Prepared by the Central Jersey Coalition against Endless War

Attacking Iran would be a triple disaster:

Moral Disaster

  • Kill thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of Iranians, many of whom will be children;
  • Produce widespread hunger, disease, and permanent disabilities among Iran’s civilians;
  • Devastate a country that, inspectors say, is not now building nuclear weapons;
  • Continue a dangerous policy of preemptive attack on countries which have supposedly considered acts that they have not carried out yet;
  • Punish the people of a resource-rich, strategically located country for having a government that does not do Washington’s bidding or allow U.S. corporations to control and amass super-profits off of their oil;
  • Severely damage the fragile fabric of international law (an unprovoked attack is illegal).

Economic Disaster

  • Send the price of gas through the roof;
  • Destabilize the American economy which is barely recovering from a severe recession;
  • Provide an excuse to divert resources from critical needs such as education, healthcare, rebuilding infrastructure and development of non-destructive sources of energy;
  • Destroy the Iranian economy for years (possibly decades) to come;
  • Devastate other poor countries by increasing energy costs and destabilizing their frail economies;

Political Disaster

  • Threaten the prodemocracy movement specifically of women and the Iranian 99%.
  • Provide another example of the hypocrisy of Washington which ignores both the nuclear weapons development of its friends and its own failure to follow the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while using charges of weapons development to weaken its opponents;
  • Weaken our remaining human rights in the US by giving even more power to politicians and bureaucrats who use war and “national security concerns” as a cover to restrict dissent;
  • Start another protracted war just when the US is trying to get out of Afghanistan;
  • Strain relations with China, India, and Russia among others;
  • Give millions more people reason to fear and hate the United States for its war-making and perhaps induce attacks upon Americans;
  • Accelerate acquisition of nuclear weapons as the only potent safeguard against being attacked.

Further reading: Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran