Jonathan P. Baird

I think it is fair to say that a broad majority of the American people do not want the war the United States and Israel are fighting against Iran. This is the latest example of America’s out-of-control militarism. After 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, America had reached the point of exhaustion with any war. Going back to Vietnam, wars have lacked justification even before we got to the current situation with Iran.

By day six, the cost of the Iran war to the United States exceeded $12.7 billion and that cost is growing by half a billion dollars everyday. That is equivalent to the cost of one year paying for medical care for 693,000 veterans, Medicaid for 3.6 million children or 9% of all U.S. elementary school teachers. There is a reason Marine Corps General Smedley Butler once said, “War is a racket”. The only beneficiaries are the military-industrial complex that profits from spilled blood.

No one knows why this war is being fought. It seems almost whimsical and impulsive on Trump’s part. There is no thought-out plan or strategy although it must be seen as part of the U.S pursuit of global military hegemony. After Venezuela, Trump believed the Iranians would fold quickly, leading to regime change.This is similar to the miscalculation that occurred with the Iraq war. Trump saying “we won the war” on day one was equivalent to George W. Bush saying “mission accomplished” on the aircraft carrier.

It can also be persuasively argued that Trump wanted a distraction from the Epstein files and war is a big distraction. There is nothing in Donald Trump’s character that would indicate that he would not launch a criminal war to advance his own personal interests.

The United States has a long record of hostility to Iran going back to its role in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. Bad feelings were exacerbated when Iran seized American hostages at the time of the Islamic revolution in 1979. Since then, relations have been bitterly fraught.

It is quite a different scenario with the Israelis. This is a war that Bibi Netanyahu has wanted to fight for 40 years. He has long tried to find an American president who would go along with this wish and he found that person in Donald Trump. At the same time, Netanyahu has been enabled by Jewish fascists and racists in his extremist government.

The Israeli state has been committing brutal crimes on multiple fronts. The indefensible Gaza genocide and the killings of Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank have both been horrifying. Israel has not prosecuted its citizens for killing Palestinian civilians in the West Bank since the start of this decade. The Iran war itself violates the U.N. charter. It certainly did not have to be fought.

As an American Jew, I oppose the extremely bellicose actions of the Israeli state just as I oppose the actions of our own government in Iran. The war is senseless. Money wasted in this war could have been spent on human needs like health care, housing or education. It is not in the American national interest to spend a fortune trying to topple the Iranian state when there are so many unaddressed needs at home.

Ironically, I think Israel’s brutality is doing much to fuel antisemitism worldwide. Many on the MAGA right are pushing the Nazi narrative that world Jewry is promoting this war. They broadly assign responsibility to Jews rather than the Israeli state. American Jews and other Jews outside Israel have no control over the actions of a foreign state.

I suspect most American Jews are completely opposed to the Iran war. Somewhere between 63%-71% of American Jews voted against Trump in 2024 and that is an indicator of his unpopularity, especially in the non-Orthodox Jewish community. Unfortunately out-of-touch major Jewish organizations like AIPAC and ADL as well as big Republican donors have blindly followed Trump’s fascist regime.

Some synagogues I have seen do have signs about standing with Israel. I believe they are making a mistake. Israel under Netanyahu is an authoritarian state run by Jewish supremacists who oppose any two state solution. The future of democracy in Israel (just as in the U.S.) depends on the political defeat of an authoritarian leader. It is misguided to support any state committing human rights crimes. Based on their actions over the last few years, the major Jewish organizations would support Israel regardless of any crimes that state commits.

It is amazing to me that major Jewish organizations overlook the despicable actions of ICE in rounding up brown-skinned people and putting them in concentration camps without due process. You hear nothing from these organizations about that as they suck up to the regime. As of January 2026, the ICE secret police were holding 73,000 people. As Jews, we should know better. We have seen this movie before.

For anyone paying attention, the growth of antisemitism on the Republican right is alarming. The chats of young Republicans exposed by Politico show the direction of a significant chunk of the party. Earlier in March, the Miami Herald also exposed hundreds of racist, homophobic, sexist and antisemitic messages written by college Republicans in Florida. Pictures show college Republicans making Nazi salutes.

The podcast world that includes Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes all indulge a “blame the Jews” perspective. When liberal democracies fail as been happening in America, those on the far right have a well-established history of scapegoating Jews. This is nothing new.

The Iran war is a joint project of the U.S. and Israel. Both states bear responsibility and they should be criticized for failing to show any restraint. An estimated 3300 people have been killed in Iran along with 13 Americans. Millions of Iranians and Lebanese have been displaced.

Blaming Jews rather than the American and Israeli leaders could not be more wrong.