A War Nobody Voted For, A Silence Nobody Can Explain

Something happened this week in Kentucky that should concern every person in every country who believes that democratic governments should answer to their citizens rather than to their donors.

A United States Congressman — Thomas Massie of Kentucky — was defeated in his Republican primary election. He had served since 2012. He had won six consecutive elections. He was well-liked by his constituents. He lost his seat not because he lost the argument with voters, but because he was the target of the most expensive congressional primary campaign in American history. Total spending against him exceeded $34 million, according to official Federal Election Commission records. Pro-Israel groups and donors, including AIPAC’s election arm the United Democracy Project, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s RJC Victory Fund, and a PAC called MAGA KY backed by pro-Israel billionaire Paul Singer, together accounted for more than $15.5 million of the spending against him.

Massie had committed two unforgivable acts in the eyes of those who funded his defeat. He had pushed for the release of the sealed Epstein files. And he had been one of the very few Republican members of Congress to consistently vote against the Iran war and support war powers resolutions that would have required the President to seek Congressional authorisation before continuing military operations.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson two weeks before the primary, Massie said that at least 95% of the funding backing his opponent came from pro-Israel lobbying groups.

On election night, conceding his defeat, Massie raised a glass of raw milk and told his supporters: “I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent to concede, and it took a while to find him in Tel Aviv.” 

That sentence tells you most of what you need to know about the political architecture sustaining this war.

The constitutional violation that no one is discussing

Before examining the geopolitical dimensions of what Alastair Crooke and other serious analysts are now identifying as a planned return to full-scale hostilities, let us begin with what is already established fact.

The United States Constitution grants Congress, not the President, the power to send US troops to war, except for limited strikes for national security reasons. Yet Trump launched Operation Epic Fury on 28 February 2026 without a formal declaration of war, without an address to the American nation, and without any meaningful Congressional debate.

When the war hit the 60-day threshold mandated by the 1973 War Powers Resolution — the legal ceiling beyond which the President must seek Congressional authorisation — Trump wrote letters to Congress claiming that because a ceasefire was in effect, no authorisation was required. The letters read: “On April 7, 2026, I ordered a two-week ceasefire. The ceasefire has since been extended. There has been no exchange of fire between the United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026. The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated.”

The Hormuz blockade was still active when those letters were written. American naval vessels were still operating in the Persian Gulf in a war posture. New York Times reporting on preparations for resumed strikes was published the same week. The hostilities had not terminated. The letters were a legal fiction designed to extinguish a constitutional obligation.

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, one of the few voices who have consistently demanded adherence to Constitutional process, said before the war even began: “If some of my colleagues support war, then they should have the guts to vote for the war, and to be held accountable by their constituents, rather than hiding under their desks.” He and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky filed a resolution to block hostilities against Iran unless explicitly authorized by Congressional declaration. The Republican majority blocked it.

Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee, speaking immediately after the launch of Operation Epic Fury, put the constitutional problem precisely: “The American people did not vote for another war in the Middle East. They voted for lower costs, safer communities, and improving quality of life for their families — not launching military action that risks dragging us into another open-ended conflict with Iran. The Trump Administration is asking Americans to accept a war of choice with no clear objective and no endgame.” 

The “now or never” ideology driving the next round

Alastair Crooke — the former British MI6 officer turned geopolitical analyst, one of the sharpest observers of the Middle East operating today — has identified with precision the ideological logic driving what sources indicate is a planned return to intensive military operations.

The argument being made inside Washington and Tel Aviv, according to Crooke’s analysis, is this: if Iran is not destroyed now, in this window, there will never again be a US president sufficiently aligned with the project to do the work. If Iran escapes this campaign and emerges with its Hormuz leverage intact, its resistance axis partially rebuilt, and its deterrent credibility established against the most powerful military on earth — Iran will be a dominant regional power for a generation. And Israel, which staked its regional strategic position on this campaign, will be strategically defeated.

From this perspective, escalation is not irrational. It is the only move left for those who invested ideologically and financially in a project that has failed to achieve its decisive objective. The logic of sunk costs becomes the logic of escalation.

Professor Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago — who has been wargaming Iran scenarios for over two decades and who warned before the war began that closing Hormuz would be Iran’s primary strategic response — assessed the current moment with characteristic directness: Trump is sending a clear message. The war is not over. The next shock is coming. And that shock will include the global economy.

China has not helped Washington win. It will not.

The reporting from Beijing following Trump’s visit tells its own story.

Two days after Trump returned from Beijing, the New York Times reported that the US and Israel were “engaged in intensive preparations — the biggest since the ceasefire took effect — for the possible resumption of strikes against Iran as soon as the following week.” 

