“Dear Senator, I am writing to express my deep concern regarding the recent threats directed at Iran”. Thus begins the letter that Giampi Sciutto, a professor of physics, “concerned about the escalating rhetoric” of US President Donald Trump, sent to one of the senators of the State of California.
Sciutto asks whether “there are any legislative measures, such as an emergency bill or a specific motion, that could be introduced to prevent this potential conflict and encourage the resumption of negotiations”. His is just one of many letters that in these hours are reaching members of the House of Representatives and Senate, expressing dissent, condemnation but also the urgency of a change of course. The appeal of Pope Leo XIV yesterday has provided further encouragement for this growing wave of calls for de-escalation, which for weeks has been visible both in the streets and across digital platforms in the United States.
“President Trump’s actions are drawing our country into yet another foreign war – that a majority of Americans don’t want – without any evidence of Iran posing an imminent threat of attack and without Congressional authorisation”, said Senator Adam Schiff, explaining that his motion to limit the President’s war powers was not carried. However, Schiff reiterated that “Congress must not relinquish its constitutional power or its voice at this critical moment”, stressing his personal commitment “to ensuring that the President is held accountable to the Constitution and to the American people, and to preventing him from dragging the United States into another endless war”.
The futility and immorality of the conflict had also been highlighted from the outset by the Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Robert McElroy, who in an interview with the Catholic Standard stated: “The criterion of just cause is not met because our country was not responding to an existing or imminent and objectively verifiable attack by Iran”. He further added that the “current war effort does not meet Catholic just war teaching because it is far from clear that the benefits of this war will outweigh the harm which will be done”.
While the US President has continued to evoke the possibility of causing “an entire civilisation” to perish and of striking bridges and power plants, without regard for civilian casualties, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops responded that such a threat “is not morally legitimate”. The Jesuit journal America Magazine went so far as to accuse Trump of war crimes: should he strike Tehran without sparing civilians, he will have “unambiguously” committed a war crime.
More than one hundred lawyers have written to the President asserting the illegitimacy of a possible conflict against Iran, while former congresswoman and former Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene on Tuesday called for his removal under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, describing on X the presidential rhetoric about the destruction of Iranian civilisation as “evil and madness”.
Meanwhile, theologians, priests, academics and Catholic authors of various orientations, together with media figures, have mobilised on social networks to reiterate that any attacks against civilian targets and infrastructure in Iran would constitute grave war crimes. According to many, Trump’s rhetoric is seriously damaging the moral reputation of the United States; some also suggest that the President, through his repeated posts invoking a logic of revenge, could find himself facing international justice, even before the Court in The Hague.
At the same time, as we write, Trump has announced that he has accepted the proposal of the President of Pakistan for a two-week ceasefire, on condition that the Strait of Hormuz be reopened “immediately”. The announcement came via Truth Social, a non-institutional and non-diplomatic channel which, in the coming hours, will likely continue to reflect the President’s mood more than to outline a clear strategy for peace, as requested by Giampi and by many Americans of their commander-in-chief.
