In mid-June 2025, Israel launched a massive surprise military assault on Iran, striking more than a dozen sites across the country . Codenamed Operation Rising Lion, this was the largest attack on Iran since the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s . Israeli jets and drones bombed nuclear facilities and military installations and assassinated several of Iran’s top military leaders in their homes . The initial bombardment was devastating: Iran’s UN ambassador reported at least 78 people killed and over 329 injured on the first day alone, claiming the “overwhelming majority” of those killed were civilians . Blasts rocked Tehran at dawn, hitting even residential neighborhoods, and local media showed that women and children were among the casualties . Iran retaliated within hours, firing volleys of missiles at Israeli cities. Some projectiles evaded air defenses and struck near Tel Aviv and Haifa, killing at least 10 Israeli civilians and injuring others . Within days, the exchange of strikes escalated into a frightening open war between Israel and Iran, with civilians on both sides caught in the crossfire. Each side’s leaders spoke in absolutist terms – Israeli officials vowed to eradicate Iran’s nuclear capability at any cost, while Tehran’s commanders promised that Israel would “burn” if attacks continued . The world watched in dread as air-raid sirens and explosions became the grim daily reality of June 2025 in both Tehran and Tel Aviv. This direct conflict, unprecedented in scale, is a tragic testament to the failure of coercive strategies that have long inflamed the Middle East. It did not erupt in a vacuum, but rather was the culmination of years of mounting hostility, military brinkmanship, and a policy of “maximum pressure” that has backfired catastrophically.
** In Gaza, the ruins and refugee camps left behind by Israel’s recent campaign speak volumes about the human cost of such aggressive policies. This new Israel–Iran war comes on the heels of a devastating war in Gaza that spanned late 2023 into 2024, in which Israel inflicted unprecedented destruction on the Palestinian enclave while battling Hamas. Israel’s offensive killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble . By the end of 2024, the Gaza Health Ministry had recorded 46,376 Palestinian deaths since the conflict began in October 2023 – a staggering toll that drew international outrage. A high-level United Nations official condemned the “collective punishment” of Gaza’s population and the “relentless bombardment” by Israeli forces as “horrific and unjustifiable” . Israel’s tactics included cutting off food, water, and electricity in a “siege and starve” strategy and pounding densely populated areas with indiscriminate airstrikes, prompting rights groups and even UN bodies to accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza . All observers could see the systematic leveling of hospitals, schools, shelters and entire city blocks – an assault that violated the most basic norms of international humanitarian law . Families that survived were often left with nothing: no homes, scarce food, and children dying of cold or disease in overcrowded tent camps once winter set in . “[Israel] has destroyed us. Every day, we just hope to die,” one despairing father in Gaza told reporters . Such testimonies underline the cruel and disproportionate nature of Israel’s onslaught. As a Democrat and a leftist observer, I do not side with the Islamist Hamas leadership or with Iran’s theocratic regime – both of which have committed their own abuses – but I also cannot ignore the scale of suffering inflicted by Israel’s far-right government on Palestinian civilians. To call Israel’s actions in Gaza excessively harsh is an understatement: they have been widely described as war crimes, with even the International Criminal Court opening war-crimes cases related to the Gaza assault . This bloody backdrop of Gaza’s ruination has undoubtedly fueled rage across the region and set the stage for the wider conflagration we now see. Iran, which casts itself as a champion of the Palestinian cause, has cited Gaza’s agony as further justification for confronting Israel. Indeed, during the Gaza war, Iranian-aligned groups (from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthi movement in Yemen) launched sporadic attacks on Israeli or Western targets in solidarity . The Middle East became a tinderbox of intertwining conflicts, all fanned by the flames of injustice in Gaza. The ensuing Israel–Iran war is thus not a bolt from the blue, but the outgrowth of a long, tragic cycle of provocation and retaliation – a cycle that the left argues must be broken by fundamentally rethinking our approach to security and peace.
