Now that an initial diplomatic deal between the US and Iran has been signed and intensive negotiations are under way to fully end the war, Congress should do everything possible to ensure this agreement is fully implemented.
While the agreement is likely to have imperfections—thanks in large part to President Donald Trump harming US leverage and interests with a disastrous war—it would be a massive mistake to attack the deal simply because it comes from this president.
The key question to consider is what steps Congress can take to ensure it becomes a durable peace — rather than merely a pause before the next round of war.
With all the human loss, destruction, and global stakes, we must stop this war, but also ensure that the conditions of peace don’t lay the groundwork for a return to conflict—or inspire its repetition elsewhere. The political and financial cost of ending this war must fall on those who aided and profited from it. The question is whether we build the safeguards to make it last.
In June 2025, it was already clear that accepting President Trump’s false narrative of absolute victory (claiming to have fully obliterated Iran’s nuclear sites) would not end US-Iran tensions.
Any peace will remain fragile if the conditions that produced the war persist: the might-makes-right mindset that proved hollow against Iran’s strategic resilience; the preference for militarism over diplomacy, from Trump’s Joint-Comprehensive Plan-of-Action withdrawal to Biden’s failure to pursue a serious alternative to “maximum pressure” sanctions; the unconditional support for Israel even when it runs counter to US interests.
It is highly possible that during the initial 60 days of negotiations contemplated in the MOU, Israel will continue military action against Iran or in Lebanon to provoke a reaction and restart the cycle. The US cannot fully control what Israel would do. But it can stop aiding and abetting the war, which would make it far more difficult for Israel to sustain a campaign to spoil diplomacy.
Military action against Iran failed at producing any of its intended objectives, while it incurred costs that are in some cases irreversible and in others generational. The lives lost will not come back. The destruction of civilian infrastructure will shape Iranian society for decades.
And the war has granted perverse legitimacy to a brutal regime, recasting the government of the Islamic Republic not as the oppressor it is, but as David against Goliath, the underdog resistor against foreign aggression. Diplomacy produced better results at far lower cost on every measure that matters.
This war confirmed what few wanted to acknowledge: that US military bases across the Gulf, sold as a projection of strength, are also a profound vulnerability. Each base became a potential target, each host government a hostage to escalation.
For many Gulf governments, American military backing is a useful substitute for political legitimacy at home. Yet the war exposed the limits of that bargain: The same shield that promised security also turned them into targets.
Turning the Strait of Hormuz into a battlefield made this dynamic undeniable. Its closure hit energy markets and created rare pressure for de-escalation from Gulf elites who felt the costs directly. But while some elites were squeezed, others made billions.
The system is designed so the profiteers are never the ones paying the ultimate price. That is exactly why temporary market pressure is not a substitute for structural accountability to prevent future conflicts.
Those who profit from war have learned over many years that neither Republicans or Democrats will hold them accountable. A new Congress post November has a real opportunity to change that—to serve US interests, meaning the American people, not a select elite.
With US$72 billion spent on the Iran war, a $1.5 trillion military budget, and war contractors more powerful and unaccountable than ever, Congress needs to investigate all war profiteers, from arms contractors to companies like the drone firm backed by the Trump sons that sought to sell interceptors to the very Gulf states being attacked, a direct conflict of interest.
In a relatively new dystopian innovation in war capitalism during the war, prediction markets like Polymarket saw millions in bets on everything from the timing of strikes to casualty estimates.
Suspected insider accounts netted $2.4 million on Iran War bets with a 98% win rate. This kind of betting on war outcomes by those with proximity to power blurs the line between forecasting and profiteering. It must also be addressed.
We do not even have to wait for elections in November to start this process. The growing support for War Powers resolutions with majority house support just this month, and the 40 senators backing the Joint Resolution of Disapproval to withhold certain arms from Israel, show what may be possible when Congress does its job. Congress should condition support, block escalation, and hold hearings on the legality of what has been done.
Such measures would serve a deeper purpose: signaling that a new Congress, and eventually a new administration, can offer something more than a return to the previous status quo: a set of concrete actions that change how war is authorized, how money is spent, and who benefits.
The problem is not a single president or party. It is the power structures that ensure those who profit from war never pay its cost, regardless of who holds office.
Corruption and war profiteering are not merely governance issues. They are theft from the American people, through unaccountable war spending, the unaffordable prices it produces, and an elite class that never pays for the policies it pushes.
A Congress that treats corruption and war profiteering as harm against the public and responds accordingly would demonstrate what a functioning democracy actually looks like.
Nancy Okail is the president and CEO of the Center for International Policy.