April 7, 2026 – Center for International Policy President & CEO Nancy Okail issued the following statement in response to President Trump’s escalating threats against the Iranian people:
“President Trump’s genocidal threats against Iran, including that “a whole civilization may die tonight,” shows he has lost control of an illegal and unnecessary war that he recklessly started. His pledge to launch a major assault specifically targeting civilian infrastructure across Iran is an announcement of an intent to commit wholesale war crimes.
“Partner countries, cabinet officials and Congress must do everything in their power to prevent this slaughter and further civilian deaths, regional escalation and global economic turmoil.
“U.S. allies who have not already done so should immediately prohibit the U.S. military from using their territory, including their airspace, in connection with further attacks on Iran. Trump administration officials, as well as commanders in the U.S. Armed Forces, should uphold their oaths by refusing to carry out unlawful orders issued by the president or others on his behalf.
“Congress should immediately reconvene to pass a War Powers Resolution disengaging U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities against Iran. Lawmakers should also make clear that they will not support any supplemental appropriation whatsoever to fund this unauthorized war.
“It should also be made clear that there must be accountability for those who started this illegal war of choice and committed war crimes in its prosecution. The failure to hold decisionmakers accountable for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza has led to this extremely dangerous moment in which a lawless president is threatening an entire people with destruction. Upholding the rule of law and basic decency requires that this illegal war end and those responsible for it face justice.”
David Cortright is a visiting scholar at Cornell University’s Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and professor emeritus at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran Deal (JCPOA) was an historic agreement that established significant constraints on Iran’s nuclear program. The core bargain involved the acceptance of nuclear restrictions and transparency measures by Iran in return for the lifting of nonproliferation sanctions imposed by the US and UN Security Council. It was the result of several years of intensive negotiations with Iran led by the US, with the involvement of with the involvement of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union. Iran made significant concessions in accepting the agreement and complied fully with its terms.
In 2013 Iran accepted and complied with an interim agreement, the Joint Plan of Action prefiguring the final accord, which required Tehran to restrict its uranium program and accept an enlarged International Atomic Energy Agency inspection regime. Iran complied with the interim agreement, building trust and laying the foundations for the final, more extensive joint comprehensive agreement.
The JCPOA blocked Iran’s pathway to developing nuclear weapons and provided unprecedented monitoring and verification systems for assuring implementation. According to a 2017 public statement by dozens of former arms control officials and weapons inspectors, the JCPOA
dramatically reduced the risk posed by Iran’s nuclear program and mandated unprecedented Iran Deal and transparency measures that make it very likely that any possible future effort by Iran to pursue nuclear weapons, even a clandestine program, would be detected promptly. By blocking Iran’s potential pathways to nuclear weapons, the JCPOA has also decreased the likelihood of destabilizing nuclear competition in the region.
Details of the agreement
Under the terms of the JCPOA Iran dismantled more than 13,000 centrifuges and placed them in monitored storage. It shipped more than 11 tons of low-enriched uranium, 98% of its stockpile, out of the country.
Iran also did the following:
Dismantled most of its centrifuges and reduced the number of operating centrifuges to 5,060 IR-1 machines for a ten-year period.
Agreed to cap the level of uranium enrichment for 15 years at 3.67 percent uranium-235, the threshold for medical use and far below the 90% level required for nuclear fission.
For 15 years, confined enrichment to the Natanz site.
Ceased the production of additional IR-1 centrifuges for a decade
Maintained a lowered stockpile of uranium of all types equivalent to 300 kilograms.
Iran’s potential pathway to a plutonium bomb was shut down. The core of its heavy-water reactor at Arak was removed and disabled. The facility was reconfigured with Russian and Chinese assistance so that it could not produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Plutonium production fell ten-fold. Iran agreed to refrain from research or work on reprocessing spent fuel to extract plutonium for potential weapons for at least 15 years.
The JCPOA provided guarantees that Iran would not be able to have a nuclear weapon for at least a period of 15 years. To verify these terms, Iran accepted “accept the kind of inspections that no other country in the world has ever accepted”the kind of inspections that no other country in the world has had to experience, as Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, stated.
Verification
In signing the JCPOA Iran agreed to the most comprehensive and intrusive IAEA weapons inspection system ever negotiated. In all previous nuclear weapons inspections, the focus had been on fissile material, to verify that nuclear materials were being used only for peaceful purposes and could not be diverted to bomb production. The JCPOA went beyond this approach to look at potential bomb-making equipment. As Ali Vaez put it, inspectors examined “every nut and bolt” that could be used for centrifuges or other machinery involved in Iran’s nuclear production.
The Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement and the Additional Protocol established with the JCPOA created procedures granting IAEA full access to Iranian nuclear sites and other sites where undeclared activities were indicated. Under the terms of the agreement, scheduled to last 15 years, the IAEA had the right to access any site in Iran, including prompt entry to suspicious sites, in some cases within 24 hours. The agreement “undoubtedly placed Iran’s nuclear program under broader and stricter safeguards than existed before the accord,” wrote Olli Heinonen. The nuclear material monitoring mechanisms of the agreement were “robust.”
When Iran confirmed its acceptance of these terms, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2231 (July 2015) lifting sanctions. The resolution created the legal framework for member states to engage in economic trade, investment, banking, and travel with Iran. The termination of sanctions was the quid pro quo that motivated Iran to accept these strict limitations to its nuclear program.
Compliance
The record shows that Iran complied with the terms of the JCPOA. In testimony before the US Congress, officials from the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the US intelligence community stated that Iran was abiding by the agreement. In April 2018, the State Department’s official report on the agreement said Iran is “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the JCPOA” and reported no material breach of the agreement.
The IAEA issued more than a dozen reports on Iranian compliance from 2016 through 2018 and found no evidence of substantive Iranian violations of the agreement. The reports described consistent Iranian fulfillment of its obligations under the agreement. Typical was the IAEA report of June 6, 2018, issued soon after the announcement of US withdrawal from the agreement. The report made clear that, contrary to claims by the Trump administration, Iranian officials were still implementing their obligations. Its findings included the following:
Iran’s stockpile of low enriched uranium at that time was 123.9 kg, below the 300 kg limit set by the accord.
The number of installed IR-1 centrifuges at Natanz remained below the 5,060 limit set by the agreement.
Iran enriched uranium only to 3.67 percent uranium-235, the limit set by the deal.
The stockpile of heavy water of 120.3 metric tons was below the negotiated 130 metric ton limit.
IAEA monitoring extended to all nuclear facilities, research and development activities, and all associated mining, milling and industrial production facilities. It is significant that the IAEA was able to measure stockpiles to the nearest 100 grams and enrichment levels to 3 figures. This was an indication of accuracy and added intelligence value of enhanced IAEA inspections and reporting.
