The Iran Reckoning American Jews Need

This week, I rediscovered a letter I drafted in 2015, after I signed onto a rabbinic statement supporting the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA. At the time, some members of my congregation were upset that I supported the agreement.

I understood their concerns. Iran was, and remains, a dangerous regime. It has threatened Israel, sponsored terror around the world, destabilized the Middle East, and brutalized its own people. But I had come to believe, after learning from serious people on both sides of the issue, that the JCPOA was likely the best available option for preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon: it placed meaningful constraints on Iran’s nuclear program, while the realistic alternatives appeared worse.

Tragically, we are now living through one of those alternatives. President Trump tore up the JCPOA and replaced it with nothing but a vague strategy of “maximum pressure.” Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better agreement never materialized. Bombing raids on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025 did not destroy Iran’s capabilities, regardless of what the Trump administration said at the time. And the war jointly launched by the United States and Israel in February that was supposed to “finish the job” — the job that had already been declared finished — has clearly not done so. After all the seemingly pointless death and destruction, we have finally rediscovered the necessity of a negotiated solution.

But the new agreement reached by the United States and Iran appears far worse from the perspective of Israeli and American interests than the one we had in 2015. The JCPOA, imperfect as it may have been, imposed real limits on enrichment, reduced Iran’s stockpile, restricted centrifuges, subjected the program to inspections, and was backed by a broad international coalition. The new framework offers Iran significant economic relief, while deferring the hardest questions — including the nuclear issue itself — to further negotiations. And because force was tried, oversold, and shown to be insufficient, the credible threat of force behind the American negotiating position has been badly diminished.

This is where the alternative to the JCPOA has led: from withdrawal to maximum pressure, from maximum pressure to war, from war to weaker diplomacy. What was sold as strength turned out to be a dangerous, hubristic fantasy. We have just learned the hard way that you cannot bully, bluster, and bomb your way to peace and security; I fear we will be paying the price of that moral and strategic miscalculation for a long time to come.

As a rabbi, what concerns me most about this fiasco is the role that many Jewish leaders and institutions played in enabling the Trump administration’s actions. This is uncomfortable, in large part because of the age-old antisemitic lie that Jews manipulate and control world powers. Neither American Jews nor the Israeli government made Trump tear up the JCPOA or go to war with Iran. But we must be honest that many American and Israeli Jews encouraged and celebrated these actions. Back in 2015, much of the organized American Jewish community opposed the JCPOA; some organizations, like AIPAC, marshaled extraordinary resources to fight against its passage, and supported the efforts of Israeli leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu to derail the deal. Politicians like Trump, whether sincerely or cynically, who echoed this fierce opposition, were bolstered by a Jewish community that too often treated resistance to the JCPOA as the only true pro-Israel position. Meanwhile, American Jews like me who supported the JCPOA were accused of naïveté, indifference to Israel’s security, and even betrayal of the Jewish people.

This moment therefore calls for American Jews to reckon with the role we played in bringing us to this point. And that reckoning begins with reconsidering our faith in strength of arms as the primary guarantor of our security, as well as reframing our understanding of what it means to be pro-Israel.

Jewish tradition has long warned against making power into an idol. The prophets of Israel, for example, repeatedly challenged the belief that military strength could, by itself, guarantee security. On the contrary, they persistently warned that societies become most vulnerable when they confuse force with wisdom, or mistake domination for safety.

The prophet Jeremiah watched the kingdom of Judah panic before the threat of Babylon, and turn to mighty Egypt for protection. Isaiah looked at a society that had armies and fortified defenses, but had hollowed itself out from within through political corruption and economic exploitation. Their message was not that might does not matter. They did not deny the reality of enemies, armies, or geopolitical threats. At the same time, they insisted that no alliance, army, or arsenal can save a society that has lost its capacity for truth, justice, humility, and moral judgment.

The later prophet Zechariah expresses the point succinctly in his most famous claim: “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, says the Lord of Hosts.” Might and power can build walls, strike enemies, and secure territory. But they cannot, by themselves, create the conditions for enduring security and flourishing. For that, we need “My spirit”: alignment with God’s redemptive vision of a loving, just, and peaceful world.

Today, too many of us have relegated Zechariah’s radical message to the realm of pious platitude. We valorize might and power while neglecting the godly spirit of mercy and justice that is supposed to discipline them. We imagine that with enough force, our enemies can be pressured, bombed, humiliated, and then compelled to accept whatever terms we dictate. But time and again, our tradition warns that when nations become intoxicated by what their power can do, they stop asking what their power cannot do, what unintended consequences it may unleash, what dangers it may intensify, and what better — even if imperfect — alternatives it may obscure.

This is also why we must no longer allow pro-Israel politics to be defined by the most hawkish positions. The mindset that casts diplomacy as appeasement, restraint as weakness, and criticism as betrayal has once again been exposed as fallacious; the policies it produces have been exposed as failures. One can believe that an imperfect diplomatic agreement may be better than a disastrous war not despite one’s love for Israel and concern for its future, but because of it.

I pray this new deal succeeds in permanently ending hostilities, constraining Iran’s nuclear ambitions, protecting Israel, and reducing the likelihood of a wider regional catastrophe. But I also want us to tell the truth about how we got here, and to learn from our failures so we do not repeat them in the future.

Not every threat can be neutralized through force of arms; not every enemy can be bombed into submission. True and lasting safety requires strength, but never strength alone. It requires the hard and holy work of building a world aligned with the godly spirit of justice, compassion, and peace. I wish we had seen that in 2015. I hope the lessons of this tragic experience will discipline us to see it now.