No one should romanticize the Iranian government in this scenario. The Islamic Republic is an authoritarian regime that brutally represses dissent at home and has pursued aggressive regional policies of its own. Iranian leaders have often used inflammatory rhetoric (even threatening to “wipe Israel off the map”) and have supported militant proxies that target Israeli and American interests . The Iranian people have suffered greatly under their own hardline rulers’ corruption and human rights violations. But crucially, they have also been suffering for years under an external chokehold: the U.S.-led regime of economic sanctions. Too often, Western policymakers and pundits present sanctions as a “peaceful” alternative to war – a tool of leverage to pressure rogue states into better behavior. This framing is deeply misleading. Sanctions must be recognized for what they are: a form of warfare by other means . Instead of bombs and bullets, sanctions deploy banks and embargoes as weapons – but their impact on innocent people can be just as deadly. In countries like Iran (and Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and others), broad sanctions “feel like war” to ordinary citizens . They devastate economies, destroy infrastructure, and kill by stealth through shortages of medicine and food. As the peace group CodePink memorably put it on a banner at an anti-sanctions protest, “Sanctions Are an Act of War.”
** Activists from CodePink protest outside the U.S. Treasury in Washington, D.C., in 2020, demanding an end to the sanctions on Iran.** Their signs – “Sanctions Kill” and “Stop Starving Iran” – highlight the core of the left-wing critique: economic blockades punish entire populations and are fundamentally incompatible with peace . The humanitarian impact of the Iran sanctions has been nothing short of catastrophic. For years, U.S. sanctions have severely restricted Iran’s access to life-saving medicines and medical equipment . Human Rights Watch reports that Iranian patients with cancer, epilepsy, hemophilia and other serious illnesses routinely face life-threatening drug shortages due to these sanctions . Although U.S. officials often claim that food and medicine are exempt from sanctions, the reality of secondary sanctions (punishing any foreign bank or company that trades with Iran) has made suppliers too fearful to sell even legal goods like pharmaceuticals to Iran . The result is a de facto blockade of critical medical supplies. Iranian doctors describe heart-wrenching scenarios: “We have the knowledge to treat our patients, but not the tools. Sanctions have turned simple treatments into impossible tasks,” one Tehran oncologist said . In a particularly tragic case, a 7-year-old boy named Armin, who had hemophilia, died because his family couldn’t obtain a vital clotting medicine – “The medication exists, but no one dares to sell it to Iran,” his mother explained after her child’s preventable death . These are not isolated anecdotes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Iran’s hospitals struggled to import ventilators, PPE, and even vaccines, exacerbating an already dire public health crisis. Ilhan Omar, a U.S. Congresswoman on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, noted that sanctions had caused “medical shortages and countless deaths in Iran” even before COVID , and that this humanitarian toll only grew worse when the virus struck a heavily sanctioned Iran. In effect, sanctions have denied Iranian civilians the basic right to healthcare – a cruelty compounded by the fact that Iran’s own pharmaceutical industry, though advanced, cannot fully compensate when raw materials and specialized drugs are blocked.
The economic strangulation goes beyond medicine. Sanctions have ravaged Iran’s economy and plunged millions into poverty. When the United States and European Union dramatically tightened sanctions between 2010 and 2012 (before the 2015 nuclear deal), the results were “immediate and profound”: within just two years, the percentage of Iranian families living in poverty nearly doubled . By the mid-2010s, ordinary Iranians were consuming about half as much red meat and bread as they did in the 1990s – a stark indicator of collapsing purchasing power and nutrition . Inflation skyrocketed, the currency (rial) plummeted in value, and jobs dried up as foreign companies pulled out en masse. Iran’s inability to import many vital goods extended even to medical inputs: by 2016, an estimated 6 million patients in Iran lacked access to essential treatment in part because sanctions choked off supplies of specialized medicines and ingredients . Imagine the human suffering behind that number – cancer patients unable to get chemotherapy, diabetics without insulin, transplant recipients without immunosuppressants. This is the so-called “peaceful” policy alternative to war. The toll on Iran’s social fabric has been devastating. Families under extreme economic strain have had to withdraw children from school, marry off daughters earlier just to survive, and forgo basic needs. A generation of youth sees its future foreclosed by misery and isolation. And despite all this pain, the promised political results – a more compliant or democratic Iran – never materialized. The sanctions strategy, often touted as a way to pressure the regime, instead came to resemble collective punishment of an entire nation. U.S. officials frankly admitted that the goal was to make life so unbearable that Iran’s government would have to capitulate . In practice, it has been life for the people that became unbearable, while the regime’s elite found ways to endure and adapt. Indeed, as many on the left argue, such an approach is not a bridge to peace at all – it is the deliberate infliction of hardship on civilians to achieve political ends, something fundamentally at odds with human rights and international law.