Official validation
Many senior U.S. government officials and nuclear experts recognized the intelligence and security benefits of the JCPOA and urged the White House to continue to comply with the agreement. Former Republican Senator Daniel Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, stated in the directorate’s May 2017 Worldwide Threat Assessment that the JCPOA has “enhanced the transparency of Iran’s nuclear activities” and “extended the amount of time Iran would need to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon from a few months to about a year.” Prior to commencing negotiations with Iran in 2013, that timeline would have been 2-3 months.
In October, 2017, Defense Secretary James Mattis confirmed that Iran was complying with the nuclear accord. When asked by then Rep. Ruben Gallego of the House Armed Services Committee if Iran was compliant, Mattis replied, “I believe fundamentally they are.” In September 2017, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iran was complying with the JCPOA and that withdrawal would have “unfortunate” ripple effects. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell described the JCPOA as “a pretty good deal” with a “very rigorous verification regime.” These and other security concerns were brushed aside in the decision to withdraw from the accord.
Positive assessments of Iranian compliance also came from the governments of Britain, France, and Germany. Conservative British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said breaking the agreement would be a “mistake.” Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said that Iran “kept the letter of the agreement quite systematically.”
In October 2017, President Trump charged that Iran “has committed multiple violations” of the agreement and was preventing IAEA inspectors from doing their job. The website FactCheck.Org thoroughly debunked the claims. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano issued a statement that “the IAEA has had access to all locations it needed to visit. … As I have reported to the Board of Governors, the nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under the JCPOA are being implemented.”
Rejection
Evidence and informed opinion notwithstanding, on May 8, 2017 the White House officially reneged on the Iran deal and announced US withdrawal from the JCPOA. U.S. sanctions were reimposed and intensified. It was a day of infamy in the history of nuclear nonproliferation.
Iran continued to comply with the JCPOA into 2019, but in the face of continuing sanctions and hostility from Washington, Tehran abandoned its policies of nuclear restraint and began enriching uranium to higher levels. The country produced substantial amounts of higher enriched uranium, bringing their stockpile closer to levels that could be further enriched for the production of nuclear weapons. While IAEA inspectors remained in Iran, they issued alarming reports of Iran’s expanding enrichment program. A May 2025 BBC report cited an IAEA assessment that Iran possessed over 400kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity – far above the level used for civilian purposes. This was a nearly 50% increase in three months.
These were dangerous developments that increased tensions in the region. They provided the justification Israel and the United States used to attack Iranian nuclear production sites during the 12-day war of June 2025. Following the 12-day war, the Iranian government halted its cooperation with the IAEA and suspended verification visits at sites illegally bombed in June in violation of IAEA Safeguards agreements. Tehran allowed IAEA inspectors back for site visits at the civilian Tehran Research Reactor.
Although Trump said the June 2025 attacks obliterated Tehran’s nuclear capacities, the US joined Israel on February 28 2026 in renewed strikes against Iran’s nuclear capabilities, launching a devastating war that continues as of this writing.
Trump’s most consistent stated objective for launching his war against Iran is to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. It is an end that many supporters of the war believe can only be achieved through force. Negotiations and diplomatic agreements were tried in the past, they argue, and failed.
Trump never wanted diplomacy to have a chance. He made that abundantly clear during his first term when in 2018 he reneged on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. That agreement was effectively blocking Iran’s path to the development of nuclear weapons when the White House pulled the plug. (A documented account of the JCPOA is provided here as an historical annex.)
The administration’s disregard for diplomacy was evident in the weeks preceding the February 28 start of war. Discussions were underway, with significant Iranian concessions on the table. Mediators and close observers of the talks believed progress was being made, but the US and Israel proceeded with military action. A similar pattern played out in June 2025 with the U.S. – Iran talks preceding the 12-day war. These negotiations were cut short when Israel launched military strikes on Iran and Iran retaliated.
Last resort?
That negotiations were taking place up to days before the launch of the war undermines any claim that Trump’s war of choice was a last resort to avert future harm. The harm that the war was intended to prevent, Iran’s possible future development and use of a nuclear weapon, was not imminent, nor was stopping it only possible through the use of military force. Ethical principles on the use of force hold that military action against an adversary is permissible only as a last resort, if other viable means of countering aggressive threats have been tried and found wanting.
Most successes in nonproliferation policy are the result of diplomatic bargaining and the deft use of threats, sanctions and incentives to induce cooperation from potential proliferating states. These means were working before Trump walked the United States out of the JCPOA, and they have been effective means to halt a nuclear program on other cases. Diplomacy should be thoroughly explored before any consideration of the use of force. This is especially true in the Iran case where diplomacy has been effective in the past, and active discussions were underway prior to the attack.
If the threat from an adversary is imminent and the risk of attack is grave, diplomatic options may not be feasible or morally appropriate. If the adversary shows no interest in negotiated solutions, that may also reduce the utility of diplomacy in achieving the desired outcome. Neither of these conditions applied in this case.
No imminent threat of nuclear weapons existed in Iran. Tehran increased the level of uranium enrichment in recent years and has a stockpile of near weapons grade enriched uranium, but it was not currently enriching and had made no conscious effort to create a nuclear weapon. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi stated on March 2 that his agency did not see a “structured program to manufacture nuclear weapons.” The 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US intelligence community stated “We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” The recently released 2026 threats report omits that sentence, but it does not include an assessment that Iran made the decision to weaponize.
A potential breakthrough?
Twice in the last year the United States started military action in the midst of negotiations that might have placed tighter limits on Iran’s nuclear program. US military threats in each instance prompted backlash among certain factions in Tehran but they also quickened Iranian diplomatic activity and in the recent round prompted concessions to avoid war.
The Geneva talks prior to February 28 were significant in showing Iran’s apparent willingness to curtail its nuclear program. Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi told reporters after the last round of talks on February 26 that the parties made “good progress” in reaching agreement. Araghchi reported that technical teams would meet the following Monday in Vienna to work out the details. “It was one of our best negotiating sessions,” he added. The mediator of the talks, Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, also reported hopefully, by declaring that the United States and Iran made “substantial progress” toward a nuclear deal. IAEA Director Rossi was less optimistic in his assessment but said there was a possibility of an agreement and confirmed that technical talks were scheduled.
Indications from press statements and interviews at the time suggest that Iran offered significant concessions that went beyond anything they had proposed previously, in some respects surpassing the limits established in the 2015 JCPOA. On offer was a plan for substantially curtailing uranium under international inspection.
Negotiators offered a three-to-five year pause of uranium enrichment and a pledge not to accumulate enriched uranium gas. They agreed that no stockpiles of highly enriched uranium would be built up in the future.
They agreed to blend down highly enriched uranium under the supervision of the IAEA, irreversibly reducing their 440kg stockpile of 60% uranium to lower levels.
They accepted comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) oversight.
