End the U.S.-Iran Conflict Before It Costs American Lives

Stop this conflict with Iran now, before Americans come home in body bags. University of Chicago political science professor Robert Pape — who has spent 20 years modeling war with Iran — warns that we have walked into an escalation trap. Each strike that fails to produce surrender or a negotiated settlement forces a choice between backing down or escalating again. Iran doesn't need to match our firepower. It needs to make the price of continuing too high to bear. Pape's assessment is that the next major Iranian response may not be a symbolic missile volley — it could be a mass-casualty attack designed to kill hundreds of Americans at once. That kind of event doesn't just kill people. It compresses time, narrows choices, and creates the emotional conditions under which leaders turn a limited conflict into a generational catastrophe. The demand to "do something" becomes more powerful than strategy, and suddenly we're debating a ground war with no answer to who governs afterward, who secures cities, or who controls weapons flowing to militias. I need you to push for an immediate ceasefire and a return to diplomacy. The off-ramp exists now. It won't after the next attack.