While China was calling for restraint, Trump was issuing military threats against Iran on an almost daily basis. William Yang, analyst at the International Crisis Group, noted the contradiction bluntly: “Trump has tried to coerce Iran into accepting US terms by threatening to resume bombing if Tehran does not agree to American conditions.”

China’s position was not ambiguous, even if it was expressed with diplomatic precision. Wang Yi publicly supported Iran’s right to develop civilian nuclear energy. Xi Jinping stated that international law “cannot be implemented selectively or ignored,” and that the world cannot be allowed to return to the “law of the jungle.” These are not neutral formulations. They are a systematic rejection, delivered in the language of statecraft, of the American approach to the conflict.

Wall Street Journal reporting indicated that Chinese companies were planning to route arms transfers to Iran through third countries to obscure their origin — a further indication of where Beijing’s practical commitments lie, beneath the diplomatic language.

Russia and China have communicated directly to Washington, through multiple channels, that a resumed bombing campaign is unacceptable to them. During the ceasefire period, both countries were actively assisting Iran in reconstituting its military capabilities — supplying air defence systems, missile components, and strategic intelligence. Putin and Xi met in Beijing during this period. The message to Washington was deliberate: the Russia-China-Iran strategic relationship has not weakened. It has deepened.

Larry Johnson, the former CIA officer whose analysis of the war has been consistently ahead of mainstream commentary, has reported that Russia and China are working — through Pakistan as intermediary — to restructure the Gulf security architecture. The project: convincing Saudi Arabia and Qatar to withdraw basing and airspace rights for US operations against Iran and enter instead a security arrangement guaranteed by Moscow and Beijing. If that project advances, the geographic foundation for sustained US military operations against Iran effectively disappears.

The opposition that is not there

This is perhaps the most revealing aspect of the entire crisis, and the one that deserves the most sustained attention.

The Democrats who appeared on weekend television programmes in the weeks following the ceasefire announcement largely devoted their foreign policy commentary to criticising Trump for being insufficiently aggressive toward China. The main opposition party in the United States is not opposing the war against Iran. It is arguing that Trump is not being hawkish enough toward America’s largest geopolitical competitor. 

This is the political environment in which the war continues. There is no credible institutional opposition to escalation. The Republicans who control Congress have blocked every war powers resolution. The Democrats who nominally provide opposition are outbidding Trump on China aggression. The one Republican member of Congress who consistently voted against the war and used his platform to challenge its legal basis has just been defeated in the most expensive congressional primary in American history, funded overwhelmingly by pro-Israel lobbying money.

Congressman Ro Khanna of California, who worked alongside Massie on war powers resolutions and the Epstein files, said on the night of Massie’s defeat: “He lost because he had the guts to stand up to the Epstein class and against the war.” He added a pointed observation about the political demographics of the result: Massie won voters under 45 by 30 points. He lost to AIPAC money and Trump’s endorsement. 

The younger generation of American voters, across party lines, does not want this war. The polling on this is consistent. Meaningful opposition among voters exists — it simply has no institutional expression in the current political structure, because the institutions have been secured by the money that funds the war’s continuation.

Senator Elizabeth Warren was among the few consistent voices in the Senate raising constitutional alarms. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, she said directly: “Donald Trump is once again playing red light, green light. This time, war with Iran. Only Congress can declare war, and the Senate must vote immediately to prevent another endless war.” The Senate did not vote.

The economic costs landing on ordinary people

The geopolitical analysis matters. But so does the immediate reality of what the war costs people who have no voice in its prosecution.

The US Producer Price Index rose 6% for the twelve months ending April — the highest level since December 2022. Fresh vegetable prices rose more than 44% on an annual basis over the three most recent months of data.

These price increases are not incidental to the war. They are the transmission mechanism through which the Hormuz disruption reaches the grocery bills of families in Kuala Lumpur, Lagos, Manila, and Memphis alike. The fertiliser shortage that the Gulf disruption has created will not show up on food prices for another six to twelve months, as reduced planting translates into reduced harvests. The full economic cost of the war has not yet arrived. What ordinary people are experiencing now is the early wave.

In the United States itself, 3,500 railway workers went on strike, auto workers rejected concessionary contracts, and labour action was spreading across multiple sectors. The immediate trigger was the cost of living crisis driven by the war’s economic effects. 

Professor Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University made the connection that no Washington policymaker wants to acknowledge: the director of the US Office of Management and Budget, when asked under Congressional testimony how much the war would cost, said he had no idea. An administration that launched a war that has produced the largest energy supply disruption in modern history did so without calculating what it would cost. And the people absorbing those costs — in higher energy bills, higher food prices, higher mortgage rates driven by inflation — had no vote in the decision.