Al Busaidi summarized the Iranian package this way: “zero accumulation, zero stockpiling, and full verification.” Iran’s proposals were presented in a seven-page memo and accompanying annex, which Araghchi showed to US envoy Steve Witkoff but did not allow him to keep.
The British security adviser and experienced mediator, Jonathan Powell, was present in Geneva at the talks. British officials who were briefed on the Iranian offer said they were impressed that Iran was prepared to make the proposed deal permanent, unlike the JCPOA, with no cut-off dates or sunset clauses.
In addition, Iranian diplomats dangled the option of a “commercial bonanza” if the US signed an agreement, no doubt appealing to Trump’s penchant for trade deals. Deputy foreign minister Hamid Ghanbari told Iranian businesspeople that the US would be given the chance to participate in a future civil nuclear program in Iran, as well as joint interests in oil and gas, investments in mining, and even the purchase of civilian aircraft.
It is impossible to know how serious Iranian officials were in offering these proposals. They were negotiating with a figurative gun to their heads and multiple US Aircraft Carrier Groups in a threatening position, and were likely desperate to continue negotiations that would avoid war. No doubt there were nonstarters among their proposals, but they included an important gem: the offer to halt and curtail enrichment. The Omanis believed this proposal was a breakthrough that meant agreement was within reach.
The Iranians were willing to give President Trump more than they gave President Obama in the JCPOA, said Ali Vaez. If Trump wanted a better deal than what Obama achieved, it was available.
The failure of the White House to follow up these Iranian diplomatic offers was a colossal act of diplomatic incompetence. It was a sign of the Trump administration’s willful disregard for negotiating a peaceful resolution of the crisis.
As reports of the talks were being circulated, Israeli and US bombing began, shattering whatever prospects existed for a diplomatic solution. The US-Israeli attack seemed intended to derail negotiations at a potentially crucial moment. The strikes that were targeted at sites in Iran were exploding at the bargaining table in Geneva.
Amateur hour
Trump’s disdain for diplomacy was evident in his choice of envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner as US negotiators. Tehran sent its Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, an experienced diplomatic player. Washington sent the clowns, uninformed and inexperienced minions with no knowledge or interest in the matters at hand.
When the latest round of talks began in Oman in early February, Witkoff committed the faux pas of inviting Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command, to join him in full uniform. Witkoff’s explanation was that “he just happened to be in the neighborhood”. The admiral was politely asked to leave by the Omani hosts.
In media appearances during the talks Witkoff made it clear that he did not have the technical expertise or diplomatic experience for effective diplomacy. His statements were riddled with errors and showed that he was out of his depth technically.
At one point, Witkoff expressed surprise that Iran was producing centrifuges, which it has done for decades. He and Kushner wrongly described the use of 20% enriched uranium at the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) as a bomb threat. The facility, well known to nuclear scientists and nonproliferation experts, was built by the United States and has been used for civilian research for nearly six decades.
The ignorance of Witkoff and Kushner and their mischaracterizations of Iran’s positions and programs likely influenced Trump’s assessment that talks were not progressing and that Iran was not negotiating seriously. A Gulf diplomat who was close to the talks said the Americans acted as if they were “Israeli assets that had conspired to force the US president into entering a war.”
The end?
The consequences of this war for the future of diplomacy are dire. Trump has poisoned the well once again, this time at the cost of more than a thousand Iranian lives and the deaths of the regime’s top leaders. It’s unlikely that the surviving leaders will rush to return to the bargaining table with Washington or accept a climb-down in their security objectives without countervailing US concessions.
US and Israeli assaults have reduced Tehran’s strategic options to survival and revenge. This may stir an impulse to play the remaining ultimate card. The tragic irony is that a war supposedly to prevent Iran from building a bomb may increase the propensity to do just that.
David Cortright is a visiting scholar at Cornell University’s Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and professor emeritus at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
In September 2023, the Middle East Institute in Washington DC held a conference – in partnership with the European Council on Foreign Relations – on the topic of the Oslo Accords. The conference commemorated 30 years since Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Accords on the White House lawn.
The consensus at the conference, however, was somber. It seemed to most participants and speakers that the Oslo Accords had largely failed, entrenching a one-state reality predicated on Palestinian subjugation. In a discussion of possible solutions, a co-panelist at one point argued that the Palestinians would have to wait 50+ years and democratize the Israeli system slowly, as African-Americans once did in the context of the Jim Crow south. I disagreed; based on the palpable anger and frustration among Palestinians at their deteriorating conditions, and some of the trends I saw in public opinion polls, I argued that the Palestinians would be unlikely to wait and pursue such a strategy.
Two weeks later, Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th. The mass violence that many analysts, including myself, had warned about was unfolding. Since then, the Gaza Strip has been entirely destroyed, with 90% of Gazans displaced, likely over 10% of the population killed, and much of the infrastructure decimated. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as many other human rights organizations around the world including in Israel, have characterized the Israeli war on Gaza as genocide.
If we are to move forward in a fruitful direction from this horror, any future attempt at an enduring peace must be informed by how the failures of past peace processes led to the tragedies of the present.
Why Oslo Failed
The last two years are proof that the Oslo Accords did indeed fail to prevent violence, improve living conditions, or move towards a two-state resolution to the conflict. There are three main reasons why the Oslo effort failed to this extent.
First, the PLO and Israel were not evenly matched prior to the peace process negotiations. One party was a nuclear-armed state with advanced military capacity; the other a national liberation movement on its last leg, having been driven out of Jordan and Lebanon and reeling from dwindling support. And, most importantly, the asymmetry in their positions was not corrected for in the peace process. The PLO recognized the state of Israel and thus accepted the loss of much of historic Palestine, whereas Israel only had to recognize the PLO as a representative of the Palestinian people (a fact already internationally recognized by the UN and other relevant parties).
Thus, as Daniel Kurtzer, the former US Ambassador to Israel, has stated since: “The Oslo agreement was full of holes. The mutual recognition was asymmetrical, and that was to hurt the Palestinian negotiating position for years to come.”
Secondly, because the main mediator in this process was the United States, this asymmetry was exacerbated further. As many involved in the negotiations have since confirmed, the US took the position of “acting as Israel’s lawyer,” thus introducing severe bias in the process of mediation and negotiation.
Thirdly, the Oslo process was predicated on shrinking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a full discussion of self-determination for all Palestinians with the right of return for refugees down into a diminished discussion of possible statehood in remnants of the occupied Palestinian territories. This was in tension with the fact that the Palestinian liberation movement included the aspirations of all Palestinians – including those who were citizens of Israel, who resided in Jerusalem, and who were scattered in diaspora communities across the globe. Oslo reduced this aspiration, and these constituencies, who were previously represented (albeit imperfectly) in the PLO, were no longer parties to the process.
