America’s War Party wants nuclear catastrophe with Iran — After Saturday’s bombings, is it now unavoidable?

Our intelligence agencies said Iran had no bomb program. Obama’s deal worked. However, the neoconservatives got their way and want to unleash nuclear war anyway.

As news of President Trump’s “successful” bombing campaign was announced on Saturday evening, the bitter screeching of war hawks again echoes loudly off the banks of the Potomac. The War Party—an unholy alliance of defense contractors, media elites, and think-tank intellectuals who feast on American blood and treasure—found its latest target: Iran.

This time, however, they demand not merely intervention but nuclear catastrophe. This is not diplomacy: this is madness dressed in the garb of patriotism.

Trump’s bombing campaign will prove to be a colossal blunder. The sole hope for what the president calls “THE TIME FOR PEACE!” now remains in the unlikely hope of Iranian restraint.

The administration appears to have acted on the assumption that Iran was bucking for nuclear weapons manufacturing.

Yet, what manner of nation ignores its own intelligence agencies? Furthermore, what kind of people disregard their own negotiated agreements?

The answer lies not in Tehran but in Washington. Now watching helplessly are those Americans whose ancestors built this republic as the political and cultural elites are gambling with atomic fire. The stakes could not be higher.

This was not about Iranian ambitions. However, this will be about whether America can survive the reckless adventurism of its own ruling class.

The facts still stand like granite monuments against the howling winds of war propaganda. In 2007, seventeen United States intelligence agencies declared with “high confidence” that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

This was not speculation or wishful thinking. As far back as Donald J. Trump’s first term, it was still the unanimous assessment of America’s most experienced intelligence professionals, from the CIA to the National Security Agency. The judgment was clear: Iran had stepped back from the nuclear precipice long ago.

Yet the War Party’s memory extends only as far as their next defense contract. They conveniently forgot that in 2011, those same intelligence agencies reaffirmed their assessment. Iran had not restarted its weapons program. The structured effort to build nuclear arms remained dormant.

Earlier this year, American intelligence assessed that Iran remained committed against building its own nuclear weapons. No new intelligence ever emerged—only new interpretations of old data, twisted to serve the interests of those who profit from perpetual conflict.

Consider the achievement that Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement represented—perhaps the only constructive act of his presidency. Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran took distinct, verifiable steps that demonstrated its commitment to peaceful nuclear development.

The numbers tell the story: Iran reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium by 97%, shipping 25,000 pounds out of the country. Two-thirds of its 19,000 centrifuges went into monitored storage, leaving only 5,060 operational at Natanz.

The symbolism was as powerful as the substance. At the Arak heavy water reactor, Iranian workers removed the reactor’s core and filled it with concrete—a permanent act of peaceful intent. This was not theater but irreversible commitment. At Fordow, uranium enrichment to 20 percent ceased entirely.

These were not the actions of a nation racing toward nuclear weapons but of one choosing the path of international cooperation.

The War Party’s response? To shred the agreement and impose maximum pressure, driving Iran to exactly the nuclear advances they now claim to fear.

As of Saturday, Natanz and Fordow no longer exist.

When America abandons its word, when it tears up its own negotiated settlements, what nation would trust American promises again?

The current crisis—and as of Saturday night yet another American “hot” war—springs not from Iranian deception but from American duplicity. This is the bitter fruit of a foreign policy establishment that prefers conflict to compromise.

History offers harsh lessons for those with eyes to see. General Douglas MacArthur, a titan of the Greatest Generation, understood the seductive danger of nuclear warfare. In Korea, he requested field commander’s discretion to employ thirty to fifty tactical atomic bombs against Chinese positions. President Truman, after already decimating two Japanese cities and then guided by either guilt or wiser counsel, refused.

MacArthur’s plan would have won the Korean War, he claimed, but at what cost? The nuclear threshold, once crossed, becomes a highway to mutual annihilation.

The parallels to our current moment are chilling. Then, as now, military leaders spoke of quick victory through nuclear force. Then, as now, the American people were told that only decisive action could prevent greater catastrophe.

Ironically, Truman came to understand what today’s War Party either ignores or forgets: nuclear weapons are not tools of policy but instruments of apocalypse.

The president who authorized their use against Japan drew the line at their use against China. Where is such wisdom today?

