Since Pres­i­dent Trump took office in 2017, the lead­er­ship of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port­ed the pre­cur­sors to today’s dan­ger­ous U.S. esca­la­tion towards Iran: sanc­tions, proxy bat­tles and a bloat­ed mil­i­tary bud­get. Yet, now that we stand on the brink of a pos­si­ble U.S. war of aggres­sion, Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers are feign­ing con­cern that Trump is lead­ing a march to war with­out con­gres­sion­al approval, and using a faulty strat­e­gy to do so. These objec­tions, how­ev­er, are ground­ed in process cri­tiques, rather than moral oppo­si­tion — and belie Democ­rats’ role in help­ing lay the ground­work for the grow­ing confrontation.

These failures are consistent with a troubling pattern: Democrats tee up the ball for Trump’s aggressive maneuvers, and then express outrage when his administration takes a swing.

The U.S. drone assas­si­na­tion of Maj. Gen. Qas­sim Suleimani, the com­man­der of Iran’s Quds Force and a rank­ing offi­cial of the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment, takes con­fronta­tion with Iran to new heights, inch­ing the U.S. clos­er to the war the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has been push­ing for. While Trump deserves blame for dri­ving this dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion, he did not do it on his own.

As recent­ly as Decem­ber 2019, the House over­whelm­ing­ly passed the Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act (NDAA) for Fis­cal Year 2020 with a vote of 377 – 48. Two amend­ments were stripped from that bill before it went to a vote: Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D‑Calif.) amend­ment to block fund­ing for a war with Iran bar­ring con­gres­sion­al approval and Rep. Bar­bara Lee’s (D‑Calif.) amend­ment to repeal 2001’s ​“Autho­riza­tion for Use of Mil­i­tary Force Against Ter­ror­ists” (AUMF). That AUMF effec­tive­ly allows the gov­ern­ment to use ​“nec­es­sary and appro­pri­ate force” against any­one sus­pect­ed of being con­nect­ed to the 9⁄ 11 attacks, and has been inter­pret­ed broad­ly to jus­ti­fy U.S. aggres­sion around the world. Offi­cials from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion have sug­gest­ed that the 2001 AUMF may give them author­i­ty to go to war with Iran.

Of the 377 Rep­re­sen­ta­tives who vot­ed for the $738 bil­lion defense bill, 188 were Democ­rats. Just 41 Democ­rats opposed the leg­is­la­tion. The bill cleared the Sen­ate with a tal­ly of 86 – 8, with just four Democ­rats vot­ing against it. None of the Sen­a­tors run­ning for the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion were present for the vote. Before the vote, Sen. Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) took to the Sen­ate floor to brag about the fact that ​“par­ti­san demands” had effec­tive­ly been removed from the bill and declared that ​“san­i­ty and progress” had won out. ​“Reas­sur­ing­ly, the past few days have final­ly brought an end to bipar­ti­san talks and pro­duced a com­pro­mise NDAA,” said McConnell.

At the time of the bill’s pas­sage, 31 orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing Yemeni Alliance Com­mit­tee and the Nation­al Iran­ian Amer­i­can Coun­cil Action, put out a joint state­ment con­demn­ing the NDAA as a loom­ing dis­as­ter des­tined to be abused by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. ​“The NDAA is a mas­sive blank check,” reads the state­ment. ​“The autho­riza­tion of $738 bil­lion is obscene. Fur­ther inflat­ing the Pentagon’s over­stuffed cof­fers does not make us safer — it per­pet­u­ates a sys­tem that treats mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion as the solu­tion to all world prob­lems.” Despite these con­cerns, Democ­rats did not put up much of a fight, and the Con­gres­sion­al Pro­gres­sive Cau­cus declined to whip the vote against the NDAA.

Democ­rats’ com­plic­i­ty doesn’t stop with bloat­ed war bud­gets. In July 2017, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.) was the only law­mak­er in both the House and the Sen­ate who cau­cus­es with the Democ­rats to vote against a bill that bun­dled togeth­er sanc­tions on Iran, Rus­sia and North Korea. Pro­po­nents of the bill, mean­while, used anti-Rus­sia rhetoric to ram it through Con­gress. Sen. Dianne Fein­stein (D‑Calif.) told the Inter­cept at the time, ​“I just looked at the sanc­tions, and it’s very hard, in view of what we know just hap­pened in this last elec­tion, not to move ahead with [sanc­tions].”

Sanders was clear that he opposed the bill because of his oppo­si­tion to sanc­tions on Iran, but sup­port­ed sanc­tions against Rus­sia and North Korea, which are also aggres­sive and harm­ful to the peo­ple of those coun­tries. Still, he was demo­nized by some in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment. As we pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, Adam Park­homenko, for­mer Hillary Clin­ton aide and founder of the Ready for Hillary PAC, said on Twit­ter at the time, ​“Feel the Bern? Bernie Sanders vot­ed against Russ­ian sanc­tions today. 98 Sen­a­tors vot­ed for Russ­ian sanc­tions today. Sanders vot­ed the same way any­one with the last name Trump would vote if they were in the Sen­ate. No excuses―stop mak­ing them for him.”

When Trump — sur­round­ed by hawk­ish advi­sors — pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in May of 2018, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment round­ly crit­i­cized him, often cit­ing the sup­posed threat posed by Iran, even though the coun­try has no nuclear weapons pro­gram, accord­ing to U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies’ own assess­ments. ​“The pres­i­den­t’s will­ing­ness to shat­ter the inter­na­tion­al con­sen­sus, forged over years of ardu­ous nego­ti­a­tions, on how to con­strain Iran’s nuclear pro­gram only makes sense as part of a cam­paign to erase his pre­de­ces­sor’s lega­cy, regard­less of the con­se­quences to our nation­al secu­ri­ty,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D‑Calif.), the rank­ing Demo­c­rat on the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, said at the time.