Oslo’s Impact on Palestinian Politics
The Oslo Accords also led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority, which in principle continued to be subordinate to the PLO as a representative body. In reality, the PA sidelined the PLO’s role entirely and became the main relevant actor in Palestinian politics. Moreover, the structure of the Oslo Accords led to the entrenchment of the Palestinian Authority, especially following the second Palestinian uprising from late 2000 to early 2005. In order to ensure that the security threats and “collapse of order” unleashed by the years-long uprising never could happen again, the US helped to expand the PA’s security sector, reducing their role in the occupied territories as a “subcontractor of occupation” while preventing democratic accountability. As a result, Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been unable to impact their leadership or policy direction since 2007, and political elites have increasingly diverged from the will of the people. Most recently, the international community has supported Mahmoud Abbas in his effort to change election laws in order to prevent opposition, Hamas included, from ever winning office again. Thus every part of the Palestinian political landscape is now afflicted with a crisis of legitimacy.
Polling shows this legitimacy crisis clearly. The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has remained president since he was first elected in 2005, supported by the US intent on remaking the Middle East region in the aftermath of 9/11. Since then, he has overstayed his term limits. Today more than 80% of Palestinians want him to resign, according to the latest poll. Furthermore, the approval rate for the Palestinian Authority as a whole is 21%. The Hamas government in Gaza does not fare better. In a poll conducted Oct 6, 2023, only 28% of Palestinians in Gaza chose Hamas as their preferred party.
Why the Palestinian Public Matters
These dynamics should be relevant to policymakers around the world involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and negotiations between the two parties. The reasons are two-fold. First, given the international (and specifically American) role in the construction of the Oslo framework and its maintenance at the expense of Palestinian self-determination, many Palestinians blame this state of affairs on international actors and see this as proof that their aspirations are not taken seriously by the international community. American policy for the past three administrations at least would justify this impression, as both President Trump and President Biden pursued Arab-Israeli normalization deals and left the Palestinian issue to fester.
Secondly, the legitimacy crisis is not an issue confined to internal Palestinian politics but impacts the resolution of the conflict. Palestinian political leadership that is seen as illegitimate will not have the mandate to enter into negotiations with Israel, or compromise on any aspect of the conflict. For this reason there is not a great deal of support for any peace plan – whether two-states or one-state. Although 45% of Palestinians say they support a 2-state solution, 56% believe that the two-state solution is no longer practical due to settlement expansion and 61% believe that the chances for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel in the next five years are “slim or non-existent.” It is clear from these numbers that no political leadership, Palestinian or international, has been able to articulate a doable and serious vision of future peace.
Palestinians are outraged at the genocide in Gaza that has been allowed to unfold, the mass displacement and ethnic cleansing of parts of the West Bank, and the deteriorating conditions of their everyday life even prior to the latest war, which the international community ignored. And the only Palestinian political leadership that is deemed acceptable by international actors is one that is illegitimate at home and among much of the diaspora, and that has not and cannot articulate a political vision for a just resolution to the conflict.
Lessons from Comparative Examples
There is only one way forward from this stagnate state of affairs: taking Palestinian agency and self-determination seriously. To do so, the international community and all relevant actors to this conflict must apply the lessons of prior peace negotiations, not just in Israel/Palestine but around the world. These lessons are: public input, inclusion, and accountability.
In the case of Northern Ireland, all parties to the conflict were included in the peace process. This included armed groups on both sides of the Protestant-Catholic divide. Most importantly, the peace process took public input into account, ensuring not one but two referendums to garner buy-in and legitimacy for the peace process. Both the people of Northern Ireland and the people of the Republic of Ireland voted to approve the Good Friday Agreement. This public input was crucial in moving the process forward, and ultimately ended the sectarian conflict since 1998.
In scenarios of severe violence and genocide, the international community must also ensure accountability for war crimes. The case of Yugoslavia, and the subsequent conflict in Bosnia & Herzegovina, demonstrates the importance of accountability – as well as what happens when accountability is not guaranteed by the peace process. The Serbian leadership responsible for war crimes following Yugoslavia’s breakdown were held accountable, taken to the Hague to answer for their role in the conflict. The international community in that instance demonstrated a commitment to upholding international law and punishing violations of the Geneva Conventions.
However, in Bosnia & Herzegovina, political groups that launched a genocide against Bosniak Muslims were largely rewarded in the peace process, given a semi-autonomous region within the new state. This region, Republica Srbska, continues to destabilize the country and threatens to upend the fragile peace.
The Way Forward
To ensure a successful and sustainable peace process in the case of Israel-Palestine, the international community cannot afford to ignore these lessons. The Palestinian people must have a say in the process – that means ensuring the leadership that represents them is democratically elected, and that means taking seriously their approval of the final contours of an agreement. Moreover, all parties to the conflict must be included to ensure the legitimacy of the process, including armed groups. The inclusion of armed groups in the Northern Ireland case indeed ensured their disarmament, and avoided the emergence of spoilers that threatened the progress of the negotiations. A similar logic can be applied in this case. Palestinian civil society actors have already articulated what this might look like; the Palestinian National Initiative for instance has generated proposals for the democratic renewal of the PLO. The international community must engage with these initiatives seriously.
Thirdly, given the severity of the violence in Gaza, and the almost complete annihilation of life in the Gaza Strip, the international community must ensure the peace process holds the perpetrators accountable. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found Israeli leaders Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, and former defense minister Yoav Gallant directly responsible for genocide. One cannot imagine a peace process having any legitimacy without addressing violations of international law and war crimes of this magnitude. Initiatives such as The Hind Rajab Foundation have pursued legal action against “perpetrators, accomplices, and inciters of violence against Palestinians.” Similar attempts to hold war criminals accountable were used in the Syrian case after the civil war, with activists utilizing universal jurisdiction, in particular in European court systems, to pursue Assad-regime criminals around the world. There should be formal support for accountability by governments, rather than rely on civil society actors to fill this gap alone.
Finally, in the Israel-Palestine case, we can also deduce two additional recommendations. First, given that the power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians is so severe, mediation of the peace process must ensure that this power imbalance is accounted for. In previous attempts at Israeli-Palestinian peace, the US did not act as an unbiased mediator – instead heavily weighting the outcome in Israel’s favor time and time again. We now have irrefutable proof that this dynamic only destroyed the possibility of peace, and increased the level of suffering and violence since. In any future process, the US cannot control the process alone.
Secondly, it is important to address all parties to the conflict, and communities that have been ignored in previous iterations of the peace process. As previously mentioned, this includes Palestinians in the diaspora, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Palestinians in Jerusalem. Inclusion of these communities not only goes farther in legitimizing the process and addressing the full scope of Palestinian aspirations, but also has the added benefit of engaging with communities with different perspectives on, and relationships to, Israeli society.
Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, especially younger generations, have only ever understood Israeli society through the context of violent occupation. Formally including these communities in the peace process thus also has the potential of generating new policy solutions and forcing changes within the Israeli regime as well.
