Every day, corporate media outlets and politicians are spreading misinformation about the war and the broader situation in Iran and the Middle East.
Understandably, many people will want to talk through these arguments. It’s important to patiently and persuasively debunk some of the common myths about the war. Here is a list of several questions you can expect to be asked along with potential responses.
Isn’t this a smaller war, where the military will accomplish a limited objective and then stop without any need to put “boots on the ground”?
This war could easily spiral into an all-out invasion. Trump has threatened to put boots on the ground many times since the war started, and all of his top officials refuse to rule it out every time they’re asked. Trump wants to overthrow the government of Iran so that he can run the country, but there’s no signs of that happening. So he either has to back down or escalate, and we know how irrational and impulsive Trump can be.
But the Iranian government is a dictatorship, and I’ve seen Iranians in America celebrating. Shouldn’t we be helping people create a democracy?
The only people who should have a say in what kind of government Iran has are people in Iran. Trump said openly that he should be the one who picks the new leader of Iran. What kind of democracy is that? Every time the U.S. government claims to be fighting a war to bring democracy to a country, it just ends up worse than before, like Afghanistan.
Iranians in the United States have a wide range of opinions about the war. Many of the demonstrations that are being shown on TV (so much more than anti-war protests!) are organized by supporters of the so-called Crown Prince who has been trying to take over the country for decades. His father was the king of Iran and led a brutal dictatorship from 1953, when the CIA organized a coup that brought him to power, until the revolution in 1979. This movement has nothing to do with democracy.
Doesn’t Iran want to build a nuclear bomb and support terrorists?
There’s no evidence that Iran is actually building a nuclear weapon – if there was evidence, Trump would be showing it to us every day. And Trump already said last year that he “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program – so why is there a need to go back to war now? This is obviously all made up, just like George Bush’s lie about there being weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And even still, Iran’s government was negotiating and about to make a deal right before Trump and Israel attacked them.
It’s true that Iran supports groups that fight against Israel. But like we saw in Gaza, where over 20,000 children were killed, the label “terrorist” really should apply to the Israeli government.
Will intervention by the United States lead to more rights and freedom for women in Iran?
U.S. war has never improved the situation for women in a targeted country. Iranian women are suffering terribly under the U.S. bombing campaign, which has caused a breakdown in public services like healthcare and led to terrible shortages of basic goods. And who could really believe that Trump is motivated by a desire to promote women’s rights? He’s a predator and an open sexist who has presided over huge rollbacks in women’s rights.
The worst atrocity of the war so far took place at a girls’ elementary school. A U.S. missile hit the school on the first day of the war, and killed nearly 200.
Will it help the economy in the United States if Trump succeeds in taking Iran’s oil?
The only people who the economy will get better for are billionaires in charge of the oil corporations and the weapons manufacturers. For everyone else, this war will make it even harder than it already is to make ends meet. A huge amount of the world’s oil and gas goes through the waters off the coast of Iran. Because of Trump’s war, that trade has stopped, and the price of oil is skyrocketing. That means not only higher prices for gas, but higher prices for everything, because the cost of transporting everything we buy will go up. Instead of doing anything to address the cost of living crisis, Trump is wasting our tax dollars to wage a war that is making it even worse.
