The Executive Council of the Professional Staff Congress (AFT 2334) strongly condemns the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. Iran is not an imminent threat to the people of the United States, and the shifting rationales that President Trump has provided for war are dangerously misguided.
As a union long committed to advocating for peaceful solutions to international conflicts, the PSC took an early stance against the “War on Terror,” opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and what the New York Times called “America’s Forever Wars”. We do so again in opposing the unprovoked and unlawfully authorized war against Iran. Already, civilian deaths number in the thousands with many more displaced, U.S. service member casualties continue to mount, all at an $11 billion cost to U.S. taxpayers in the first week alone. (1) In the two decades following the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. spent $5 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, not including the continuing cost of caring for the veterans. (2) These resources could have gone to critical human services like public education, health care, and housing. Today, people of conscience must demand an immediate end to this war.
While the Trump administration pursues regime change abroad through extrajudicial violence in Venezuela, resource blockades in Cuba, and a war on Iran now widening throughout the Middle East, they have also cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid, enacted the largest reduction in history to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, dismantled the Department of Education, and delivered tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. The war against Iran is not a war of defense or a war in the interest of working people. Resources should instead be directed to social programs, education, and job creation.
(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/world/middleeast/iran-war-costs-pentagon.html
(2) https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/economic/us-federal-budget
Published: March 15, 2026
