The news that the U.S. has joined Israel in starting an offensive war against Iran while in the midst of diplomatic negotiations is tragic. As a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, with access to ample classified information about threats from Iran and others, I can state plainly that there was no imminent threat from Iran to America sufficient to warrant committing our sons and daughters to another war in the Middle East -- especially without the congressional debate and vote that the Constitution requires. The American people don't want to be dragged into another forever war under false pretenses. That's why I'll insist that all senators vote on my bipartisan resolution to stop U.S. hostilities against Iran as soon as possible.
To be sure, Iran is a bad actor, oppressing its own citizens and fomenting violence outside its borders, including attacks against U.S. troops in the region. But these actions accompany a powerful history that many prefer to overlook.
The U.S. and Iran were friends and allies until the U.S. led a coup to overthrow Iran's democratically elected government in 1953. That led to seven decades of hostility -- the U.S. funding a brutal dictatorship that was toppled by the Iranian people in 1979; Iranian protesters seizing the U.S. Embassy and holding 66 American hostages for up to 444 days shortly thereafter; the U.S. providing arms to Iraq as it waged a devastating war against Iran in the 1980s; Iranian-funded Hezbollah militants bombing the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing 307 people, including 241 U.S. troops; the same militants striking the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983 and again in 1984, killing hundreds more; the U.S. Navy downing an Iranian commercial airplane in 1988, killing 288 civilians; the U.S. invading Iran's western neighbor Afghanistan in 2001 and eastern neighbor Iraq in 2003; and repeated attacks on U.S. troops in the region carried out by Iran-backed terrorist organizations in the 25 years of the global war on terror.
The U.S. and Iran have both constructed narratives whereby the other is the aggressor in this longstanding conflict. More war isn't the answer. If it were, the past 70 years would have produced a better outcome than what we see today.
During the Obama administration, the U.S. decided to explore diplomacy rather than war, and in 2015 it announced a deal to end any move by Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. At the diplomatic table were America's European allies plus China and Russia, all invested in helping the U.S. and Iran find a diplomatic path forward. The deal was ratified by Congress pursuant to the Iran Nuclear Review Act, which I co-authored. The first paragraph of the agreement contained the core of the deal: "Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons."
The deal, containing significant limitations on Iran subject to intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, was working, in the opinions of the parties to the deal and the IAEA. But President Trump tore up the deal during his first term and walked away from diplomacy -- over the objections of his secretaries of defense and state -- and Washington and Tehran returned to hostilities throughout the region. The U.S. decision to abandon diplomacy alienated allies, eliminated a forum where the U.S. was productively engaged in diplomacy with Russia and China, and allowed Iran to justify its own abandonment of the deal's restrictions. Mr. Trump's decision to terminate a working nuclear deal also effectively ended any negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear program. Why would Pyongyang make a deal with the U.S. if we don't keep our word?
The news that Mr. Trump has again abandoned diplomacy and chosen war against Iran is deeply puzzling due to his shifting rationales. He suggests that it's due to Iran's nuclear program. If that was of concern, why did he tear up a diplomatic deal that controlled the program? And why wage an attack now, after he initiated an attack just months ago that he claimed "obliterated" the nation's nuclear program?
Mr. Trump suggests the war is to aid Iranian protesters. This claim is hard to accept from a president who, at the same time, is deporting refugees back to Iran, where they are likely to suffer the persecution he pretends to care about.
Mr. Trump suggests the war is about regime change. But he promised to avoid wars for that reason given the history of U.S. disasters in attempting regime change in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
Finally, he suggests that Iran faces war because it interfered in the 2020 presidential election, which he still can't admit that he lost. Is this a reason to force our sons and daughters into war?
Our troops deserve better than to be sent into war by a president who promised to end wars. Iranian citizens deserve better than their mistreatment by their own regime and the death of civilians, including schoolchildren, at the hands of U.S. and Israeli aerial bombardment. The world deserves better than a clear message by the Trump administration that might makes right -- that neither domestic nor international law matters, diplomacy should be pushed aside, and war should be the preferred means for solving disputes between nations.
Dictators around the world will draw a powerful message from Mr. Trump's actions: that they can proceed against weaker nations as they please, and America no longer has the credibility to assert important principles of sovereignty, diplomacy or human rights. If we can wage an illegal and unnecessary war to invade another nation's sovereignty, why shouldn't any nation feel free to follow our ill-conceived example?
I pray for American troops and personnel stationed in the Middle East. I pray for Iranian civilians and all in the region who are punished by a war they never sought and can't escape. And I pray that my congressional colleagues find the backbone to stand up to a warmongering president who has used our military to attack targets in Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran, the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean without congressional approval while threatening additional military action in Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Greenland and God knows where else. How long will the Article I branch of America's government remain silent against this wholesale repudiation of our basic constitutional order?
Mr. Kaine, a Democrat, is a U.S. senator from Virginia.