They Said They Didn’t Want War With Iran. Now They’re Cheering on War With Iran.
Drop a frog into boiling water, and it jumps right out. But put the frog in lukewarm water that is being heated gradually, the legend goes, and you can boil the unsuspecting creature.
We are now in boiling water. After years of tension with Iran, war looks to be on the horizon. Iranian-backed militias have been clashing with U.S.-led forces across the region for the past several months. This weekend, the U.S. military stepped in directly to defend Israel from a direct Iranian missile attack for the first time ever.
Many of the hawks calling for war today used to swear up and down that they weren’t seeking war. We just want a little bit more pressure on Iran, politicians insisted, and certainly wouldn’t call for a full-on invasion. Boil the water slowly.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) has been one of the loudest voices in Congress calling for war over the past few months. In the wake of the October 2023 attacks on Israel, he called for bombing Iran even if there was no evidence that Iran was behind the attacks. After Iraqi militias killed three U.S. troops in December, the senator declared, “Hit Iran now. Hit them hard.” Referring to an Iranian military headquarters, Graham urged President Joe Biden to “blow it off the map.”
A few years ago, Graham was terribly offended by the idea that he would call for war with Iran. In 2015, when then-President Barack Obama said that a deal to halt Iran’s nuclear program was the only alternative to war, Graham issued a joint statement with the late Sen. John McCain (R–Ariz.) attacking the “false choices” that Obama was presenting.
“No one believes that military force can and should solve all problems. No one believes that diplomacy, including diplomacy with adversaries, is tantamount to weakness,” Graham and McCain stated. “The alternative to this deal was never war; it was greater pressure on Iran and insistence on a better agreement.”
Commenting on Graham’s attitude, Max Fischer noted in Vox that “Iran hawks can’t be honest about what they really want” because “a repeat of what we did in Iraq…is not a politically palatable idea.” At least not yet.
Graham got what he wanted; former President Donald Trump tore up the deal that Obama had made, began a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, and brought in Graham as an adviser. They never did get that “better agreement,” but the United States did come close to bombing Iran several times, with Graham as a cheerleader for escalation.
Along with Graham, the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) was one of the most important actors advising Trump on Iran. FDD had a cozy relationship with the administration and even kept a member of Trump’s National Security Council on its payroll.
Like Graham, the foundation’s CEO Mark Dubowitz had insisted that his goal was to “fix not nix” diplomacy over the Iranian nuclear program.
“One thing we don’t want to do is go to war with Iran, and we’re trying to find peaceful ways to stop the Iranians and all the malign activities,” Dubowitz said in a 2016 interview on C-SPAN.
Would it be surprising to hear that Dubowitz is now calling for war? On Monday, he mused that “it is time for friendly foreign powers to commit to a crushing preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons program as well as givin
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