By Medea Benjamin

Trump and Netanyahu should never have started the war on Iran, and Congress should have stopped it. But now it has to end. There is an agreement on the table, and we should do everything we can to make it work. The priority has to be ending the bloodshed—not finding new excuses to prolong it.

But the critics are already lining up from both sides of the aisle.

Democratic Senator Ed Markey, one of the Senate’s more dovish voices, said: “We had an Iran nuclear deal. Trump tore it up. Now Trump’s ‘deal’ includes a $300 billion payoff for Iran and no new limits on its nuclear program. This is a joke. Congress must review and reject this deal immediately.” So what is the alternative? More war?

Senator Richard Blumenthal says the agreement would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate. Chris Murphy, while not rejecting the deal, calls it a “humiliating loss” and a “surrender” to Tehran.

And Senator John Fetterman—the pro-Israel hawk who supported this war all along and once said that negotiations with Iran should consist of “30,000-pound bombs and the IDF”—now says Iran should not be rewarded with concessions.

On the Republican side, Senator Bill Cassidy calls it a lousy deal. Ted Cruz, trying to criticize the agreement without criticizing the president, says Trump is receiving “bad advice”—presumably from J.D. Vance, who has become the U.S. face of this deal.

And of course Benjamin Netanyahu is already threatening the agreement by refusing to halt Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and withdraw Israeli forces. David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel, warns that the agreement “manifestly empowers and finances a mass-murdering regime.” Perhaps the most fiery is Israeli analyst Nir Dvori, who likened the deal to a “diplomatic Oct. 7” — a cataclysmic disaster for which Israel was wholly unprepared.

You can be sure AIPAC and its allies are preparing to spend the next sixty days trying to kill this deal.

That’s why voices for peace have to be loud.

This is not about supporting Trump. It is certainly Trump’s war, and he should be held accountable. But as Trira Parsi said, “If the Democrats help torpedo the MOU and war resumes, then they will co-own the next war. Trump’s disaster will become theirs as well.”

All this outrage over “concessions” to Iran is strange. After years of sanctions, assassinations, an unprovoked attack, and a war that the United States and Israel did not win, why do so many people think Iran should get nothing?

That’s not how negotiations work. When wars don’t produce a clear victor, compromise is the only way they end. Peace is built on mutual concessions, not demands for unconditional surrender.

And we should be asking a much bigger question: how do we stop being dragged into these endless wars in the first place? If we want peace in the Middle East, that means peace not only with Iran, but in Lebanon, in Gaza, and throughout the region.

And that means ending U.S. support for Israel’s wars. That is a much heavier lift, given AIPAC’s hold on Washington, but it is absolutely necessary.

Medea Benjamin is a cofounder of both CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange. She is the author of 11 books, including Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection, Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran and War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, coauthored with Nicolas J.S. Davies. Her most recent book, coauthored with David Swanson, is NATO: What You Need to Know.