Dana El Kurd is associate professor of political science at the University of Richmond and senior non-resident fellow at the Arab Center Washington. El Kurd is a researcher of Arab and Palestinian politics, with a focus on authoritarianism and US intervention.
Abdelhalim Abdelrahman is a Palestinian-American political analyst, host of the Uncharted Territory Podcast and a Marcellus Policy Fellow alum at the John Quincy Adams Society advocating for a restrained U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East centered around American laws and respect for Palestinian human rights.
Following the October 7th, 2023 attacks, Israel embarked on a series of military operations that human rights organizations, legal experts, and U.N. special rapporteurs recognize as constituting a number of war crimes and other violations of international law, including the crime of genocide. The involvement of US citizens as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) personnel in Gaza–and possibly in other roles in the territory–has raised questions of whether Americans may have committed war crimes in Gaza.
The Guardian published a report in September 2025 on Daniel Rabb, a U.S.–Israeli citizen from Chicago operating as a sniper in Gaza. Raab is part of the Paratrooper Unit 202, a sniper division of the IDF, for which Raab’s parents helped fundraise over $300,000. Raab, reports the Guardian, says he shot Salem Doghmosh “simply because he tried to retrieve the body of his beloved older brother Mohammed.” This goes against International Humanitarian Law regarding the recovery of the dead. The Guardian story also quotes Asa Kasher, co-author of the Israeli Defense Forces’ ethics code, stating that “if you see someone recovering a body or helping a wounded person, that’s a rescue operation, it should be respected. Someone like that should not be shot.”
Accusations that Americans committed war crimes in Gaza have not been limited to those US citizens who served in the IDF. While allowing a trickle of aid into Gaza, Israel’s government prevented the United Nations from delivering aid for much of 2025, instead disbursing lifesaving supplies through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), created with the involvement of the U.S. Department of State and Israel. However, the United Nations estimated that, by August 1, 2025, over 850 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed near GHF distribution sites, largely from fire by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
On May 27, 2025, the New York Times reported that the opening of aid distribution sites by the GHF was marred by chaos and gunfire near some of the sites. On June 2, CNN reported that hundreds of Palestinians had received gunshot wounds outside an aid site run by GHF. On July 2nd, the Associated Press reported that two US contractors speaking on condition of anonymity claimed that fellow GHF contractors had “regularly lobbed stun grenades and pepper spray in the direction of the Palestinians.” AP reported that one of the contractors “said bullets were fired in all directions — in the air, into the ground and at times toward the Palestinians, recalling at least one instance where he thought someone had been hit.” Videos provided by one of the contractors “include conversation between English-speaking men discussing how to disperse crowds and encouraging each other after bursts of gunfire,” according to the AP report.
In July 2025, Democracy Now interviewed U.S. Army Veteran Anthony Aguilar about his experience in Gaza with UG Solutions, the security subcontractor working with the GHF. He told Democracy Now that the aid distribution sites had “become death traps.” He also said “[w]e are using indiscriminate force, targeting civilians, escalation of force that goes far beyond the measures of appropriate, against an unarmed, starving population.”
In August, CBS Newsinterviewed another individual claiming to be a GHF whistleblower under the alias “Mike,” who also asserted that American subcontractors and the IDF deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians near aid sites. The GHF vigorously denies the claims that its contractors fired on any Palestinian civilians.
Under the 1996 War Crimes Act, Congress and the Department of State have the authority to investigate and charge citizens and dual nationals who facilitate war crimes. While federal level action is unlikely under the Trump administration, members of Congress, civil society, and groups leading strategic litigation should press to use U.S. law to hold both the Israeli government and individual perpetrators accountable.
The War Crimes Act
Although the United States’ engagement with international war crimes prosecution is complex, under statutory law, U.S. nationals can be held domestically accountable for war crimes. The War Crimes Act, passed in 1996 by unanimous consent in the Senate and voice vote in the House, criminalizes a range of conduct constituting “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions, when committed by U.S. nationals or members of the U.S. armed forces. The scope of the WCA is significant: conduct committed overseas is not exempt from prosecution under U.S. law if the perpetrator is an American national.
Conduct by U.S. citizens and dual nationals in Gaza, like firing on civilians, could constitute a “grave breach” under the Geneva Conventions. This offers a legal basis for the Department of Justice to open WCA investigations against Americans credibly alleged to have committed war crimes.
The DOJ should immediately create a War Crimes Task Force, which would actively investigate credible allegations of war crimes committed by U.S citizens in Gaza. This task force should have expertise in international humanitarian law, open-source forensics, and conflict-zone investigations. This step would make clear that American citizenship is not a means to evade responsibility, and would allow the U.S. government to enforce the War Crimes Act to help prevent future impunity. Such an effort would also likely clear the path for a long-overdue accounting of war crimes committed by people serving in the US military, such as the 151 cases uncovered by The New Yorker and the Pulitzer Center in 2024.
Disarming Dangerous ‘Allies’
While the War Crimes Act allows for charges to be brought against perpetrators, the State Department and Department of Defense are obliged under the Leahy Laws to prevent continued military aid to foreign military units “where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights”. There is potential for overlap: if an American is serving in a foreign military unit committing abuses, they could be charged under the War Crimes Act, and their unit should be flagged for rigorous vetting under the Leahy Laws, though the crimes need not overlap for either measure to be useful.
The Leahy Laws offer another tool to prevent the use of American weapons in human rights abuses. Initially passed in 1997, and expanded/reaffirmed since, the Leahy Laws prohibit U.S. security assistance to any foreign security force unit “about which” credible information exists of gross violations of human rights, including but not limited to torture, extrajudicial killing, and enforced disappearance. The Leahy laws prevent specific military aid from continuing to be provided to units found in violation, but the laws do not at present ensure such units are barred from receiving assistance given to the foreign country’s military as a whole, after which the distribution of that aid makes it non-traceable, and can leave it in the hands of specific units that violate human rights. Patrick Leahy, the former Senator whose name the Leahy laws bear, argued in spring 2024 that the laws should be applied to Israel. “Unlike for most countries,” he wrote, “U.S. weapons, ammunition and other aid are provided to Israeli security forces in bulk rather than to specific units. The secretary of state is therefore required to regularly inform Israel of any security force unit ineligible for U.S. aid because of having committed a gross violation of human rights, and the Israeli government is obligated to comply with that prohibition.”
To date, the Leahy Laws have been used to impede funding to suspect units in Colombia, Pakistan, Egypt, Ukraine, and elsewhere, but as Leahy himself noted, since “the Leahy law was passed, not a single Israeli security force unit has been deemed ineligible for U.S. aid, despite repeated, credible reports of gross violations of human rights and a pattern of failing to appropriately punish Israeli soldiers and police who violate the rights of Palestinians.”