Paradoxically, far from weakening the Iranian regime’s grip, the economic warfare has often strengthened Iran’s most authoritarian elements. The academic research on sanctions is clear: imposing broad sanctions tends to make the targeted country more repressive and less democratic, not less . One comprehensive study found that sanctioned states experienced a significant erosion of political and civil rights compared to similar countries not under sanctions . The reasons are not mysterious. When a nation is besieged economically, power concentrates in the hands of those who control scarce resources – usually the ruling elite and security apparatus. In Iran’s case, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its networks have exploited sanctions to expand their wealth and influence, entrenching themselves deeper into Iran’s economy and politics . As legitimate businesses collapsed and foreign trade became criminalized, the IRGC and other well-connected insiders took over black-market smuggling and monopolized whatever economic activity remained. Iranian analysts observed during the height of Obama-era sanctions that hardliners were creating a “near-economic monopoly” in Iran as sanctions “crushed Iran’s private sector and drove the middle class out of legitimate businesses.” In other words, sanctions hit the independent middle class – the very social group most inclined to push for reform – the hardest. As a result, Iran’s middle class, the prime driver of anti-government activism, grew weaker and poorer . An Iranian-American journalist, Jason Rezaian (who himself was once jailed by Tehran), summed up the lesson of the last sanctions round: “when people are squeezed economically, their needs and aspirations become much more about survival than about working toward change.” Survival mode is exactly what the Iranian public has been pushed into. People focused on finding food, medicine, or a way to pay the rent are less able to organize politically or challenge a repressive state. This dynamic was not lost on Iranian pro-democracy activists. In 2013, a group of Iranian dissidents wrote an open letter to President Obama warning that sanctions were “eliminating the only opportunity for peaceful and democratic change in our country” by weakening civil society and “strengthening the hands of extremists.” Unfortunately, their plea went unheeded at the time. Throughout the 2010s, as sanctions tightened, hardliners in Iran grew ever more powerful. They used the external threat as both a scapegoat for domestic woes and a pretext to crack down on dissent (portraying dissidents as “agents of the West”). They also hijacked much of the relief that did come in – for instance, controlling distribution of rationed goods – to reward loyalists and punish potential opponents . This pattern is not unique to Iran. Under Saddam Hussein in Iraq during the 1990s, for example, UN sanctions cut off the economy and Saddam responded by establishing strict rationing that actually increased his regime’s control over Iraqi society . Ordinary Iraqis suffered horribly (hundreds of thousands of children died of malnutrition and disease), yet Saddam remained securely in power until he was toppled by outright war in 2003. In Iran, sanctions similarly bred corruption and a wartime “siege economy” mentality that enriched a “mafia-like class” of sanction profiteers while the general populace grew more desperate . As one Iranian social scientist noted, sanctions have been “breaking the collective will and marginalizing democratic voices while solidifying the power of the ruling elite” . In short, economic pressure has often strengthened authoritarianism, hollowing out the very social forces that could have produced organic democratic change.
