Jake Johnson
"Right
now, the most effective thing you can do is flood Congress with calls to show
that the American people don't want to go to war with Iran," said the
advocacy group Demand Progress.
U.S. Marines watch as protesters hold
signs during a "No War on Iran" demonstration outside the Wilshire
Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 18, 2025. (Photo: Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images)
President Donald Trump is set to
meet with top advisers in the White House Situation Room Thursday morning in
the wake of reports that he has privately approved plans for a U.S. attack on
Iran, a development that comes after days of pressure from Israeli officials
and Republican war hawks in Congress to intervene in the war that Israel
launched last week.
The Wall Street Journalreported
late Wednesday that Trump told senior aides that he "approved of attack
plans for Iran, but was holding off on giving the final order to see if Tehran
will abandon its nuclear program."
"While Trump weighed his
decision, the U.S. military continued to move forces to Europe and toward the
Middle East, including tanker planes to refuel aircraft in flight, warships
capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, an aircraft carrier battle group,
and advanced F-22 air-to-air fighters, which flew Wednesday to a base in
Britain," the Journal observed.
CBS News also reported that Trump
"approved attack plans on Iran Tuesday night."
Trump's belligerent rhetoric and
demand for "unconditional surrender" ahead of a possible U.S. attack
have drawn sharp rebukes from Iranian officials, who said Wednesday that the
country "does NOT negotiate under duress, shall NOT accept peace under
duress, and certainly NOT with a has-been warmonger clinging to
relevance."
The U.S. possesses 30,000-pound
bunker-buster bombs within striking distance of Iran, and Israel claims it
needs such explosives to hit Iran's heavily entrenched Fordow nuclear site.
"We are the only ones who
have the capability to do it, but that doesn't mean I am going to do it,"
Trump told reporters Wednesday.
With a final decision from the
president expected at any moment, anti-war members of Congress are moving with
urgency to build support for legislative efforts to avert an unauthorized U.S.
attack on Iran.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is
co-leading a House war powers resolution with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), has
called on Democrats to unify against U.S. involvement in Israel's war.
"This is now defining for
the Democratic Party," Khanna toldHuffPost on Wednesday. "Are we
going to criticize the offensive weapons for Netanyahu and the blank check? Are
we going to stand up with clarity against the strikes on Iran? Are we going to
actually be the party of peace, or are we going to be just another party of
war?"
Just 37 members of Congress,
according to one tally, have backed anti-war resolutions currently before the
House and Senate, even as new polling shows that a majority of the American
public opposes U.S. military action in Iran.
"Right now, the most
effective thing you can do is flood Congress with calls to show that the
American people don't want to go to war with Iran," the advocacy group
Demand Progress wrote Wednesday, urging Americans to call 1-833-STOP-WAR to connect
with their representatives and push them to support war powers resolutions.
The two top Democrats in
Congress—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority
Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)—have been mostly quiet this week about the
Trump administration's march to war, and Schumer has declined to back
legislation introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would bar the
president from using federal funds for an unauthorized attack on Iran.
But Schumer was among the top
Democratic senators who signed a joint statement Wednesday declaring that
"we will not rubberstamp military intervention that puts the United States
at risk."
"Intensifying military
actions between Israel and Iran represent a dangerous escalation that risks
igniting a broader regional war," reads the statement. "As President
Trump reportedly considers expanding U.S. engagement in the war, we are deeply
concerned about a lack of preparation, strategy, and clearly defined
objectives, and the enormous risk to Americans and civilians in the
region."
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) unveiled a
war powers resolution earlier this week in the Republican-controlled Senate,
but he must wait 10 days before he can force a vote on the measure.
"The Constitution gives
Congress the power to declare war," Kaine wrote in a social media post on
Wednesday. "That's why I filed a resolution to require a debate and vote
in Congress before we send our nation's men and women in uniform into harm's
way."
Senators are set to receive a
classified briefing on Iran from the Trump administration next week—but the
president could order a military strike before then.
Politicoreported Wednesday that
"Trump, who criticized his predecessor for allowing new wars to break out
on his watch, is increasingly listening to a small group of Iran hawks who have
been pushing to go tougher on Tehran."
"Trump has become more
receptive to arguments by those advocating more military engagement, including
Gen. Michael 'Erik' Kurilla, who leads Central Command, as well as Republican
senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Tom Cotton of Arkansas," the
outlet noted.
June 18, 2025
Brett Wilkins
Peace advocates
including a prominent Iranian academic and Venezuelan delegates to a United
Nations event in Paris paid homage Wednesday to a young Iranian poet killed
along with her parents and teenage brother last week during Israeli bombing of
Tehran.
Iranian poet Parnia Abbasi was killed in a June 13, 2025 Israeli airstrike on her family's home in Tehran. (Photo: social media)
Parnia Abbasi, who was just days away from her 24th birthday, was
killed in a June 13 airstrike on a residential complex in Tehran's Sattarkhan
neighborhood during the first wave of Israel's unprovoked U.S.-backed war on
Iran, which has reportedly killed at least 585 people and wounded over 1,300
others as of early Wednesday.
Iranian media reported that Parviz Abbasi and Masoumeh
Shahriari—Parnia's retired father and mother—and her younger brother Parham
Abbasi were also killed in the Israeli strike. The family was reportedly
sleeping when their home was bombed.
According toThe Washington Post's Yeganeh Torbati:
[Abbasi] dreamed of
seeing the band Coldplay live in concert. She loved trying new foods and was
learning Italian. She wrote poetry constantly and shared it with friends and
family. She was so proud of having summited Iran's highest peak, Mount
Damavand, that she made sure to mention that fact to everyone she met. She was,
as her friends described in phone interviews and text messages this week, as
bright and full of life as the sunflowers that she adored...
Abbasi's friends
shared in interviews, messages, and on social media their favorite memories of
her: how she took them camping outdoors for the first time, how she freely gave
them gifts, how her sense of humor often took a moment to sink in and then bowled
them over with laughter. She did silly dances for the camera.
The Tehran Timescalled Abbasi, who was also an English teacher,
"a rising star among Iran's new generation of poets" who was
"celebrated for her poignant and introspective poetry."
Abbasi was quoted in a memorial post by the literary magazine
Vazn-e Donya as saying, "I look at everything that happens to me as
something I might be able to write down—to express the feeling I had in that
moment through poetry."
The following is an excerpt from Abbasi's best-known poem, The
Extinguished Star, as translated by Ghazal Mosadeq:
you and I will come to an end
somewhere
the most beautiful poem in the world
falls quiet
you begin
somewhere
to cry the
murmur of life
but I will end
I burn
I'll be that extinguished star
in your sky
like smoke
The Tehran Timesreported that renowned Iranian academic and artist
Zahra Rahnavard—who according to the advocacy group PEN America has been under
unofficial house arrest since 2011 for her women's rights activism—said during
a Wednesday tribute to Abbasi that "women have always been the first
victims in times of conflict."
"This time, they fell prey to bombardments carried out by a
criminal infamous worldwide for killing women and children, from Gaza to
Iran," she added, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged war
crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine.
Members of Venezuela's delegation to the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) 10th Assembly of
the Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in Paris also honored
Abassi Wednesday, lamenting that "a voice died, a legacy in the making,
another opportunity for cultural dialogue among peoples."
Arvin Abedi, one of Abbasi's many friends, told the Post that
"when war happens, it's not just military people... who are casualties...
Ordinary people can easily be destroyed."
Abedi added that Abbasi "has the right to not be
forgotten."
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