This piece was simultaneously published in The Guardian.

Two decades ago, as Americans debated whether their country should invade Iraq, one question loomed the largest: Did Saddam Hussein possess weapons of mass destruction? If so, the implication was that the United States should disarm and overthrow his regime by military force. If not, Washington could keep that option in reserve and continue to contain Saddam through economic sanctions and routine bombings.

In time, the implications of the Iraq war far exceeded the boundaries of the original debate. Saddam, it turned out, had no weapons of mass destruction. But suppose he had possessed the chemical and biological agents that the war’s advocates claimed. Invading his country to destroy his regime would have given him the greatest possible incentive to use the worst weapons at his disposal. The war would have been just as mistaken—more so, in fact. 

For the same reason, the matter of WMD hardly explains the war’s genesis or its ultimate consequences. The advocates of invasion, it is true, didn’t want Saddam to build his supposed arsenal and potentially go nuclear. More important, however, they saw an opportunity to assert America’s dominance on the global stage after the country was struck on 9/11. They wanted to remake the Middle East and demonstrate American power. That they did, just not as they hoped.

Today the United States government, under President Donald Trump, is again weighing whether to use military force against a Middle Eastern country that was not preparing to attack the United States. This time the decisive question is supposed to be whether Iran was building a nuclear weapon and reaching some ill-defined point of no return. If you answer yes, you therefore favor U.S. strikes on Iranian enrichment facilities and possibly much else. After all, the United States has long maintained that Iran cannot acquire a nuclear weapon, and if that goal cannot be achieved by diplomacy—even if America’s ally Israel may have spoiled that diplomacy—it must be attempted by force.

The American public should resist such thinking, which does not make sense. Iran, according to U.S. intelligence, was not on the verge of producing a usable nuclear device. It was giving itself that option, producing highly enriched uranium, but had not yet decided to obtain a weapon, much less undertaken the additional steps needed to construct one. For the past two months, Iran had been in diplomatic negotiations with the Trump administration, and both sides appeared to be getting closer to a deal that would drastically curtail Tehran’s enrichment of uranium and prevent any path to the bomb.

Then Israel attacked. It acted less to preempt an Iranian bomb than to preempt American diplomacy. A new nuclear deal would have lifted sanctions on Iran’s battered economy, helping it to recover and grow. A deal would have stabilized Iran’s position in the Middle East and potentially strengthened it over time. Precisely by succeeding in preventing Iran from going nuclear, a deal would have advanced Iran’s integration into the region, accelerating the wary rapprochement Tehran had achieved with its historic rival, Saudi Arabia, over the past two years. The specific deal under discussion, which envisaged bringing Iran into a regional consortium to enrich uranium, would have kick-started the process. From there, who knows: perhaps the United States might normalize relations with Iran and, having rid itself of its main regional enemy, finally act on the desire of successive bipartisan presidents, Trump included, to pull back from the Middle East.

This was the outcome that would have best served the interests of the United States. This was the outcome Israel acted to prevent. To Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a formidable, normalized, and non-nuclear Iran was the threat that mattered most. Attacking Iran, by contrast, presented an opportunity—to cripple and perhaps even overthrow the Islamic Republic, whose best air defenses Israel had disabled the previous year, after Iran’s strongest regional allies in Lebanon and Syria crumbled in spectacular fashion. Israel does not know, because no one can, what kind of Iran will emerge from the wreckage: whether it will be more aggrieved or less, nuclear armed or not, a functioning state or a cauldron of chaos. Netanyahu took a gamble nonetheless, figuring the United States would finish his job, clean up his mess, or both.

Even if Iran were speeding toward a nuclear weapon, even if diplomacy had been exhausted, the threat of a nuclear Iran should not be inflated. Suppose for a moment that Iran went nuclear, which it may well do now that the absence of such a deterrent left it vulnerable to attack. If Iran got the bomb, the United States, a nuclear-armed country, would remain fundamentally secure. Israel, a nuclear-armed country, would remain fundamentally secure. Iran would go nuclear to ensure the survival of its regime. Firing nuclear weapons at Israel would assure Iran’s destruction. Iran is unlikely to do that.

Make no mistake: for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons is entirely undesirable. It could trigger the further spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and beyond. Iran could resume its destabilizing and destructive activities, targeting U.S. interests and allies, assured that no one would dare to strike at the regime. The United States has rightly invested considerable effort, over decades, to prevent an Iranian bomb. But is that objective worth war? Our war? This war? 

If the United States joins Israel’s fight to try to finish Israel’s job, it will enter into a war of unknowable scope against a country of 90 million people in a region of marginal strategic significance. Iran may well retaliate against Americans, triggering a large-scale, open-ended conflict. In the absolute best-case scenario, the war would quickly end in an Iranian capitulation so complete that Israel would be content to stop shooting. What then?

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Iranians won’t forget being attacked. Israelis won’t trust the country they attacked but left intact. And Americans will see that no matter whom they elect—even on the slogan of “America first”—their leaders refuse to take control of events and act on the national imperative to leave Middle East wars behind and focus instead on the great many unsolved and worsening problems that will actually decide America’s fate.

If, on the other hand, the United States steps back from the brink, it will open up new possibilities. Of valuing the well-being of Americans over the hatred of distant demons. Of no longer living in permanent, insatiable fear. Of getting out of the position from which a rogue ally can obstruct America’s efforts, determine its national agenda, and damage its civic life. 

Those are the possibilities worth fighting for.