” Time and again, the United States forgets the lessons of its own history. In 1953, the United States overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, because his government nationalized British oil interests. The US installed the Shah, whose brutal authoritarian dictatorship fueled nationwide protests and ultimately the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
In 2015, through painstaking diplomatic work, the Obama administration successfully negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the “Iran Nuclear Deal.” The agreement imposed strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program and established an extensive verification system, ensuring that Iran could not develop a nuclear weapon without the United States and the international community knowing well in advance. Despite verification measures showing time and again that Iran was complying, Donald Trump blew up the JCPOA in 2018, withdrawing the United States from the agreement.
Now the Trump administration has decided it wants regime change in Iran and has begun a war of choice in the Middle East without congressional approval. To justify this escalation, President Trump has lied about Iran restarting its nuclear program, getting close to attaining nuclear weapons, and building ICBMs that can reach the United States. What the United States and Israel are doing in Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon demonstrates a profound disregard for international law and human life. They are willing to murder women and children and in the words of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the goal is to “bring death and destruction from the sky, all day long.”
Oregon PSR opposes this war in the strongest possible terms. As an organization that works to eliminate the nuclear threat and combat climate change, this administration’s actions move us in the opposite direction on both fronts, moving us further from peace, increasing the risk of a wider war, and putting the future of this planet in danger. The ripple effects are already visible. France has announced plans to expand its nuclear arsenal, demonstrating how quickly escalation in a regional war can fuel dangerous arms racing around the world.
War with Iran will not make anyone safer. It will bring more death, more instability, and greater danger for people across the Middle East and around the world.
We stand with all those who choose diplomacy over military action, international laws over the actions of a rogue nation which we have become, and peace over war. Oregon PSR knows now is not a time to be silent and urges all our supporters and elected officials to join us in condemning the reckless and dangerous actions of the US and Israel.