The US/Israel war on Iran must be stopped. Already thousands have been killed and millions have been made homeless. Now President Trump is escalating the war against Iran’s oil facilities. Iran promises to retaliate against the oil industries of US-allied countries. World economic chaos will follow.
Those opposed to war are the majority in the USA. More than 90 percent of “Democrats” oppose the war, according to many polls. One would think that Democratic Party leaders would see opportunity here, targeting the fall elections by painting Trump as a crazed war-monger. Yet the messaging coming from leading Democrats is that the “fault” with this war is that Congress was not consulted, that Trump doesn’t have a plan to end the war. Democrats want answers!
No, voters will not be satisfied by “answers”; we want peace. The Democratic Party leadership is still paralyzed by the imagined threat of “supporters” of Israel turning against them if the party criticizes the war, uses words such as genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” or questions Israeli prime minister Netanyahu’s crazed foreign policy. Along with the rest of Democratic Party voters, US Jews are strongly against this war and fear the consequences of US policy toward Iran being joined to that of Israel, which has worked for decades to involve the United States in a war against Iran.
We must recall that the US & Israel attacked Iran while negotiations between Iran and the US were “proceeding smoothly,” possibly towards a peaceful settlement. Iran posed no threat to the US. The attack on Iran while negotiating ends forever any hope that a country will trust US negotiation offers. Nevertheless, the leading US newspapers give uncritical support to the war, with broadcast television following in lock-step.
If not stopped, the war will wreck the US economy, perhaps for many years. So far the war has cost US taxpayers $20 billion, and will cost at least $1 billion dollars each day going forward. If it is a long war, the damage to the US economy is predicted to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Moreover, if the war spreads throughout the Middle East, as now seems likely, the oil flows from the entire region will be stopped. Many of the economies of the world will grind to a halt. A massive worldwide depression could follow, with untold damage to entire nations and their people.
WE THE PEOPLE have little power in this greatly flawed “democracy,” but we must do what we can. Please call our Congress people - Rep. Latimer - (202) 225-2464, Sen. Gillibrand - (202) 224-4451, Sen. Schumer – (202) 224-6542. Demand that they vote against any money for the Iran war or any more money for Israel. Thanks.
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING THE WAR AGAINST IRAN
How Might the United States and Israel’s War on Iran Falter?
By Bassam Haddd, Jadaliyya [Arab Studies Institute] [March 12, 2026]
---- What was framed as a swift and definitive strike against Iran is fast becoming something far more unpredictable and potentially more dangerous. The expanding US–Israeli war on Iran was sold, implicitly or explicitly, as a decisive blow: a campaign that would topple the regime, trigger mass protests, fracture the Iranian state, and reassert US–Israeli dominance across the region. Beyond the assassination of the country’s Supreme Leader and an unknown number of Iranian military and political officials, US-Israeli bombardment has killed over 1,300 Iranian civilians, injured upwards of 10,000 more, and damaged over 13,500 civilian buildings. The latter includes more than 11,000 residential units, 2,300 commercial buildings, 65 educational facilities, 77 medical facilities, and various public squares, sports facilities, fuel storage facilities, and other critical civilian infrastructure. Yet two weeks into the war, the opposite dynamic of the alleged decisive blow appears to be taking shape. Finally, the chaotically bombastic rhetoric by the aggressors has set a relatively low bar for the definition of failure. … None of the pressures outlined above guarantee a particular outcome. Iran could weaken. Key stockpiles and launchers could be severely hit. Escalation could spiral unpredictably while de-escalation remains possible, potentially based on a differing threshold of pain for Israel and the United States. But the assumption that this war would be short, controlled, and strategically clarifying already appears misplaced as well as precarious. For now, what is certain is the mounting toll on civilians across the region—and the growing possibility that a campaign meant to reinforce US and Israeli supremacy may instead mark another turning point in its decline. [Read More]
(Video) Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Netanyahu Could Turn to Nuclear Bombs If Iran War Escalates
From Democracy Now! [March 10, 2026]
---- As President Trump gives conflicting statements about the length and objectives of the war he launched with Israel against Iran, fears are growing that the conflict could continue to expand throughout the region and beyond. Lawrence Wilkerson, retired U.S. Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, says the U.S. and Israel are committing wanton “war crimes” in Iran. “We have bombed civilians relentlessly. We have bombed a school. We have bombed a hospital,” says Wilkerson, who also suggests Western media outlets are downplaying the extent of the damage in Israel and how successful Iran has been in defending itself. “This is a war with long legs. Trump has completely misinterpreted it,” says Wilkerson. “The only one who’s interpreted it correctly is Bibi Netanyahu, and I think he’s ready to use a nuclear weapon, should it become as bad as it looks like it might right now, because Iran has not even began to shoot its most sophisticated missiles.” [See the Program]