It’s important to underscore that sanctions have also failed on their own terms. After decades of U.S. economic warfare, Iran is neither pacified nor free. The Islamic Republic’s government remains firmly in place, and if anything its adversarial stance toward the West has hardened. Crucially, Iran’s nuclear program – ostensibly the number one target of sanctions – not only survived but progressed. In 2015, a diplomatic breakthrough was achieved: Iran agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), trading strict limits and inspections on its nuclear activities for sanctions relief . For a brief window, this showed the promise of diplomacy. Iran shipped out tons of enriched uranium, dismantled centrifuges, and opened its facilities to international inspectors, and in return its economy began to recover as sanctions were lifted . Iranian moderates, backed by a hopeful populace, genuinely sought a thaw with the world. The tension noticeably eased. However, the U.S. – under President Donald Trump – unilaterally violated this multilateral agreement in 2018, reinstating and expanding sanctions on Iran even though Iran was confirmed to be complying with the deal . The message this sent to Iranians was devastating: it implied that even if they abide by diplomatic accords, they will not reap the benefits, because Washington can break its promises. Hardliners in Tehran seized on this betrayal to argue that the U.S. only understands force, not dialogue. Iran responded by gradually resuming nuclear activities. By 2021, Tehran had ramped uranium enrichment up to 60% purity – a level far beyond the JCPOA limits and close to weapons-grade . Thus, the collapse of diplomacy directly led to an expanded Iranian nuclear program, the very outcome hawks claimed sanctions would prevent. It is a bitter irony: the “maximum pressure” campaign that replaced the JCPOA ended up isolating and impoverishing the Iranian people without stopping (and arguably accelerating) Iran’s nuclear advances. Former Trump officials have since quietly admitted that the sanctions didn’t achieve their strategic goals . As one analysis noted, sanctions have “clearly failed to achieve their intended policy outcomes” in case after case – from Iran to Cuba to North Korea – no matter how aggressively they were applied . What they have accomplished is “massive disruptions in the everyday lives of citizens” of those nations . In other words, sanctions “work” only in the sense of inflicting pain, not in producing peace or justice. The ongoing war with Israel further underscores this failure. Years of sanctions did not bring Iran’s government to its knees nor halt its regional influence; instead, we now have a situation where that government is embattled but unyielding, trading fire with a U.S. ally in a dangerous war. The logic of collective punishment, whether through siege or sanctions, has reached its ultimate, horrifying expression: open military conflict, with all the risk of a wider regional war that entails.
Given this dismal record, the left insists on a fundamentally different approach: diplomacy over coercion. It is not “soft” to pursue negotiations; on the contrary, it is often the only pragmatic and morally sound course. As progressive voices have long argued, problems with Iran (or any nation) will not be solved by starving its people or bombing its cities, but by engaging with its government and society through dialogue and mutual respect. We have seen glimpses of what diplomacy can achieve – the 2015 nuclear deal being a prime example – and we have seen all too clearly what its absence brings. Representative Ilhan Omar put it succinctly after Trump’s 2020 sanctions threats: “You cannot claim to want de-escalation and then announce new sanctions with no clear goal. This is not a measured response!” . Her colleague Barbara Lee, a veteran peace advocate in Congress, argued that piling on more sanctions would only “further hurt everyday Iranians” and urged the U.S. to work on a new deal with Iran, emphasizing that sanctions won’t lead to diplomacy and that we must focus on direct engagement instead . Even some conservative or libertarian-leaning figures have come to agree. Former Republican Congressman Justin Amash remarked that “Direct, firm, and peaceful engagement with Iran is more likely to bring about positive change than are further sanctions and warfare.” This is not naive idealism; it’s a sober assessment drawn from real-world outcomes. Diplomacy recognizes Iran as a proud, sovereign nation that responds better to respect and incentives than to humiliation and threats. It seeks to address security concerns through dialogue – for example, by negotiating limits on Iran’s military programs in exchange for security guarantees – rather than assuming those concerns can be bombed or starved away.
The immediate priority, from a humane and leftist perspective, is de-escalation. In the Israel–Iran war, that means an urgent ceasefire and a halt to further attacks before the death toll multiplies. Every additional missile or airstrike simply perpetuates the cycle of vengeance and makes future reconciliation harder. Leaders on all sides must be pressed to stop the bloodshed. The left strongly favors measures like humanitarian corridors and aid shipments to civilians in war zones, be it Gaza under Israeli siege or Iranian cities reeling from strikes. Life-saving assistance should never be held hostage to political disputes. Over the longer term, negotiations must resume – not only on the nuclear file but on the broader regional disputes that underlie these conflicts. This means reviving some form of the JCPOA to put Iran’s nuclear program back under verifiable limits (something both Iran and the U.S. had indicated openness to before the recent war), and concurrently pursuing frameworks to reduce Iran–Israel hostilities. While Israel and Iran have no formal relations, back-channel communication or multilateral forums could be established to address incidents and prevent accidental escalation. It is noteworthy that even as Israel was bombing Iran, some U.S. officials were reportedly trying to keep “back doors” open for talks – a recognition that there will eventually have to be a settlement, since neither side can permanently eliminate the other.
