🇺🇸 Has Donald Trump Started an Illegal and Immoral War in Iran?

Session 1 — Wednesday, March 25, 2026 — The Oval at THE Ohio State University 🦅

✊ Supporting the troops means holding leaders accountable

The chain of command runs: lower ranks → higher ranks → the President → the people
It is our job to hold the president accountable through active, non-violent protest, elections, and where appropriate, demands for impeachment and prosecution
Protesting an unjust war is not opposing the troops — it’s protecting them from being sacrificed for illegitimate goals
Failing to speak is failing the troops

Every death deprives a person of all future goods in this life
- Even if you believe in an afterlife or reincarnation, we are still taking away everything this life offers
War deprives the rest of us of each victim’s distinctive contributions — their relationships, their work, their culture
This is not strategic calculation — it is catastrophic mass deprivation of human potential

Widespread killing — the ultimate deprivation
Destruction of cultural and communal goods built over generations
Massive opportunity costs — modern American wars cost trillions in direct and indirect spending
- Resources that could save lives, improve education, and build communities are spent on destruction instead

Just cause — war must be a response to a serious wrong, such as an invasion
- Intelligence officials argue Iran posed no imminent threat
Last resort — all non-violent solutions must be exhausted first
- Omani diplomatic breakthrough reported 24 hours before bombing
Proportionality — anticipated good must outweigh the harm
Legitimate authority — the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Resolution require Congressional participation
Preemption is justifiable only with a verifiable, imminent threat — the “last window of opportunity”
- The danger of inflating threats is real
Preventive war is never justified — striking before someone “might someday” become a threat would justify war in far too many cases
Non-combatant immunity — international law demands discrimination between combatants and civilians
Avoid assassinations — they create power vacuums, leave no one to endorse surrender, and make peace harder

The stated justification was weapons of mass destruction
- None were found — either a profound intelligence failure or a deliberate lie
The human cost:
- Iraqi combatants: 60,000–100,000 killed
- Iraqi civilians: 130,000–200,000 killed
- U.S. service members: 4,431 killed 🇺🇸 (source)
Economic cost: trillions in direct and indirect spending
The war contributed to the rise of ISIS — power vacuums, sectarian violence, millions displaced
- The long tail of harm continues

1953: The CIA backed a coup that removed Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh
- In part because he nationalized the oil supply
- Replaced him with an authoritarian more friendly to U.S. oil interests
- Conservative sources argue Mosaddegh wasn’t a true democrat — but most historians agree this intervention sowed the seeds for 1979
1979: The Islamic Revolution overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah
- Eventually leading to state support for terrorism
2025: The U.S. launched preventive strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities (the “Twelve-Day War”)
Iranians view the 2025–2026 strikes as continuation of this legacy of foreign interference

The day before the bombing, Oman’s Foreign Minister said a diplomatic breakthrough was within reach
- Iran had committed to “zero stockpiling” of enriched uranium with full IAEA verification
- Was this really a last resort?
The strikes set back local protest and reform efforts inside Iran, entrenching the authoritarians we claim to oppose
Joe Kent, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned — stating Iran “posed no imminent threat”
- Kent, a veteran and former CIA officer, cited his wife Shannon’s death in an ISIS bombing: he refused to be part of “sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people”
U.S. demands are unreasonable:
- “Zero enrichment” ignores legitimate uses in energy and medicine
- Demands appear more like unconditional surrender than non-proliferation
- Comparisons drawn to the logic that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution — only Congress has power to declare war
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 — limits the President’s ability to commit forces without Congressional approval
- These operations were initiated without a Congressional vote
The UN Charter, Article 51 — restricts use of force to self-defense
If expert assessments say there was no imminent threat and diplomacy was producing results, the principles of just cause, last resort, and legitimate authority are severely undermined