Yet, Democ­rats’ pre­vi­ous sup­port for sanc­tions already vio­lat­ed the Iran deal, whose ben­e­fits for the Iran­ian peo­ple were almost entire­ly premised on relief from dev­as­tat­ing sanc­tions. In Decem­ber of 2018, high-pro­file Democ­rats, includ­ing Eliz­a­beth War­ren, called for the Unit­ed States to return to the Iran nuclear deal. While such a move would cer­tain­ly con­sti­tute a de-esca­la­tion, these calls were bereft of account­abil­i­ty for the role that Democ­rats played in embold­en­ing Trump to impose even more sanc­tions—and ulti­mate­ly walk away from the agreement.

These fail­ures are con­sis­tent with a trou­bling pat­tern: Democ­rats tee up the ball for Trump’s aggres­sive maneu­vers, and then express out­rage when his admin­is­tra­tion takes a swing. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has been on a course towards towards con­fronta­tion with Iran for three years. He’s hired noto­ri­ous Iran-war fanat­ics Gen. James Mat­tis, John Bolton and Elliot Abrams. His biggest donor is anti-Iran rad­i­cal bil­lion­aire Shel­don Adle­son. His State Depart­ment appears to have staffed out some of its Iran pol­i­cy to the pro-Israel, rightwing think tank Foun­da­tion for Defense of Democ­ra­cies. He’s sig­naled from day one his goal was to march the Unit­ed States towards war. Yet, Democ­rats still padded his war bud­gets, vot­ed for his appoint­ments, bait­ed him to have a tougher stance against Iran’s most impor­tant ally, Rus­sia, and did noth­ing to curb his sup­port for anti-Iran forces in the Mid­dle East. Democ­rats have, for the most part, been not only unwill­ing to spend their polit­i­cal cap­i­tal try­ing to change this course, but have active­ly encour­aged it through their sup­port for proxy bat­tles against Iran in Syr­ia and Iraq. And we must not for­get that it was Pres­i­dent Oba­ma who, in 2014, sent troops back to Iraq as part of the war against ISIS.

Although many Democ­rats were quick to crit­i­cize Trump’s dead­ly drone strike, most of the state­ments were qual­i­fied with asser­tions about the mur­der­ous nature of Suleimani. ​“No Amer­i­can will mourn Qassem Suleimani’s pass­ing,” begins Joe Biden’s state­ment. ​“He deserved to be brought to jus­tice for his crimes against Amer­i­can troops and thou­sands of inno­cents through­out the region. He sup­port­ed ter­ror and sowed chaos.” Ini­tial state­ments from Sens. Eliz­a­beth War­ren and Amy Klobuchar began with sim­i­lar dec­la­ra­tions. The first state­ment that has even referred to the killing as an ​“assas­si­na­tion” has been from Bernie Sanders. War­ren lat­er fol­lowed up her ini­tial state­ment with remarks that also used the lan­guage of assassination.

Some Democ­rats who vot­ed for the NDAA and hand­ed the Trump admin­is­tra­tion a blank check sud­den­ly expressed con­cern about the President’s pow­ers. ​“Soleimani was an ene­my of the Unit­ed States. That’s not a ques­tion,” tweet­ed Con­necti­cut Sen. Chris Mur­phy (D‑Ct.) — who vot­ed or the bill. ​“The ques­tion is this — as reports sug­gest, did Amer­i­ca just assas­si­nate, with­out any con­gres­sion­al autho­riza­tion, the sec­ond most pow­er­ful per­son in Iran, know­ing­ly set­ting off a poten­tial mas­sive region­al war?”

Oth­er Democ­rats are also express­ing con­cern that Trump is deploy­ing the wrong strat­e­gy against a dan­ger­ous ene­my, while accept­ing the premise that inter­ven­tion could be jus­ti­fied. This approach is reflect­ed in pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Pete Buttigieg’s state­ment, released today: ​“Before engag­ing in mil­i­tary action that could desta­bi­lize an entire region, we must take a strate­gic, delib­er­ate approach that includes con­sul­ta­tion with Con­gress, our allies, and stake­hold­ers in the Mid­dle East.” This state­ment pre­sumes that a desta­bi­liz­ing war of aggres­sion could be jus­ti­fied, con­ced­ing Trump’s moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, even as Buttigieg hand­wrings about the method.

We can’t stop a war with Iran unless we rec­og­nize U.S. aggres­sion is not the prod­uct of failed strat­e­gy, or the Repub­li­can Par­ty alone. It’s the prod­uct of a sys­tem where it’s nor­mal bipar­ti­san pol­i­tics to lay the build­ing blocks of war with no pub­lic account of the pro­found harm that is being done. And then, on the eve of said war, those Democ­rats who have been set­ting its course feign out­rage and shock — if a Repub­li­can is in the White House, that is. We saw this script play out with the Iraq War, and we’re see­ing it again now. In a U.S. polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment where killing peo­ple abroad comes with lit­tle polit­i­cal cost, the politi­cians who con­tributed to the U.S. cli­mate of bel­liger­ence are nev­er forced to face the con­se­quences. It costs noth­ing to to jock­ey for war, but every­thing to stand against it — includ­ing war’s pre­cur­sors, such as sanc­tions, bloat­ed mil­i­tary bud­gets and CIA med­dling. Our only hope is to change this.