Washington Post Editorial Board Gives Blessing to Endless War on Iran
The Washington Post editorial board published an official opinion piece on September 2, 2025, entitled “Iran is poking the bear again,” which serves as an official blessing from one of the nation’s highest-circulated newspapers to take the United States back to war with Iran.
Citing the continued standoff between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency following Israeli and American attacks on Iran in June, the editorial board declares, “Iran’s recalcitrance raises the prospect that American military forces might need to be called in again.” It also warns that “the United States is not afraid of using military force to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons,” noting that “Trump resisted pressure from the vocal isolationist faction in his base” amid the June war, signaling that the President could order strikes again if needed and the nuclear standoff persists.
This isn’t the case of the editorial board merely taking a bad position. The media helps shape the political environment around war and peace. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, editorial boards across the country - including The Washington Post - beat the drum steadily for war. As Bill Moyers noted in the documentary Buying the War, “in the six months leading up to the invasion (of Iraq) The Washington Post would editorialize in favor of the war at least 27 times.” As a result, it’s important to correct the record and make sure that history isn’t repeating itself.
The authors willfully ignore that a renewal of the June war against Iran would be illegal under both domestic and international law, and far more likely to deepen ongoing concerns about Iran’s nuclear program than resolve them.
To reach a new nuclear understanding with Iran will require a deeper understanding of Iranian calculations and security concerns, which the editorial board too readily dismisses. They claim that committing not to strike Iran amid negotiations would be giving away “too much leverage” for the United States. Yet it is a highly reasonable expectation that one party will not be actively bombed by another when negotiating during peacetime. It is all the more understandable given that President Trump okayed Israel’s attack on Iran in the middle of negotiations in June before joining them, imperiling any near-term diplomatic prospects.
Meanwhile, many in Iran are undoubtedly arguing that inviting international inspectors in, including to determine the location of its uranium stockpile, would not just be giving away “too much leverage” but actively endangering the nation, particularly absent a security guarantee. Otherwise, Iran would be at risk of providing certainty that future attacks would be more successful than the round of strikes in June. Whether a diplomatic process can be resuscitated will not be determined by chest thumping, as demonstrated by the threats pervasive in the Washington Post editorial, but whether any modicum of trust can be restored following U.S. violations of the 2015 nuclear deal and this summer’s bombing campaign that prematurely ended earlier negotiations.
Today, Washington, DC is proof positive that endless war abroad is corrosive to American democracy at home, with the streets literally militarized in service of the whims of President Trump. Such an outcome should be unthinkable, yet it has become normalized by those who ignore the Constitution whenever it might pose a speedbump to the forever wars abroad. Rather than warn foreign nations that their actions invite “more U.S. bombing,” the Editorial Board must insist that the current administration follow the law, and warn against any further move toward a potentially disastrous war with Iran without explicit authorization from Congress and the United Nations.