The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) led the groups
in a letter to Biden asserted that it is not in the national interest
for the US to be led into a war with Iran by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
far-right government.
The letter's signatories include Just Foreign Policy,
Friends Committee on National Legislation, IfNotNow, US Campaign for
Palestinian Rights, CodePink, Peace Action, and the Quincy Institute for
Responsible Statecraft.
"The primary ask behind this letter is that the Biden
administration utilize the significant leverage it has to rein in Netanyahu as
he continues to proceed with a consistently failed 'de-escalation through
escalation' approach throughout the region that has cost countless civilian
lives," NIAC explained.
As stated in the letter, "It is in the strong national
interest to utilize diplomacy, backed by full American leverage—including
withholding further offensive weapons transfers to Israel's military—to move
all the parties back from the brink and toward a cease-fire that ends the
devastation of Gaza and Lebanon and reverses the slide to regional
war."
"Moreover, we urge you to recognize and respect that
Congress has not authorized military force against Iran or militias backed by
Iran, and that any potential military action against Iran could only proceed
following a debate and passage of a war authorization before entering our
troops into any imminent hostilities in the region," the groups continued.
"President Biden has recently spoken of steps he has
taken to wind down America's military footprint abroad," the letter adds.
"However, unless he acts quickly and decisively through diplomacy, it
appears that a new endless war will be his legacy."
The US provides Israel with billions of dollars
worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover for its yearlong war on
Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 148,000 Palestinians and is the
subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
Fears of a full-blown regional war have mounted recently as
Israel escalates hostilities by assassinating Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in
Tehran and Beirut and as Israeli forces invade southern Lebanon accompanied by
a bombing campaign that has left thousands of Lebanese dead and wounded.
Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based political and paramilitary
group, has been engaged in limited cross-border projectile attacks on Israel in
solidarity with Gaza, resulting in scores of deaths and injuries.
"The wars in the Middle East are just getting more and
more dangerous, not only with Lebanon, but now with Iran," CodePink
co-founder Medea Benjamin said Wednesday in a video urging Americans
to call their members of Congress to demand peace. "Netanyahu has been
trying to drag the US into a war with Iran for years, and unfortunately, there
are many members in this Congress... who are all too eager to go along with
him."
Benjamin highlighted remarks by US lawmakers including Rep.
Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) who said Tuesday that attacks on Iranian nuclear
facilities are "fair game."
"Let's remember it's Israel that has nuclear weapons,
not Iran," said Benjamin, who added that attacking Iran would encourage
Tehran's allies "to strike US soldiers in the region."
Benjamin also noted Sen. Robert Wicker's (R-Miss.) call for
regime change in Tehran—one of the latest in a long line of such calls over the
past 45 years—and admonished US officials for "forgetting the disastrous
attempts of regime change that the US did recently in Iraq, in Libya, in
Afghanistan," and that "the present government in Iran is there
precisely because of the US overthrowing their democratically elected
government in 1953."
"We want to live in peace," Benjamin added.
"We want to stop supporting the genocide that Israel is carrying out... We
don't want any more weapons sent to the region... We the American people don't
want war with Iran. We want to live in peace."
Courtesy: Common Dreams
