Democrats in 12th District House race sound off on the Iran war

Twelve Democrats are vying in the June 2 primary for their party’s nomination to succeed a retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman in the 12th Congressional District (Republican Gregg Mele is running unopposed in the GOP primary).

We asked each of them what they think about the war in Iran. Here are their answers:

Matt Adams

I think the war is highly ill advised. It is poorly run. We are committing war crimes because of the leadership of Pete Hegseth, who despises legal oversight, especially from those like me, the military judge advocate generals. He’s fired the top JAGs from military. And so these war crimes need to be called out by experts such as myself, and they need to be stopped, and the war itself needs to end. It’s just a ridiculous war.

Sue Altman

The Iranian regime was a menace, but this war has no plan. It’s hurting the economy. Consumers are bearing the brunt of the cost of this war. It’s expensive. It’s a waste of money and it’s going nowhere and there’s no plan and there’s no exit strategy and it’s illegal.

Brad Cohen

I think that it’s an illegal war because the president of the United States has not gone to Congress and explained what our mission is, what our goals are, how you define success, and how you get out. Without that, he’s doing this on his own, and I don’t believe that, constitutionally, that’s appropriate, and Congress needs to come back and take back control of something the Founding Fathers put in the legislative branch for a reason.

Adam Hamawy

It’s an illegal and immoral war that needs to be stopped. I was in Iraq. From personal experience, I saw the biggest joke that was there was ‘did we find the WMDs today.’ And we have the same thing here now in Iran. We’re talking about nuclear weapons, regime change, and the real reason we’re doing that is because we are catering to special interests of the defense contractors and war mongers and with organizations like AIPAC and Israel’s special interests, so we need to look back to spending the money that we’re wasting overseas, a billion dollars a day on bombs, and spend it here in our community.

Kyle Little

It’s awful, it’s awful. We should have never — both times that Trump has bombed another country without congressional approval.  So that’s another reason he needs to be held accountable. And’s no reason for it. It’s only putting us at risk, putting all people at risk, putting our soldiers at risk, and you see the prices of gas right now, right? 
Gas prices have skyrocketed since this whole war has been going on. So yeah, it’s awful, to say the least.

Adrian Mapp

The war in Iran is a senseless war, a waste of taxpayers’ resources. We are spending over $2 billion, it had been reported, per day to fund a senseless war that we should never have started in the first place. And my thoughts on it are no different than the Vietnam War that we never should have fought, no different than the Iraq war that never should have fought. And so this war with Iran is a senseless war that doesn’t have the support of Congress, wasn’t approved by the War Powers Act as would be required, and it doesn’t have the support of our allies in the Middle Eastern region or our allies in Europe.

Verlina Reynolds-Jackson

This Trump administration is operating very, very illegally. They have not followed the War Powers Act. I believe that this is an unnecessary war that we’re in. We are operating without congressional approval. There’s no oversight. There’s no investigation. There’s no end to this war. It is costing us lives and trillions, trillions of dollars. And again, Congress has the power to appropriate, to de-appropriate. I feel like we need to definitely invoke those. And also the Leahy Act — there are ways that we can make sure that everybody follows the rules and there are sanctions if there are things that they should not be doing. There’s a watchful eye there. The war is an unnecessary thing. There’s just no plan for us.

Shanel Robinson

It is unauthorized. We are committing war crimes where innocent lives are being taken. As a veteran, I understand the rules of engagement and some of the business cases for war. However, that’s not where we are as a country. And I find it horrible, how we’ve gotten here. And certainly, any crime against war crimes, or any engagement of wars, such as what we’re engaged in right now, just not in Iran, but other conflicts since this administration has taken office, is not who we are as a country.

Squire Servance

It’s unconstitutional. We shouldn’t have been in there in the first place. I think if you go into war — my mother was a marine, so I’m sensitive to sending anyone in harms way, particularly in the war. I think you need to first exhaust all diplomatic avenues first. Then you need to have clear objectives when you go in that just don’t keep changing, and then you have to have congressional approval. For the Iran war, we had none of them. That’s the approach we should have taken to enter into this war, and now we’re seeing the outcome of higher gas prices specifically due to this war.

Sujit Singh

Well, it’s terrible for U.S. national interests and for global energy security, and it gives Iran a regional power status. It’s really bad. It’s the worst thing in the U.S. history. A big blunder, I would call that.

Jay Vaingankar

This is an illegal war that’s costing us over a billion dollars a day, and we’re paying for it as everyday Americans, not just as taxpayers, but we’re paying for it every day, with gas approaching $5 a gallon. 
And in the wealthiest country in the world, we wonder why we don’t have universal healthcare or universal childcare. It’s because our politicians prioritize our money on a military industrial complex and a war that costs a billion dollars a day.

Sam Wang

That invasion is poorly thought out, it’s in violation of the War Powers Act, and it takes us backwards. This ill-thought-out war is costing consumers at the gas pump. It’s costing hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent lives, and it’s in the service of pulling our attention away from other issues like public corruption and the Epstein files. So there appears to be no winner anywhere, and the sooner we resolve it by old-fashioned diplomacy, the better.

Interviews were edited for length and clarity, but not to alter meaning or context.

Nikita Biryukov, Dana DiFilippo, and Sophie Nieto-Muñoz contributed.