The Lindsey Graham problem

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina described Trump’s position as “his Churchill moment,” arguing that the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran justified any economic cost.

The historical comparison is worth examining directly, because it tells us something important about the quality of reasoning being applied to these decisions.

Churchill came to power in May 1940, after Nazi Germany had already invaded Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and was actively invading France. Britain was under immediate existential threat. The sacrifice Churchill asked for was in defence of Britain’s own survival against an enemy that had already demonstrated its intention to conquer Europe.

Iran has not attacked the United States. Iran has not attacked any American territory. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to a US-Israeli military campaign that killed its Supreme Leader, its Supreme Leader’s family, and senior officials of the Iranian state. Iran is defending itself from an attack launched without Congressional authorisation, without an address to the American people, and without any allied support beyond Israel.

The Churchill comparison is not merely inapt. It inverts the actual situation. Churchill was defending a country under attack. Graham is advocating for continuing an attack on a country that was not the aggressor.

What the Massie defeat means

The most expensive House primary in American history has produced a result that is clarifying in its implications. The combined force of Trump’s endorsement and AIPAC’s $32 million proved insurmountable even against a well-liked incumbent who won voters under 45 by 30 points. His replacement is Ed Gallrein, a Navy SEAL whose financial backers have not been fully made public. 

Al Jazeera’s analysis of the race quoted Massie’s opponent directly: AIPAC’s United Democracy Project described Massie as “the most anti-Israel Republican in the House.” He was not, in any sense, anti-Israel in his record. He was against all foreign aid — to Israel, Ukraine, Egypt, and everyone else. He believed in the Constitution’s allocation of war powers to Congress.

That was sufficient to make him the target of $34 million in opposition spending and a presidential campaign of personal denunciation.

The question Al Jazeera’s analysts raised is the correct one: what does it mean for democratic governance when the most expensive weapon deployed in an American election is not argument, but money — and when the money overwhelmingly comes from a foreign policy lobbying apparatus whose primary interest is the continuation of a war that American voters oppose in polling majority?

Alastair Crooke’s analysis of the “now or never” moment takes on its full significance in this context. The ideological and financial interests driving this war are not primarily American in their orientation. They are invested in an outcome — the strategic destruction of Iran as a regional power — that serves Israeli strategic aims, enriches American defence contractors and energy exporters, and imposes its costs on everyone else.

The ordinary American who is paying more for vegetables and petrol is subsidising a war they did not vote for, prosecuted without the Constitutional authorisation their elected representatives are required to provide, sustained by campaign finance mechanisms that ensure the elected representatives who might oppose it are eliminated from Congress by money that exceeds what any previous primary has ever seen.

The endgame nobody is saying out loud

Glenn Diesen, the Norwegian professor of international relations whose analysis of US-Russia-China dynamics has been consistently precise, identified the underlying strategic problem clearly: the original American plan was to destroy Iran and, if that failed, to demonstrate enough destruction to claim victory and withdraw — as was done in Yemen. But Hormuz has changed that calculus. Iran’s control over the strait means there is no exit to a pre-war status quo. Iran is guaranteeing its own security through geography and deterrence, not through agreement with Washington.

Every day that passes in the ceasefire, Iran rebuilds its military capacity with Russian and Chinese assistance. Every day that passes, the economic pressure on American consumers — and therefore on the political viability of continued escalation — increases. Every day that passes, more countries calculate that the American security guarantee is worth less than they previously believed, and look for alternatives.

The war’s architects had a window. They used it. They did not achieve their objective. The window is closing. And rather than accept that reality, they are preparing — if the reporting is accurate, and the regional signals suggest it is — to force it open again.

What the rest of the world, and what the people of Malaysia and Indonesia and every country that depends on Gulf energy and global trade, needs to understand is this: the only parties who want this war to continue and escalate are those who will not personally absorb a single dollar of its economic cost or a single casualty of its human cost. Everyone else — the American workers paying more for food, the Asian manufacturers facing energy price shocks, the African families whose fertiliser supply has been disrupted, the Lebanese civilians still being bombed — are absorbing costs they never consented to, imposed by interests they never voted for, sustained by a political architecture whose most honest recent expression was $34 million spent to silence the one Republican Congressman who consistently said no.

Thomas Massie, conceding defeat in Kentucky, delivered the clearest verdict on what this war has revealed about American democracy: “If the legislative branch always votes with the president, we do have a king.”

He is correct. And the king is not accountable to the people he governs.