Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is playing the same role he played more than two decades ago — ineffectively — in trying to stop the U.S. from committing to full-scale involvement in a war in the Middle East.
Sanders is urging caution and emphasizing the parallels between today’s calls to attack Iran with U.S. missiles to destroy its nuclear capabilities — and possibly open the door to “regime change” — and similar calls heeded during the George W. Bush administration to take out Iraq’s leadership, which was incorrectly said to be pursuing a nuclear weapon.
The Vermont Senator is also using words that have been proven to appeal powerfully to the current U.S. Commander-in-Chief — Sanders wrote today on X: “Trump was right.” Sanders refers specifically to 2016, when the then-GOP candidate for President said “obviously the war in Iraq was a big fat mistake.“
Donald Trump in 2016: “Obviously the war in Iraq was a big fat mistake.“
Trump was right.
Let’s not repeat that mistake in 2025 by getting dragged into a war with Iran.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 18, 2025
“Let’s not repeat that mistake in 2025,” Sanders wrote, “by getting dragged into a war with Iran.”
By praising Trump’s after-the-fact assessment of Bush’s Iraq mission, Sanders hopes to sway the President, who has let it be known that any decision to abandon diplomacy and attack Iran lies solely with him.
In case his appeal to Trump’s judgement isn’t effective, Sanders is also introducing a legislation to ban an attack (see below), though any declaration of war against Iran by the U.S. is already required by law to be authorized by Congress.
Tonight, I introduced legislation to stop Trump from from leading us into an illegal war with Iran.
Another war in the Middle East could cost countless lives, waste trillions more dollars, and lead to even more deaths, more conflict, and more displacement. pic.twitter.com/CchHlSnLZy
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 17, 2025
While Sanders credits Trump with being correct with his Iraq invasion assessment, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who encouraged the Iraq invasion and supported a false narrative that Saddam Hussein’s military was close to producing a nuclear weapon, was wrong, Sanders says.
As Sanders writes, sharing a press release, Netanyahu was wrong then on Iraq and he is wrong now on Iran.
Netanyahu was wrong in 2002.
He Is wrong now. pic.twitter.com/2wZAlVF4OZ
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 19, 2025
[Sanders cited the nearly 5,000 Americans killed, the “32,000 wounded and a cost of roughly 3 trillion dollars,” noting that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis also died “as a result of that tragic war.”]
Sanders can refer to voices inside the Trump administration that refute Netanyahu’s assertions. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said this spring that, though Iran had enriched “unprecedented” amounts of uranium, that the nation was not believed to be developing a nuclear weapon.
President Trump, creating cover for any future aggressive action, on Tuesday rejected Gabbard’s assessment, saying: “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.”