(Video) “War on the Iranian People”: Nationalism Grows in Iran in Defiance of Deadly U.S. and Israeli Strikes
From Democracy Now! [March 12, 2026]
---- “This is all being read inside of Iran as a war on the Iranian people.” As oil prices threaten to spike to $200 a barrel amid Iran’s pressure campaign against the U.S. and its allies, professor Narges Bajoghli returns to Democracy Now! with an update on the war on Iran and its place in the modern history of U.S.-Iran relations. Bajoghli explains how the combination of harsh sanctions and an insidious propaganda campaign has created a deep political divide within Iran and its diaspora, as Iranians are stuck between theocratic governance and the prospective return of the U.S.-backed monarchy. [See the Program]
(Video) Economist Jeffrey Sachs: U.S.-Israeli “War of Choice,” Assault on U.N. Charter Could Lead to WWIII
From Democracy Now! [March 13, 2026]
---- The global economy has been rocked by the war in the Middle East, with Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatening energy flows and sending the price of oil soaring to its highest level in years. The United Nations Security Council responded to the unprovoked U.S.-Israeli war by passing a resolution this week condemning Iran — specifically for its attacks on U.S. allies in the region — while ignoring the role of the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government in instigating the bloodshed. Economist Jeffrey Sachs joins Democracy Now! to discuss the fallout of the “war of choice” and why it also constitutes an assault on the United Nations. “This is so out of control, without any logic, any rationality, not any humane, moral, legal justification whatsoever,” says Sachs. “It will lead to world war the way we’re going, because we have two malignant narcissists, Netanyahu and Trump, that are leading us to disaster.” [See the Program]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “The Unbelievable Madness of Our War With Iran,” by Annelle Sheline, The New Republic [March 10, 2026] [Link]; “As Hell Rains Down on Iran, Western Media averts its Gaze,” by Kamin Mohammadi, Truthdig [March 15, 2026] [Link]; “Iran Transformed,” by Arang Keshavarzian, New York Review of Books [March 8, 2026] [Link]; and (Video) “Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy: Israel Will Not Stop Wars & Occupation Until U.S. Pulls Support,” from Democracy Now! [March 13, 2026] [Link].
NEWS NOTES
At last week’s rally supporting International Women’s Day, one of our activities was fund-raising for Hope’s Door, an organization that “seeks to end domestic violence and to empower victims to achieve safety, independence, and healing from the trauma of abuse.” Those assembled in Hastings raised more than $200 for Hope’s Door. Visit their website to learn what they do and how you can support this worthy project.
Leqaa Kordia is the last Columbia student still in jail. She has been incarcerated at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas for one year. Last week she was visited by Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Recently Leqaa suffered a seizure caused by malnutrition. To learn more about this horrible case and how you might help, go here.
The war against Iran is/will be VERY EXPENSIVE. The official estimate is about $20 billion, with an additional $1 billion added each day. For those keeping score at home, the Iran cost-ticker is for you. Also on this site are other “not-official” estimates of the cost of this war. If it is a long one, which I expect it to be, a Wharton School project estimates to the total cost to the USA will be more than $250 billion. For more on this read “The Cost of War: Iran Edition,” by Eric Morrissette at Common Dreams.
We have no death penalty in NY, but state-murder is alive and well in a dozen states and several others have killing on pause, “for now.” Last week The New York Times put up an excellent editorial, “The Death Penalty Is Even More Horrifying Than You Think” showing, among other things, how the USA is alone among “modern states” in allowing state murder.
Money has always bought politicians, but recent developments in US campaign funding have highlighted the enormous influence of billions on US politis. According to a New York Times study published last week, “300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated more than $3 billion — 19 percent of all contributions — in federal elections in 2024, either directly or through political action committees.” For a user-friendly analysis, read “Billionaires Gave Nearly 20% of Donations in 2024 US Federal Elections,” by Stephen Prager, Common Dreams [March 9, 2026] [Link].
The Trump lie that Iranian-Americans are big fans of bombing Iran and overturning the current regime there is simply that, a lie. A recent poll organized by the National Iranian American Council found that “Iranian Americans overwhelmingly support a diplomatic off-ramp to reduce tensions and end the war.” Read more here.
German political philosopher Jürgen Habermas died yesterday at the ago of 96. For decades he was associated, as a later generation member, of the Frankfurt School, which included such famous thinkers as Theodore Adorn and Max Horkheimer. He was especially known for his attention to “the public sphere,” the political space – large or small – where ideas could be publicly discussed, which he saw as essential to democracy. To read the New York Times’ review of his life and work, go here.