Congress and State should end that double standard. Accountability and integrity under US law demands that the Leahy conditions should be upheld in every instance, even and especially when friends and allies commit war crimes.
Daniel Raab’s Israeli Sniper Unit 202 should be subject to rigorous Leahy Law vetting, reasserting that U.S. military assistance—training, intelligence, equipment, etc.— can and will be withdrawn on credible allegations of unlawful attacks. Other units responsible for war crimes, like the targeting of civilians, should be identified in the open source or news reporting and similarly be made ineligible for U.S support under the Leahy Laws.
Policy Recommendations
Congress must do its job to ensure oversight and transparency. It should require the State Department to make regular public reports on investigations of U.S. nationals under the War Crimes Act, as well as the results of Leahy vetting. Congress can and should hold oversight hearings to demand the executive branch take action (or explain its inaction) when such violations come to light. The U.S. government should coordinate with U.N. fact-finding missions, NGOs, and international prosecutors and share evidence it has that can be used to corroborate allegations. It should be absolutely clear, through public messaging by the State Department, that U.S. nationals are not exempt from accountability mechanisms for violations committed anywhere.
As the second anniversary of October 7 passes, and the tenuous terms of a ceasefire are once again agreed to, the genocide in Gaza remains a humanitarian and legal crisis. American citizens and nationals have been directly implicated in the violence, raising profound questions of accountability. Washington possesses legal tools, like the War Crimes Act, and legally mandated procedural obligations, like arms withholding under Leahy Laws—but has lacked the political and moral courage to utilize them. Enforcing these statutes, such as conditioning aid, arms embargoes and enhancing transparency, are essential steps toward upholding international law, deterring future violations, and ensuring that American citizenship is never misused as a shield for war crimes.
The United States cannot credibly demand accountability for atrocities in other conflicts (e.g Russian war crimes in Ukraine) while it simultaneously shields Americans who may be complicit in war crimes in Gaza
If serving in a foreign military is a free pass to immunity, then citizenship, and by extension the law, loses meaning. The U.S. must not create that precedent. The threat, however small, of prosecution or conditioned assistance will have a deterrent effect: knowing that one’s military actions may later have legal and reputational consequences will push compliance with IHL.
While the present administration may disregard the harm done to national reputation as undermining U.S. strategic interest, unaddressed accusations of grave human rights violations by U.S. citizens abroad carries real diplomatic risk for Washington. Ignoring it erodes trust with allies and partners that expect and demand the U.S. to uphold its own laws.
Editor’s note: This piece has been updated for clarity and to include the GHF’s denial of claims by cited sources.
September 29, 2025 — Following President Trump’s meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House, and the Trump administration’s release of a “21-point plan” to end the conflict in Gaza, Matt Duss, Executive Vice-President at the Center for International Policy, released the following statement:
“The world desperately needs an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, whose people have endured unspeakable horror over these past two years. Unfortunately, the 21-point plan released by the Trump administration today, while thankfully walking back from Trump’s previous goal of expelling Gaza’s people, contains numerous opportunities for Netanyahu to renege on his commitments, as he has repeatedly done in the past. It is not clear who has agreed to which terms of Trump’s plan, or whether Trump himself understands what is in it. Trump and Netanyahu’s remarks today were a litany of lies about the last 30 years, not a promising foundation for peace.
“Despite his claim of being close to a deal, Trump’s statement that Israel will have ‘full US backing’ to “‘finish the job’ in Gaza if his plan is not agreed to stood out most clearly. This would be more of what we have seen not only the last nine months, but the last two years, as the United States has unconditionally armed and subsidized a genocide in Gaza.”
“The path to a desperately needed peace remains the same as it has for nearly two years: using leverage and pressure on Israel to achieve a ceasefire that stops its atrocities, frees all hostages, ends the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and supports a real path to Palestinian liberation, without which the region will not know real security.”
Sina Toossi is a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for International Policy.
Shahed Ghoreishi was a career‑level press officer who drafted a single, straightforward line for the State Department press office: “We do not support forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.” A short time later his proposed language was cut, and days after that he was fired — an action colleagues told reporters sent a “chilling message” through the building that veering from the administration’s framing could threaten a person’s job.
That is far more than a personnel dispute. It is a window into a deeper pathology in U.S. foreign policy: a system — inside government and across its think tanks, media, and political circles — that too often punishes facts, rewards conformity, and makes it perilous for professionals to tell leaders what they need to hear.
Social scientists have a name for this dynamic: groupthink. Far from being an abstract academic idea, it describes what happens when teams value unity over truth. Psychologist Irving Janis, who coined the term, defined it as “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”
In other words, the stronger the pull of conformity, the weaker the capacity for independent judgment. The result, Janis warned, is a deterioration of decision-making: mental efficiency declines, reality testing erodes, and moral judgement falters.
The process is easy to spot: decisions made within small, insulated circles create pressure to conform. Those who disagree either stay silent or are pushed aside, a false sense of consensus emerges, and what Irving Janis called “mindguards” step in—members who shield leaders from uncomfortable information and preserve the illusion of unanimity. The consequences are serious. Scholars of U.S. foreign policy have linked this very pattern to disastrous mistakes, from fatally flawed contingency planning to the manipulation and misuse of intelligence that paved the way for war.
That explains why Ghoreishi’s firing should make us uneasy. It communicates to tens of thousands of public servants that nuance can be dangerous, that raising inconvenient facts is a political liability, and that professional judgment may be judged less on merit than on loyalty to a preferred frame.
Protect honest debate
Public debate only works when people are willing to risk being unpopular in order to correct mistakes. As legal scholar Cass Sunstein has noted, dissenters who bring forward inconvenient facts are “to be prized,” because even one honest voice can puncture a false consensus. But when criticism is immediately treated as a political attack, the cost of speaking rises too high, and people choose silence instead.
When organizations go after people’s motives instead of addressing their arguments, real debate is replaced by character assassination. The Ghoreishi case was not just a routine decision by a manager; it was driven by a political appointee with an ideological agenda, and it was followed by a vicious smear campaign from far-right activist Laura Loomer. The message to career officials was unmistakable: even language consistent with long-standing U.S. policy could end a career. Such a culture silences public servants and leaves leaders deaf to the truth.
The consequences of manufactured consensus are not hypothetical. They were on full display in the run-up to the Iraq war, when insulated teams, reinforced by pressure from the top, narrowed intelligence assessments and sidelined skeptics. It was a textbook case of groupthink. Iraq proved that when dissent is punished, institutions lose the very safeguards that can prevent catastrophe.
Re‑center evidence over ideology
Good foreign policy begins with clear-eyed diagnosis and an honest weighing of costs and alternatives. Too often, though, the language of government cables and committee deliberations favors a politically convenient frame over a messy truth. The result is policy built on selective intelligence, comforting assumptions, and incomplete evidence.
