National Nurses United, the largest U.S. union of registered nurses, strongly condemned the Trump administration’s illegal unauthorized war against Iran, issuing the following statement: 

Nurses across the country are outraged that the Trump administration has ignored the Constitution and committed yet another imperialist act of war over the weekend without approval from Congress. Just like Trump’s unilateral military action in Venezuela, the U.S. attack on Iran is paid for by our patients: working-class people across the United States who are already struggling here at home to afford basic necessities such as health care, food, and housing.

It couldn’t be more clear that, while the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a brutal dictator who inflicted massive harm on his own people, this mission is an extension of Trump’s fascist allegiance to the billionaire class and a continuation of decades of U.S. intervention in Iran, beginning with the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh government in 1953.

While prioritizing spending on war abroad, Trump and the Republicans have also openly waged war over the past year on working-class people here at home, gutting Medicaid and Medicare, refusing to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that keep our patients’ premiums from skyrocketing, and proving that they run the United States to benefit only billionaires and corporations.

Nurses know that in any military conflict, working people and families suffer the most, from patients in the United States being priced out of lifesaving medical care while their taxes fund conflicts that risk becoming “forever wars” lasting decades — to innocent people on the ground in targeted areas having their daily lives become a battlefield. RNs have been especially appalled to see civilian infrastructure already decimated, including the bombing of a girls’ school in southern Iran over the weekend that killed more than 150 children and adults. Multiple Iranian hospitals have also been damaged, a violation of international humanitarian law. Several U.S. soldiers have also been killed over the weekend, with Trump adding callous remarks that more will “likely” die.

Nurses call for international solidarity among working people and demand the following: 

• A call for peace, starting with an immediate end to the war in Iran and an end to all military violence. Congress is obligated to take all necessary steps to end this war. They have the power to do so by blocking funding and passing a war powers resolution to cease more bloodshed.
• Prioritization by the U.S. government on domestic policy and improving the lives of millions of working-class people here at home, who are suffering and dying from lack of health care, inability to afford food, and housing insecurity.
• Restoration and extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies.
• A complete reversal of the over $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and other critical public programs passed via H.R. 1. These disastrous cuts threaten vulnerable hospitals with care reduction or closure, and threaten patients with inability to afford care, putting tens of thousands of lives unnecessarily at risk.
• A healthy society, with Medicare for All and more, defined by care, compassion, and justice, not war.