Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.—George Orwell

Recent events have alarmed us, demonstrating how ill-defined policy goals, bellicose rhetoric, policies and brinkmanship, and operating outside the well-defined framework of international law can easily bring countries to the brink of mutual disaster. —Middle East scholars

Countries go to war when they have decided that it’s in their interests to fight… Shooting down an RQ-4 drone — even in international waters — should not fundamentally change the likelihood of escalation. —Michael C. Horowitz , Sarah E. Kreps and Matthew Fuhrman

America does not need to blindly support countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the name of countering Iran. These governments repress their own people, stoke regional conflicts and have funded terrorism and radical indoctrination abroad. When the United States partners with Saudi Arabia by supporting a war in Yemen – supposedly to counter Iran – that creates a humanitarian disaster, America has lost sight of its interests.—Michael H Fuchs

When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.—Henry David Thoreau

A living dog is better than a dead lion.—Henry David Thoreau

If you’re not careful, Mr. President, hawks will lead you into a war that will be worse than anything the world has seen outside of WW II.—Brittain Ladd

We a group of Iranian women’s movement activists and women’s rights defenders strongly condemn US efforts to stoke yet another war in the Middle East, this time against Iran. The Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign, its bellicose posturing and sanctions, hurt the Iranian people most, especially women, children, minorities, refugees, the chronically ill and those with disabilities.—Iranian Women Activists

A war with Iran, either by choice or miscalculation, would produce dramatic repercussions in an already destabilized Middle East and drag the United States into another armed conflict at immense financial, human, and geopolitical cost.—Retired US generals

While I firmly believe that Iran’s government should be held accountable for its sponsorship of terror, regional aggression, illegal detention of dual U.S.-Iranian nationals, and repression of its own citizens, the Trump administration’s go-it-alone policy toward Iran has alienated us from our key allies and raised the possibility of sparking another conflict in the Middle East. —Sen. Dianne Feinstein