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
‘Iran Is Not Gaza’: Arundhati Roy’s Scathing Speech on the US-Israeli War
By Arundhati Roy, Zeteo [March 12, 2026]
[FB - Arundhati Roy, was in conversation in New Delhi on Monday about her recent book ‘Mother Mary Comes To Me.’ At the end of the event, Arundhati delivered impassioned remarks on the war in Iran, US imperialism, and India’s own role in all of this.]
---- I know we are here today to talk about Mother Mary Comes To Me. But how can we end the day without talking about those beautiful cities – Tehran, Isfahan, and Beirut that are up in flames? In keeping with my Mother Mary’s spirit of candour and impoliteness, I would like to use this platform to say something about the unprovoked and illegal attack by the United States and Israel on Iran. It is, of course, a continuation of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza. It’s the same old genocidaires using the same old playbook. Murdering women and children. Bombing hospitals. Carpet bombing cities. And then playing the victim. But Iran is not Gaza. The theater of this new war could expand to consume the whole world. We are on the brink of nuclear calamity and economic collapse. The same country that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be readying itself to bomb one of the most ancient civilizations in the world. There will be other occasions to speak of this in detail, so here, let me simply say that I stand with Iran. Unequivocally. Any regimes that need changing, including the US, Israel, and ours, need to be changed by the people, not by some bloated, lying, cheating, greedy, resource-grabbing, bomb-dropping imperial power and its allies who are trying to bully the whole world into submission. [Read More]
Longing for My Tehran
By Orly Noy, Israeli journalist [March 14, 2026]
---- On the Israeli news, I watch as the country whose citizenship I hold devastates the one where I was born. Since the outbreak of the current war between Israel and Iran—much like during the previous one last summer—I have been sought after for interviews by foreign media. An Iranian-born pro-Palestinian Israeli political activist is, it seems, a highly desirable commodity. Some want me to explain the Israeli position, others the Iranian one, still others to hear about the attitudes of the Jewish Iranian community in Israel. I find myself repeating the same answers over and over. I cannot explain these positions, I say, since I find them difficult to understand myself. Nothing about this war makes much sense to me. During one interview I was asked whether I thought my parents had made a mistake when they left Iran following the 1979 revolution. The question astonished me, not because I found it offensive but because I have been asking it myself for so many years. Now, as I watch my homeland go up in flames, it echoes in my mind more loudly than ever. My family and I left Iran in January 1979, on the same day the Shah fled the country. I was nine years old. Later my parents came to identify as Zionists and even sought to apply that identity to themselves retroactively. But the truth is that until the revolution they had never even considered emigrating to Israel; all of our plans for the future took place in Iran. Over the years, as I became Israeli, my parents maintained a proud Iranian identity. From our emigration until his death, there was not a single day when my father’s soul did not long for his Tehran. [Read More]
No Kings: How to Win A Ceasefire, End Trumpism, and Achieve Anything/Everything Else As Well
By Michael Albert, Founder of Znet [March 14, 2026]
---- We win almost any social demand only when some elite figure(s) succumb and implement the sought change. We demand a higher wage, a new stop sign at a dangerous intersection, abortion rights, affirmative action, a wealth tax, an end to a war—whatever. In each case. the demand is either met or unmet when some elite or elites accept or reject it. What can cause the involved decision-makers, DMs, to make a decision we seek? It is almost never that we teach the DMs new morals. It is almost never that we get the DMs to substantially agree with us. It is almost always, instead, that the DMs conclude that to to do what we wish will cost the DMs less than to not do what we wish. First, how can I be so sure of that? Second, what can we do that raises unbearable costs for a DM who doesn’t implement wharf we demand? [Read More]
(Video) From Iraq to Iran to Venezuela: Antonia Juhasz on U.S. Quest for Fossil Fuel Dominance
From Democracy Now! [March 10, 2026]
---- We continue our conversation with investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz, who says the Iran war should be viewed as part of a larger fossil fuel agenda. “Let’s remember that after Iraq, Iran was always next on the Bush administration’s agenda for war,” she says. Juhasz also notes that military operations have “an enormous climate toll,” which is compounded during times of active conflict. Oil prices surged past $100 a barrel this week as the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran threatens global energy supplies and the broader economy. Iranian officials say no oil will be allowed to leave the Middle East until the bombardment stops, raising fears of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which about 20% of the world’s oil and gas flows. This comes as Israel has struck oil depots in Tehran, blanketing the capital in smoke and toxic rain. “What we’re seeing is just one of the clearest depictions yet of the frailty of a global order that is grounded in fossil fuels. All sides in this war are using fossil fuels as a weapon of war,” says independent investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz, who reports on energy and climate. [See the Program] For Part 1 of this interview, go here.
