Congressional Democrats are playing ‘war party’ on Iran. It will backfire on them.

Opinion>Opinions - International The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill Congressional Democrats are playing ‘war party’ on Iran. It will backfire on them. Comments: by Norman Solomon, opinion contributor - 06/25/26 9:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Norman Solomon, opinion contributor - 06/25/26 9:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The doubletalk coming from many congressional Democrats in response to President Trump’s peace initiative with Iran has been a political wonder to behold. While correctly declaring that Trump should not have started the war, they’ve routinely gone on to condemn the memorandum of understanding that offers a process to end it.

Instead of supporting peace efforts that could move the Middle East toward genuine diplomacy instead of nonstop warfare, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) opted for partisan sniping. He quickly decried the memorandum. “It is so bad,” he said, “that even Republicans who cringe and knock their knees before criticizing Trump have no choice but to say what a bad deal this is.”

Other Senate Democrats have gone over the top while taking aim at the set of sensible steps outlined in the memorandum of understanding.

Denouncing what he called “a disgraceful deal” and “unconditional surrender,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) vowed that “anything like this deal will be dead on arrival in the Senate.” Not to be outdone in throwing cold water on the peace scenario, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) slammed it as “a dangerous giveaway.” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said that it is “hard to imagine a more thorough capitulation.”

Even Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) — who has a long record of advocating for peace and disarmament — participated in this race to the militaristic bottom. He swiftly announced his flat-out opposition to the emerging Iran deal, tweeting, “Congress must review and reject this deal immediately.”

Markey is facing a challenge for his Senate seat in the Massachusetts Democratic primary from Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who claimed that the “terrible deal” was “basically a surrender document from Donald Trump to the supreme leader of Iran.” Not to be outdone with hyperbolic rhetoric, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) described the memorandum as “the most humiliating national security episode since the British burned the White House.”

For its part, the Democratic National Committee lost no time sending out a denunciation of the agreement as a “weak and shaky ‘deal’ with Iran.” The DNC approvingly quoted several Republican hardliners, in effect making common cause with some of the most hawkish Republican members of Congress. Such a tacit alliance could strangle the nascent peace effort in its cradle.

When Democrats claim that the memorandum of understanding amounts to surrender, they are playing with fire. Trump is already abruptly swerving between rational overtures for diplomatic dialogue and new bombastic threats. It might seem clever to bait the president by casting him as submissive to Iran, but goading him to prove the opposite is just plain irresponsible.

All of this is bad news for a world beset with the grim impacts of war, from carnage and refugee crises to spiking energy prices, trade disruption and environmental damage. It is also bad politics for the Democratic Party.

If Democrats are seen as trying to derail a Trump peace deal, they will enable him and Vice President JD Vance to portray the Democratic Party as the party of war, which is hardly good for electoral prospects. Both of Trump’s successful runs for president were aided by voter discontent with Democratic leaders’ support for war.

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against Trump was hampered by her reputation as a politician who “never met a war she didn’t want other Americans to fight.” A post-election study by Douglas Kriner at Cornell University and Francis Shen at the University of Minnesota found “a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump.” The professors wrote, “Our statistical model suggests that if three states key to Trump’s victory — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House.”

The Democratic Party’s pro-war stance also harmed Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign. In mid-August of that year, YouGov pollsters released findings in key swing states indicating that Harris would have gained more than five times as many votes as she would have lost, had she called for an arms embargo against Israel while its war in Gaza continued. Post-election polling indicated similar results.

Looking ahead, attempts to out-hawk Republicans are very likely to be losing propositions for Democrats. As in 2016 and again in 2024, a standard-bearer perceived as pro-war is just the ticket for depressing voter turnout that the party needs from its base.

The outcry from Democratic leaders against this agreed path toward peace does not bode well for the 2026 midterms or for the 2028 presidential race. The Democratic Party should not make itself a war party.

Norman Solomon is cofounder of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His book “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine” was published in 2023.