Now that an initial diplomatic deal between the US and Iran has been signed and intensive negotiations are under way to fully end the war, Congress should do everything possible to ensure this agreement is fully implemented. While the agreement is likely to have imperfections—thanks in large part to President Donald Trump harming US leverage and interests with a disastrous war—it would be a massive mistake to attack the deal simply because it comes from this president. The key question to consider is what steps Congress can take to ensure it becomes a durable peace—rather than merely a pause before the next round of war.

With all the human loss, destruction, and global stakes, we must stop this war, but also ensure that the conditions of peace don’t lay the groundwork for a return to conflict—or inspire its repetition elsewhere. The political and financial cost of ending this war must fall on those who aided and profited from it. The question is whether we build the safeguards to make it last.

In June 2025, it was already clear that accepting President Trump’s false narrative of absolute victory (claiming to have fully obliterated Iran’s nuclear sites) would not end US-Iran tensions. Any peace will remain fragile if the conditions that produced the war persist: the might-makes-right mindset that proved hollow against Iran’s strategic resilience; the preference for militarism over diplomacy, from Trump’s Joint-Comprehensive Plan-of-Action withdrawal to Biden’s failure to pursue a serious alternative to “maximum pressure” sanctions; the unconditional support for Israel even when it runs counter to US interests.

It is highly possible that during the initial 60 days of negotiations contemplated in the MOU, Israel will continue military action against Iran or in Lebanon to provoke a reaction and restart the cycle. The US cannot fully control what Israel would do. But it can stop aiding and abetting the war, which would make it far more difficult for Israel to sustain a campaign to spoil diplomacy.

The problem is not a single president or party. It is the power structures that ensure those who profit from war never pay its cost, regardless of who holds office.

Military action against Iran failed at producing any of its intended objectives, while it incurred costs that are in some cases irreversible and in others generational. The lives lost will not come back. The destruction of civilian infrastructure will shape Iranian society for decades. And the war has granted perverse legitimacy to a brutal regime, recasting the government of the Islamic Republic not as the oppressor it is, but as David against Goliath, the underdog resistor against foreign aggression. Diplomacy produced better results at far lower cost on every measure that matters.

This war confirmed what few wanted to acknowledge: that US military bases across the Gulf, sold as a projection of strength, are also a profound vulnerability. Each base became a potential target, each host government a hostage to escalation. For many Gulf governments, American military backing is a useful substitute for political legitimacy at home. Yet the war exposed the limits of that bargain:........

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