Research on group decision-making shows why this happens. Some cohesion can help teams move faster, but only if dissent is protected and confirmation bias kept low. Once conformity takes hold and critics are silenced, decision quality quickly collapses. As Cass Sunstein warns, that fragile balance breaks down when powerful voices dominate, turning healthy teamwork into conformity, self-censorship, and collective error.
That is why reforming how decisions are made is urgent. Leaders should be required to hear out alternative analyses, include minority views in the record, and respond directly to objections from skeptics. These are not box-checking exercises. They are simple guardrails that make it harder for institutions to ignore inconvenient evidence before locking in a course of action.
Safeguard public servants
If we want honest debate, we must make dissent less costly. The scholarship is blunt: dissent must be rewarded or at least protected, especially when it benefits the public interest. That requires stronger safeguards for career staff and whistleblowers, real channels for internal disagreement, and institutional incentives that value critical review over blind loyalty.
But rules on paper only go so far. Culture ultimately decides whether people speak up or stay silent. In today’s climate, self-censorship is rising. Fear of reputational damage leads many to hold their tongue, and that instinct seeps into elite institutions where insiders are reluctant to challenge prevailing narratives. The Ghoreishi case makes the point: it taught public servants not just what language is permitted, but what truths are too dangerous to even raise.
Ultimately, even the healthiest institutions need outside pressure to stay honest. That is why external checks are indispensable. A free press and a Congress willing to investigate provide the counterweights to executive overreach and groupthink. These mechanisms are not partisan weapons; they are structural safeguards. By forcing leaders to explain their decisions, confront inconvenient facts, and stay accountable, they keep the system honest, and the country safer.
Why defending dissent is patriotic and vital for national security
Dissent is often painted as disloyalty. In reality, the opposite is true: telling leaders uncomfortable truths is a patriotic duty. When analysts, diplomats, or generals speak up, they reduce the chances that the nation will stumble into unnecessary wars, misjudge adversaries, or ignore the human costs of reckless policies.
That is why Shahed Ghoreishi’s firing should alarm anyone who cares about sound statecraft. It signals a climate where loyalty to the script outweighs telling the truth. And when silence becomes the safer career path, the nation loses its best safeguard against small mistakes growing into strategic disasters.
The fixes are not complicated. Institutions can create formal channels for dissent, assign rotating devil’s advocates, test plans against adversarial analysis, and shield career professionals from political retribution. These steps will not prevent every mistake, but they will make policy sturdier and leaders better informed.
History shows that even a single dissenter can break a false consensus and steer a group back toward sound judgment. Protecting those voices is not weakness; it is prudence. It is how democracies learn, adapt, and survive.
Fatima Rezaie is an education activist who uses her platforms (instagram and Facebook) to share educational opportunities for Afghan youths, especially women, inside and outside Afghanistan.
When you grow up and study in a community with little to no resources, dreaming big can feel like a luxury. Opportunities don’t knock often, and when they do, they’re easy to miss. Sometimes, all it takes is one “yes,” one act of belief, from a single source of hope to push you one step closer. What does it take for a girl in rural Afghanistan to break through? A strong will? The right timing? Or just one small chance in the right moment?
I am writing here today because a modest investment in me by USAID changed the entire trajectory of my life. While this will always be my story to tell, I am sharing it now because the very concept of foreign aid is under attack, and the agency that provided this aid to myself and so many others is shuttered. That money, distributed through USAID, had a profound impact on countless lives, including mine.
In 2016, when I was in Grade 10 at a small-town school in Herat, Afghanistan, a new subject was added to our curriculum called “Royesh,” with the goal of empowering young women by teaching us how to start a business. It was part of the USAID Promote Women Leadership Program that encouraged women’s full participation in community by building their confidence and equipping them with the skills they need to succeed in the public and private sector. As someone always eager to try new things, I was super excited to see what it had to offer.
For this new subject, we had two trainers who taught us how to plan, market, and operate a business. We engaged in activities that put us in the shoes of customers and business owners. The class was fun, and the topics were exciting, a completely new experience I had never had before.
Towards the end of the school year, the program provided funds for girls to complete secondary school education. The funds weren’t for every single Royesh trained student, but for those who can successfully get to the final round after submitting their application. In my school, only around 600 students above grade 10 were part of this program. And that’s not even counting the thousands of students receiving the same training in Kabul, Balkh, Kandahar, Nangarhar, and other public schools in Herat. I was terrified to apply as my chances felt like anything below zero, but something inside me whispered, why not? Just submit your application. At the end of the day, it’s better to try and fail than to give up and live with regret. Failure may be temporary, but regret can last forever. One day before the deadline, after going back and forth with myself, I submitted my application. With no experience writing essays or telling my story, I was beyond relieved when my application was accepted. According to the USAID’s report on Women’s Leadership Development Program, a total of 6,436 applications had been received under needbased scholarships; 5,012 had been reviewed by the selection committee, and 2,735 had been selected as final candidates. And I was among the 2,735 people. The scholarship award totaled 35,000 Afghani (about $500), enough to cover two years of high school, school supplies, and university entrance exam (Konkor) preparation courses.
This fund gave me the freedom to stop feeling ashamed of asking my parents for money, or worse, giving in to marriage just to secure financial support. Would I have been lucky enough to marry someone supportive? Only God knows. Though my parents never pressured me to marry, I never wanted to be a burden to them, especially since they had three younger children to care for. But I’m grateful that this fund gave me the support I needed to complete my secondary education and work hard for my future.
Turning Determination into Results
With that scholarship, I invested every penny back into my studies. In Afghanistan, medical school is considered a pathway to lifelong stability, and as a top student, the social pressure to pursue medicine was intense. I enrolled in rigorous Konkor preparation courses, bought essential textbooks, and took weekly practice exams to test my knowledge. I began these courses at the start of grade 11, while many aspiring medical students start as early as grade 9 or 10. I simply couldn’t afford them earlier. That small but crucial amount of funding came as a huge relief and enabled me to catch up and continue chasing my goals.
By the end of Grade 12, while preparing for medical school in Afghanistan, I also began exploring opportunities to study abroad. One of the programs I applied to was the Education for Leadership in Crisis program, offered by the U.S. Embassy in partnership with the American University of Beirut. I found out about it through my cousin, who saw an advertisement on TV while visiting his in-laws. He took a photo and sent it to me on Telegram.
A TV ad, a golden opportunity, and a fearful me, who didn’t even feel qualified enough to apply. There were only 15 seats for girls across all of Afghanistan. Could I really be one of them? Impossible, I thought. But thanks to my cousin’s encouragement, I submitted the application anyway, and the rest was history.
After successfully passing the first round of exam, I had to take the TOEFL test. TOEFL, or “Test of English as a Foreign Language,” is a test I would need to pass to enroll in an English-speaking university. I was thrilled for making to this point, but when I read the line: “You are responsible for the TOEFL test fee”, my excitement quickly turned into anxiety.