From a leftist point of view, peace cannot be achieved by one side’s total victory or an enemy’s total defeat – that is a dangerous illusion when dealing with nations and peoples. True peace requires recognizing the humanity and rights of all parties and working toward coexistence. For Israel and Iran, as for Israel and Palestine, this will ultimately entail acknowledging each other’s security concerns and renouncing zero-sum ambitions (such as regime change or territorial conquest). Certainly, any diplomacy must also be paired with a frank commitment to human rights. For instance, part of reducing tensions would involve Israel ending its occupation and oppression of Palestinians – a core grievance driving regional conflict – and Iran curbing support to militant groups as confidence builds. These are difficult issues, but they become intractable only in the absence of dialogue. Through negotiations, compromises and creative solutions can emerge.
Philosophically, the left’s stance is rooted in a simple ethical insight: you cannot starve a nation into peace, nor bomb it into submission without sowing the seeds of future wars. In the end, sanctions are not peace – they are a continuation of war by other means, an expression of domination and cruelty that deepens enmity. And war itself, with all its wanton cruelty (whether in Gaza or Tehran), is a failure of our moral imagination. We believe there is always an alternative to killing and maiming the innocent. As one Iranian commentator poignantly noted, when the isolation of sanctions causes “a child to miss insulin or a patient to die untreated, it becomes something far darker. It is no longer policy – it is cruelty systematized.” This cruelty is evident in the emaciated faces of Yemeni children under blockade, in the trauma of Gaza’s bombed-out families, and in the quiet deaths of Iranian patients denied medicine. It cannot be the path to a just world. Peace built on justice and empathy is the only sustainable future – a future where we resolve conflicts not by obliterating our adversaries but by understanding them, addressing legitimate grievances, and finding ways to coexist.
In conclusion, as a Democrat and someone on the left, I stand against the wars of bombs and the wars of sanctions with equal conviction. I refuse to choose between supporting Israel’s military brutality or Iran’s authoritarian defiance. Instead, I choose the side of the people – the ordinary Israelis, Iranians, Palestinians and others who simply want to live in dignity without fear. Their voices are often drowned out by the drumbeats of war and the rhetoric of “strength,” but they are the ones who suffer most from both airstrikes and economic blockades. We owe it to them to pursue a different path. That means immediately easing the sanctions that function as economic warfare on Iran’s populace, and vigorously championing diplomatic initiatives to halt the Israel–Iran hostilities (and to finally deliver justice in Palestine). It means recognizing that coercion is not a substitute for a coherent peace strategy. Sanctions and wars may be touted as quick fixes or shows of resolve, but in reality they strengthen hardliners, devastate civilians, and sow the bitterness that fuels the next conflict. By contrast, engagement, compromise, and respect for international law can actually address security concerns while upholding our values. The left case is ultimately a humanitarian case: we seek a foreign policy that measures its success not by subjugating adversaries but by improving human lives. In the case of Iran, that means ending the siege economy and returning to the negotiating table in good faith. In the case of Israel–Palestine, it means conditioning aid on respect for human rights and pushing for a political solution that ensures freedom and safety for both peoples. These are long roads, certainly, but they are the only roads that do not lead to perpetual violence.
The Israel–Iran war of June 2025 should be a wake-up call. It starkly illustrates that the politics of endless confrontation – of “maximum pressure” and military brinksmanship – only produce maximum suffering. There is another way: detente, diplomacy, mutual compromise. It happened before (as in the 2015 Iran deal) and it can happen again, if we demand it. As citizens and as human beings, we must insist that our leaders break the cycle of escalation. Sanctions are not peace, and war is not peace. Peace is peace – and it is achieved through dialogue, justice, and the courageous work of healing wounds, not inflaming them. It is time to reject economic warfare and military aggression, and instead champion a foreign policy grounded in empathy, equality, and hope. Only then can we prevent the next Gaza, the next Tehran – and truly secure a better future for all who call this region home.