AOC Says "No War" — But She's Already Helping Start One

On February 21, 2026, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted on X: "No war with Iran." It got 8+ million views. It was shared widely among progressives. It felt like resistance.

It wasn't.

Because look at what those two statements actually say together. In January, she amplified the fabricated narrative that the Iranian government is a uniquely horrific, violent regime that must be confronted — and signals that the U.S. should act. In February, she posts "No war with Iran." But if you've already accepted the premise that the "regime" is monstrous and that the U.S. has a role to play in stopping it, you haven't said no to war. You've just said no to the last step of it. You've endorsed the justification while objecting to the conclusion.

That's not a principled anti-war position. That's someone who wants credit for opposing the bombs while laying the moral groundwork that makes the bombs feel necessary.

And in an Instagram post, she argued not against the war escalation framework itself — but only against its most visible endpoint. She said she opposed "a full, all out war" and a "mass bombing campaign." She insisted the U.S. has other “tools” available. She condemned the "regime." She expressed solidarity with "protesters."

How War Actually Works

Modern war does not begin with bombs. It begins with a story.

Step 1 is always the same: portray the target country as uniquely monstrous. Flood the media with atrocity claims — exaggerated, distorted, or fabricated outright. Build moral outrage. Make the public feel that something must be done.

Step 2: use that outrage to justify sanctions. Sanctions are sold as a peaceful alternative to war. They are not. Sanctions are economic warfare. They strangle banking systems, block medicine imports, choke fuel supplies, and collapse infrastructure. Entire civilian populations — not governments, not militaries — bear the cost. When an economy is crushed, instability follows. And that instability is then cited as proof that outside intervention is necessary.

The cycle:

Atrocity Propaganda → Sanctions → Destabilization → Military Intervention

This is not theory. This is the documented history of U.S. foreign policy — in Iraq, in Libya, in Venezuela, in Syria. The script does not change. Only the target does.

The West Has Always Been inside Iran

Before you accept the narrative that what happened in Iran in early January is a spontaneous popular uprising against a monstrous government, you need to understand the history — because the U.S. has been interfering in Iranian political life for over seventy years.

In 1953, the CIA and MI6 (British intelligence) orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in Operation Ajax, installing the Shah and setting the conditions for decades of blowback. This is not disputed. It is declassified. The U.S. government admitted it.

The infrastructure of interference was never dismantled — it was modernized. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID, and a network of Western-funded NGOs have for decades funneled money into Iranian opposition media, civil society organizations, and activist networks. In 2006, the Bush administration requested $75 million explicitly to fund regime change efforts inside Iran. The Obama administration continued and expanded these programs. The CIA and Mossad have run covert operations inside Iran including sabotage campaigns, the assassination of Iranian scientists, and the arming and funding of armed groups operating within Iranian territory. Iran International — the satellite channel that became the primary amplifier of protest coverage — is backed by sources tied to Gulf monarchies and Western governments with direct interests in Iranian destabilization. Voice of America Persian and Radio Farda are instruments of the U.S. state, not independent journalism.

This is the context in which last month's unrest must be understood. The economic suffering driving instability inside Iran was not produced by the Iranian government — it was deliberately engineered by decades of crushing U.S. sanctions designed to make ordinary Iranian life unbearable. The West built the pressure cooker, turned up the heat, and then pointed cameras at it and called it an “uprising.”

Iran has the right to defend itself from CIA and Mossad-backed armed operatives conducting destabilization operations on its soil. That is not repression. That is sovereignty. When Western media and politicians like AOC frame that defense as a crackdown on "peaceful protesters," they are not reporting — they are running information operations in service of regime change.

AOC expressing solidarity with "the protesters" without any of this context is not naivety. It is a function. She is lending progressive credibility to a narrative constructed in Washington and Occupied Tel Aviv to justify the next phase of aggression against Iran.

It's All War

Information warfare is war. Economic warfare is war. Psychological operations are war. Regime change infrastructure is war. The missile strike at the end of the cycle is just the part the cameras show.

When AOC amplifies regime-change propaganda — condemning the Iranian government in the language of Western interventionism, calling on the U.S. to "help" — she is not staying neutral. She is greasing the machinery of escalation. She is performing Step 1.

And then she tweets "No war with Iran" and expects credit for it.

This is how controlled opposition works. It lets people feel like someone powerful is on their side — while that someone never actually challenges the system producing the war. AOC positions herself as the face of "anti-war" sentiment while endorsing the very framework that makes war inevitable. Opposing the bombs while cheering for the economic siege that starves and kills civilians just as surely is not a principled position. It's cover.

"No War" Cannot Be a Slogan

Real solidarity with the Iranian people does not look like demanding the U.S. government "do something." Real solidarity means opposing the sanctions destroying ordinary Iranians' lives right now. It means rejecting the media campaigns that soften the public up for the next intervention. It means recognizing that the U.S. government — regardless of which party controls it — can never be a legitimate vehicle for human rights abroad.

You cannot say "No war with Iran" while amplifying the propaganda that justifies war with Iran. You cannot oppose bombs while supporting the economic siege that clears the path for them.

Real anti-imperialism means opposing the entire escalation framework — not just the final strike. It means saying no at every stage of the cycle, not performing opposition at the most visible moment while enabling everything that came before.

"No war" cannot be a slogan. It has to be a principle.

Don't let the imperialists rebrand themselves as the anti-imperialist movement. Know the cycle. Reject every stage of it.