ALSO OF INTEREST - “’The Horror! The Horror:’ Trump and the White Man’s Burden Redux,” by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [March 13, 2026] [Link]; “I’m No Longer Waiting For The Storm To Pass” [From Noam Chomsky’s assistant], by Bev Boisseau Stohl [March 13, 2026] [Link]; and (Video) “Amnesty Head Agnès Callamard on Iran War, Global Fight for Gender Justice & Killing of Yanar Mohammed,” from Democracy Now! [March 12, 2026] [Link].
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
How a Rocket in Iran Reverberates in Gaza
By Hassan Herzallah, The Nation [March 12, 2026]
---- In a place that has endured two years of genocide and long years of blockade, any regional escalation is immediately read as a direct threat to daily life. Israel often takes advantage of such moments to tighten its control over Gaza, restrict access to essential goods, and limit movement, making daily life even more precarious for residents, while much of the world and the media remain distracted or unaware of what is happening on the ground. The signs appeared quickly. Israel sealed off Gaza’s borders—blocking the flow not just of goods but also humanitarian aid. It even shut down travel crossings that allow patients to leave Gaza for urgent medical treatment abroad. With the closures, fuel and gas trucks—which had only just begun to pick up after the ceasefire required Israel to lift its near-total siege—stopped entering the territory. [Read More]
The West Bank
The Most Predictable Place on Earth
By Jasper Nathaniel, Infinite Jaz [March 15, 2026]
---- Palestinians across the West Bank and injured more than fifteen. In addition to the March 7 killing, settlers shot and killed two brothers on March 2 after invading their land in Qaryut. On March 8, masked settlers stormed the village of Abu Falah around 2 a.m., wielding clubs and setting olive trees on fire. When residents came out to defend their homes, dozens more settlers arrived. Two men—Thaer Farouq Hamayel, 24, and Farea Jawdat Hamayel, 57—were shot in the head and killed. When Israeli soldiers arrived, they fired tear gas into the village. Another man, Muhammad Hassan Murra, 55, went into cardiac arrest after inhaling it and died. … Many observers have suggested that the latest wave of settler attacks is unfolding “under the cover of the war with Iran.” There may be some truth to this, but settlers were already operating with unprecedented confidence before the first bombs fell on Tehran. The machinery of violent displacement had been accelerating for months. Now it is simply running more smoothly and with less need for disguise. [Read More]
THE WAR ON UKRAINE
(Video) The Uncomfortable Truth About Ukraine
By Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Münchau, Econoclasts [March 12, 2026] – 40 minutes
---- In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau target the orthodoxy of NATO’s post-1991 expansion as well as dismantling the prevailing narrative surrounding the war in Ukraine, including the logistical delusion of a Western victory and the dereliction of duty by European leadership that risks a global escalation. [See the Program]
WAR ON CUBA?
Defend Cuba From US Efforts to Crush It
By Helen Yaffe, Jacobin Magazine [March 2026]
---- Donald Trump’s efforts to blockade Cuba’s fuel supply aim to create chaos. Now more than ever, Cuba needs practical international solidarity to resist US imperialist bullying. US president Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are seeking regime change in Cuba by the end of 2026. Their actions expose the hypocrisy of US policy toward Cuba over decades — claiming to champion human rights while imposing a blockade that denies Cubans access to vital resources. Trump openly backs the return of Cuba’s old elite and has even suggested a “friendly takeover” of Cuba by the United States. After years of the US establishment blaming the island’s economic problems on socialism, incompetence, and mismanagement, Trump today openly boasts that the US embargo means “there’s no oil, there’s no money, there’s no anything.” If Cuba really were a failed state, as Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden claim, US economic warfare would be unnecessary. This renewed aggression reveals a declining great power losing hegemony, riven by contradictions and internal crises, and desperate to crush all challenges and alternatives in order to preserve its dominance. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Now Comes the Heat [War and the environment]
By Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years [March 13, 2026]
---- Trump’s endless folly (first tariffs, now a desperately stupid war that has closed the Strait of Hormuz) has caused what everyone is beginning to understand is widespread economic damage. As the Times reported today, “this is the big one,” and “the fallout is rattling households and businesses in neighborhoods all over the globe.” On a stable planet, though, the damage might be contained and repaired; someone as incompetent as Trump (who is now describing his war as a “short excursion” and insisting that the Strait is in “very good shape”) will eventually (please God) burn himself out. Our bigger problem, as we’re about to be reminded, is that the planet is the furthest thing from stable. The backdrop is about to become the foreground, and with that the drama will shift once more. It’s already hot, all over the world and here in the United States. That’s been a little hidden these past months, because the country’s population and power center—the northeast corridor from Boston to DC—has had a cold winter; until the last few days of rapid-onset mud season it’s felt like an old-school winter in New England (with sublime skiing, which has kept me sane). And Minnesota, the source of much of the year’s news so far, was cold too, at least in bursts. But we’ve been the exception: in fact, it was the second-warmest winter on record in the continental U.S., and that’s because the West broke every possible record, usually by a mile. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
(Video) “Killers of Roe”: Amy Littlefield Investigates the “Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights” in U.S.