George Kennan’s doctrine of containment offers a blueprint for dealing with Iran that requires neither war nor appeasement. Kennan taught that patient pressure, economic competition, and diplomatic isolation could achieve what military force could not. The Soviet Union collapsed not under American bombs but under the weight of its own contradictions.

Iran, facing similar internal pressures, should have been given the time and space to evolve. The world can scarcely afford this catalyst of American aggression that will likely further unite Iran’s people against the West.

The strategic picture reveals America’s fundamental weakness: overextension. Its forces are scattered across the globe like Roman legions on a frontier too vast to defend.

General Charles Flynn, the Army’s outgoing Pacific commander, warned that America can “ill afford” another war when authoritarian regimes challenge us from Europe to Asia. The Pentagon deploys more fighter jets to the Middle East while China builds its military power in the Pacific. This is not strength but the desperate shuffling of inadequate resources.

The economic reality cuts deeper than any military assessment. America’s post-September 11 wars have cost $5.6 trillion, with future interest payments adding another $7.9 trillion to the national debt. Each American taxpayer already bears a heavy and growing burden for these conflicts.

The War Party’s answer? More debt, more spending, more blood. The costs are socialized while the profits are privatized, leaving ordinary Americans to pay for their imperial ambitions.

The American people understand what their leaders refuse to acknowledge. A recent Washington Post poll found that 45 percent of Americans opposed military action against Iran, compared to only 25 percent who supported it. The margin of opposition reflects the deep war-weariness that grips the nation. Only 22 percent of respondents viewed Iran as an “immediate and serious threat.”

Through the language of bombs, however, the establishment has spoken. The disconnect between elite opinion and popular sentiment could not be more stark.

This is not the 1950s, when American confidence and capability could reshape the world. This is not the 1980s, when President Reagan could call for a tripling of the defense budget to meet the Soviet challenge. America in 2025 faces multiple crises: economic stagnation, social fragmentation, and institutional decay.

The last thing this republic needed is another war, especially one that could escalate to nuclear exchange.

The sober path forward—if the administration can ever recover from this bender of bomb-dropping—requires not the courage of warriors but the wisdom of statesmen. America should have returned to the negotiating table, not with weakness but with strength rooted in realism. The JCPOA framework provided a foundation for renewed diplomacy.

Is it too late?

Given the current circumstances, it appears that diplomacy will not be the answer. However, Iran’s compliance with that agreement, even under extreme pressure, demonstrated its willingness to accept limitations on its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief and international recognition.

Now, if Iran does not exhibit restraint after having been bombed, the alternative is unconscionable. Nuclear war with Iran would not remain limited to the Middle East. The economic disruption alone would cost trillions globally. The strategic consequences would reshape the international order, likely driving Russia and China into even closer alliance against American interests.

The moral cost would be immeasurable. It would be the first use of nuclear weapons in the theatre of war since 1945, breaking a taboo that has kept humanity from the brink for nearly eight decades.

What Saturday’s events demonstrated was that the War Party’s true target was not Iran but the American people’s growing resistance to endless conflict. They understand that public opinion has shifted decisively against military adventurism.

Their solution was to manufacture a crisis so severe that opposition becomes impossible—even if that crisis leads to nuclear war.

This is not patriotism but its opposite: the willingness to sacrifice the nation’s future for present political advantage.

The choice before Americans has become existential. We can continue down the path of imperial overstretch, depleting our resources and morale in conflicts that serve no vital national interest, or we can return to the wisdom of our founders, who warned against foreign entanglements that would drain our strength and corrupt our institutions.

We can choose the way of George Washington and John Quincy Adams—confident in our principles but cautious in our commitments.

The Iranian nuclear crisis was never about Iranian capabilities but about American choices. Do we even have the power to choose diplomacy over destruction? Negotiation over nuclear war?

A better question, perhaps: Do we have either the wisdom or humility to use that power?

The descendants of those who built this republic with their hands and defended it with their blood deserve leaders who will not gamble their future on the altar of ideological fanaticism.

The War Party’s drums may thunder, but they need not drown out the voice of reason. America has faced greater challenges with less and emerged stronger. We can do so again—but only if we choose the path of peace over the seductive whisper of nuclear war. The stakes are too high, the consequences too terrible, for any other choice.

This is not about Iran: this is about America’s survival as a republic.