CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The War on Iran—and Washington’s Missing Exit Strategy

Image Massachusetts Peace Action.

The United States has once again launched a war in the Middle East based on false claims about weapons of mass destruction. Like the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. assault on Iran rests on allegations that international inspectors have already debunked. But beyond the false pretext lies an even more pressing question that few officials in Washington seem willing—or able—to answer: What is the U.S. exit strategy from its war on Iran?

President Trump has justified the attack by claiming that Iran refuses to renounce nuclear weapons. As he prepared to launch the war, Trump repeatedly claimed, “We haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, responded by reiterating Iran’s long-standing policy, stating plainly: “Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon.”

After years of unprecedented inspections, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) never found evidence that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program. In 2015 the agency declared its investigation complete and subsequently monitored Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement. The IAEA repeatedly confirmed that Iran was abiding by the deal—until the United States under Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.

Yet the endless repetition of these disproven allegations by U.S. and Israeli politicians has served as a political pretext for “maximum pressure” economic coercion, escalating threats, and now full-scale illegal aggression against Iran.

Under international law, aggression is not just another war crime—it is the gravest crime of all. The judges at the Nuremberg Trials called aggression “the supreme international crime,” because it “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Those convicted of launching aggressive war were held responsible for all the horrors that followed. For that reason, the Nuremberg tribunal reserved its harshest punishment—death by hanging—for the defendants convicted of planning and waging aggressive war, while those found guilty only of war crimes or crimes against humanity received lesser sentences.

The wisdom of that distinction is borne out by the horrors taking place in Iran and neighboring countries today. In the first week of the US-Israeli bombing of Iran, they have already destroyed schools and hospitals and killed hundreds of innocent civilians. On March 2nd, President Trump said that the US plans to achieve all its goals in Iran through four or five weeks of this kind of mass slaughter.

At a Pentagon press conference a few hours earlier, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was........

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