From Democracy Now! [March 11, 2026]
---- Killers of Roe is a new book by the reproductive rights journalist Amy Littlefield on what she describes as the death of abortion rights in the United States. The book is framed as a murder mystery, examining a “twisted alliance of believers and opportunists” in the years and decades before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. “It started out as a murder mystery because it was a way to entice myself to tell a really difficult story about women dying preventable deaths as a result of anti-abortion policy,” says Littlefield. [See the Program]. ALSO OF INTEREST is Littlefield’s essay in the New York Review of Books, “Since Dobbs” [About abortion rights and telehealth networks] [March 13, 2026] [Link].
The Underground Movement to Spark Union Organizing From the Inside
By Ella Fanger, The Nation [March 10, 2026]
---- When you apply for a job as an “associate” at an Amazon warehouse, you don’t have to attach a résumé or supply references. All you have to provide is your name and your Social Security number, and the automated hiring system conducts a basic background check within minutes. If you clear that, congratulations—you got the job! Next you’re invited to a “hiring appointment” at a nondescript office building, where you shuffle into a line with dozens of other new hires, surrounded by banners in Amazon’s signature blue emblazoned with the company’s “Leadership Principles”: “Bias for Action,” “Learn and Be Curious,” “Customer Obsession.” You are photographed, drug-tested, and told, verbally, what your start date and schedule will be. At no point are you asked, “Why do you want to work here?” When I went through these steps in the fall of 2022, my answer would have been “I want to build a union at Amazon.” I was a “salt,” a worker who gets a job in order to organize their workplace. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
First the Cherokee, Now the Palestinians
By Norman G. Finkelstein, Current Affairs [1996]
---- A notable feature of the “ferment of the ’60s,” Noam Chomsky observed, was that it raised the “cultural and moral” awareness of many U.S. citizens. Perhaps the most striking example is current perceptions of the European conquest of the Americas. In marked contrast to even the recent past, few today would find justice, let alone nobility, in that chapter of world history. One may anticipate that Israelis, too, will some day rue what was done to the indigenous population of Palestine. Indeed, the process as well as the rationalizations of conquest were remarkably similar in the two cases. … Exemplary of the “generosity” of the U.S. government was the fate of the Cherokee Indians. Indeed, in its main lineaments, the Cherokee displacement typified the fate of many conquered peoples, Palestinians included. For that reason a detailed examination of the fate of the Cherokee nation in its relations with frontier settlers and the U.S. government serves as a useful parallel to the fate of the Palestinians in their contest with Jewish settlers and Israel. Although the two processes are widely separated by time, place, and culture, there are striking similarities in the rhetoric, tactics, legal justifications, and deployment of violence by the two conquest regimes. [Read More]
The Truth About Israel’s Violent Expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 Is Nothing New
By Amira Hass, Ha’aretz [Israel] [March 3, 2026]
---- “Thousands of newly discovered documents now make it possible to tell the true story of Israel’s expulsion of Palestinians in 1948,” declares the subheadline of another unsettling article by historian Adam Raz, published recently. The headline misses the mark. Palestinians told the “true story” of ‘48 long before these documents surfaced. The essence of that story has always been clear: the Hebrew army expelled them intentionally, and one of the means it employed was acts of murder and massacre. … Even if this knowledge was not immediately transcribed, cross-referenced by conventional historical methods, or translated into Hebrew, it conveyed the true story from the very beginning. It was the knowledge of the expelled, the survivors, the “present absentees,” the bereaved sisters, and the villagers who tried to reach – “infiltrate,” in our parlance – their vineyards to harvest fruit from trees their parents had planted. It belonged to the young people who sought revenge with weapons, the students who sang of return to their homeland, and the founders of the liberation organizations. [Read More]
