The Boy Who Cried World War III

Apocalyptic warnings lose currency each time they fail to materialize.

I scan several other big political Substacks. All of them have their philosophical angle. And that’s all well and good; I have mine as well! What I notice, however, is that there’s often a lot of cheerleading in the comments. More “So true!” and not so much “Is that true?”

Not at The Next Move. You all regularly challenge me—and one another. There’s a debate raging in the comment thread under nearly every post. And that’s a good thing. Echo chambers don’t sharpen our thinking—only an informed back-and-forth can do that.

With that, we’ve got two hot topics to wade into this week: the conflict with Iran and the New York mayoral primary. There are enough comments to fill two posts, so that’s exactly what I’ll be doing. I see the Iran situation as more dynamic, so I’ll be addressing your responses to our posts on the Middle East today. If you’re closely following the fallout of the Zohran revolution, fear not! We'll get to your comments tomorrow.

Before we dive into it, I want to thank everyone who joined as a paid subscriber in the past two weeks. In a moment when the popular take was that events in Iran would be the catalyst for a world war, there was clear demand for more level-headed analysis, and we saw a surge in sign-ups. If you are not a paid subscriber, please consider upgrading. Not one kopek from your subscriptions goes to me: all of it supports the Renew Democracy Initiative and getting more content out on The Next Move.

Now, speaking of world war… there were some who expressed worries. One reader writes:

The “wrong” decision does not mean the loss of a chess game, but potentially a catastrophic war for humankind.

World war is a fair thing to be concerned about, and, true, it’s far more serious than chess (may I introduce you to the concept of metaphor?). Anyway, let me put your mind at ease.

In order for the Iran crisis to spark a global conflict, other big players would have to get involved, namely the Russians and the Chinese. The rapid fall of the Syrian Baath regime—an older and more consistent Russian ally than Iran, dating back to the Soviet era—reinforced the argument that the Kremlin would not fight the US or Israel in Iran. We also know that Russia is overextended in Ukraine to the point where they’ve been drawing troops out of the Far East. I’m not sure the general public appreciates just how much of the Russian military is fighting and dying in Eastern Europe right now. We can intuit from this that even if Russia had the desire to get in on the action in Iran, it simply does not have the resources. As for China, they know better than to get involved in a Middle Eastern war. The People’s Liberation Army has no modern combat experience and Iran is unfamiliar territory.

This is what made me confident in my recommendation that the US press the advantage in Iran. Sure enough, Russia and China have stayed out. A photo-op in Moscow and a performative tongue lashing at the UN Security Council don’t count.

That’s the big, international picture. Now the domestic angle. After the US bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend, several Democratic politicians called the campaign illegal. Some members of Congress even moved for impeachment.

Sanity prevailed among the majority of Democrats on the Hill who decided it was better to save impeachment for a bigger, more beautiful Trump mess to come, but the drama was instructive. Watching this all play out, I cautioned that “it’s borderline political malpractice to declare a constitutional crisis every time this president makes a significant decision you may not like.”

Some of you did not agree. Reader Roch Ripley chimed in that:

It’s a democratic crisis because he started a war without Congress.

For good or ill, this is how a lot of American military campaigns have been waged for the better part of the last century. The most recent formal declaration of war was in 1942 against the minor Axis powers—Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania—following the previous December’s post-Pearl Harbor declaration against Japan, Germany, and Italy.

You can argue that Trump carrying out strikes in Iran from the White House is an institutional problem—that Congress has given up too much of its warmaking powers to the executive. Yet if you want to convince the public of that point, Trump’s Democratic critics will have to admit a fair bit of hypocrisy on their part and commit to being truly consistent in the future, applying this firm standard to presidents of their own party.

Congressman Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat and friend of The Next Move, did a good job of this. Those who want to reclaim the legislative branch’s authority over war and peace would do well to echo the congressman’s nonpartisan forthrightness. The honesty will go a long way with skeptical voters. Here’s what Ritchie had to say:

I fully support reasserting Congress’s war powers. But in doing so, we must be honest: presidents of both parties have unilaterally undertaken major military operations without Congressional authorization.

— Rep. Ritchie Torres on Twitter, June 22, 2025

There’s a common thread tying these last two questions together—a sort of “boy who cried wolf” (or “boy who cried World War III/constitutional crisis”) phenomenon. Voters are exhausted by a decade of crises. Now, some of those were real crises—like January 6 or Trump’s politicized deportations. Others, such as the limited strikes against Iran last weekend or the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Trump’s first term, weren’t. The World War III boogeyman was raised in Kosovo nearly thirty years ago. It’s reared its head in Ukraine multiple times. And now, we hear that refrain in Iran. Each time it fails to materializes it loses currency.

And remember, this doesn’t mean anything Trump does is above criticism—including these latest strikes in Iran. I’d be the last person to say that anything that any president does is beyond reproach. But something can be bad on its merits without being the end of the world.

You and I will have our policy disagreements, but if you’re reading The Next Move we are probably already on the same page about the threat that Trump’s authoritarianism poses. Not everyone is. In order to bring them on side, we need them to pay attention when things are truly serious.

Before we close out this exchange, I’ll take one curveball question: A reader asks—what about Israel’s nukes?

Why is Iran not allowed to have a Nuke? I personally believe it would bring stability to the region because it would put a Nuclear Israel in check.

Well, first of all, Israelis will tell you that they don’t have nukes—just a very nice textile mill.

I reference that obfuscation about Israel’s nuclear weapons only half-jokingly. The very fact that Israel does not openly acknowledge its atomic arsenal means it cannot use it as a blunt instrument of foreign policy. Whatever you want to criticize about Israel, it has been a mostly responsible custodian of nuclear technology—with one shameful exception related to South Africa, but that was nearly half a century ago. Israel does not have regional terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East. Iran does. It does not threaten other nations with total annihilation. Iran does. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Israel went nuclear as a last resort. In spite of the myriad lethal threats on Israel’s borders, those weapons have never been used. Israeli nuclear weapons are not a threat to any country’s security. Iranian nuclear weapons would be.

That’s all for now. As always, I’m eager to know what you think. And if you’re focused on the debate over Zohran Mamdani and the New York mayoral race, hold on just a little longer! We’ll have a back-and-forth tomorrow.

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