At the time, the cost was $215, which was equal to two months of my mom’s salary. Her income supported a household of six, so it was impossible to ask her for help. I rushed to check the small stash of money left from USAID fund I had hidden in my closet, and to my surprise, exactly $200 remained. It felt like a miracle. The remaining amount was kindly covered by Women for Afghan Women, an NGO in Kabul that had partnered with the U.S. Embassy to support applicants through the admission process. I will always be grateful to them for stepping in at that critical moment.
I took the exam, scored well, advanced through multiple rounds, and ultimately won the scholarship.
From Lebanon to United States of America
Over the course of my undergraduate studies in Lebanon, I graduated with high distinction, represented Afghanistan at international conferences in South Korea and France, learned Arabic, and even explored Lebanon more than I ever had in my own country. I went on to pursue a master’s degree at an Ivy League university, launched my social initiative Educate2Empower on social media – where I’ve inspired thousands of Afghan youth to chase their dreams despite fear and uncertainty – and ultimately secured my U.S. Green Card.
Was I extraordinary? Perhaps. But the truth is, my story isn’t the exception, it’s the proof. That initial $500 from USAID started a chain reaction of opportunity.
Thanks to those funds, I:
Took the TOEFL.
Studied abroad.
Founded an educational initiative.
Became a U.S. green-card holder
prepared for medical school
That small amount wasn’t a drop in the bucket, it was the first stone cast in a ripple of lifelong change.
Why This Matters
In Afghanistan, where educational access, especially for young women, is inconsistent and now, with the Taliban being in power, non-existent, programs like this break cycles of disadvantage. The establishment of American University of Afghanistan in 2005 with the support of USAID empowered hundreds of Afghan youth, especially Afghan women. After the Taliban takeover, the university continued its operations online and at its new campus in Qatar, despite funding challenges, and kept alive the last hope for a brighter future for its female students.
Afghan women have played a key role in the development of the country across different sectors, and their continued presence is crucial for rebuilding a nation that has gone through decades of turmoil. After the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 and before their rise in 2021, educational opportunities expanded at all levels. The infant mortality rate was cut in half, and the gross national income per capita nearly tripled in real terms, from US$810 in 2001 to $2,590 in 2020 (adjusted for purchasing power). Afghan women played a key role in livestock and dairy production, crop processing, and producing export goods like carpets, hides, karakul skins, and wool. In the 20 years before the fall of the republic, they launched around 57,000 small and medium-sized businesses with donor support.
The 2021 education ban stripped Afghan women of their fundamental right to education and has had widespread negative effects on their lives. Aid groups warn that, with growing hardship and no access to school, more girls are at risk of child labor and early marriage. According to the U.N., Afghan girls without secondary education are more likely to have children young, miss out on child immunization, and marry off their daughters before 18, making lack of education a key driver of deprivation. More importantly, the education ban has taken a severe psychological toll, with Afghan women and girls reporting anxiety, depression, PTSD, and suicidal thoughts. That’s why urgent action and sustained humanitarian funding are more critical than ever.
This ban on education hasn’t only silenced classrooms, it has triggered a chain reaction of deeper crises. Violence against women has sharply increased. The legal assistance programs and special courts that once protected women and girls have been dismantled. With no systems of support in place, many now suffer in silence. At the same time, forced and early marriages have surged across Afghanistan, as desperate families marry off their teenage daughters, often to prevent them from being taken by Taliban fighters. That’s why restoring access to education is not just a policy issue, it’s a lifeline. Without it, every other intervention will be incomplete.
Such investments:
Keep girls in school.
Encourage them to dream beyond traditional roles.
Build local ecosystems of ambition and action.
Every dollar invested yielded returns in the form of thousands of empowered students who will pave the way for further improvement. In order to save the current and future generations, the necessary actions must be taken. Foreign aid can be a lifeline for others like myself.
The first and most vital step is addressing the elephant in the room: allowing women and girls to return to school. Regional and international actors, including both Muslim and non-Muslim countries, organizations like the United Nations and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, must take stronger, unified action. It has been almost four years since the Taliban stripped Afghan women of their basic right to education, robbing the country of talent, potential, and a future that those young women could have helped build.
At this point in Afghanistan’s crisis, humanitarian grants are absolutely essential to support women and girls in continuing their education. For many, international scholarship programs offer a vital pathway to pursue their studies in safe, stable environments abroad. For example, through a new partnership, the EAA Foundation, supported by the Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD) and USAID, will mobilize US$50 million, equally contributed by both parties. This funding aims to enroll over 100,000 out-of-school children and provide nearly 2,000 post-secondary scholarships, helping thousands of Afghan students regain access to education and opportunity.
Equally powerful are the contributions of everyday individuals, especially those with time, knowledge, or resources. Volunteering with organizations that teach English to Afghan girls, or mentoring them through the process of applying for educational opportunities abroad, can be life-changing. You can’t imagine how powerful and meaningful it is for a girl in Afghanistan to have someone who believes in her, guides her, and helps her navigate a path she never knew existed. This August marks four years since the Taliban took power and stripped women of their right to education. Your support, no matter how small, can be part of the resistance to that injustice. You can find a non-exhaustive list of organizations helping Afghan women at the end of the article.
In retrospect, that $500 investment did more than support one Afghan girl, it sent a message: your future matters. My life today stands on that moment, and on the confidence that someone believed in me far before I believed in myself. Humanitarian investment is a catalyst and Eight years later, its impact in my life is undeniable.
Below are a list of organizations, curated by Fatima, that support the education of Afghan women, which you can support through donations or volunteering:
July 10, 2025 – In response to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s move to impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, on the basis of her due cooperation with International Criminal Court (ICC) processes, Center for International Policy Vice President for Government Affairs Dylan Williams issued the following statement:
“Secretary Rubio’s decision to impose sanctions on a United Nations official for the proper exercise of her duties is another egregious attack on international norms and the rule of law by the Trump Administration. Punishing U.N. officials for doing their jobs, like the administration’s sanctioning of International Criminal Court officials and their families earlier this year, is rogue state behavior that undermines global and human security, while providing succor to human rights abusers and war criminals around the world.
“It is clear that UN Special Rapporteur Albanese was targeted for saying what countless international law experts, historians and prominent statespeople have themselves concluded: Israel is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide, in Gaza. Yet one need not agree with Albanese’s or any other U.N. or ICC official’s assessments or characterizations to defend the basic principles of due process and the rule of law. The Trump Administration’s hostility to the integrity of legal proceedings and its persecution under the color of law of those with whom it disagrees should be opposed as vigorously in international settings as it is domestically.
“We call on U.S. lawmakers to unequivocally condemn this latest abuse of power by the Trump Administration. We also encourage countries that are party to the Rome Statute of the ICC to take appropriate measures to uphold their obligations in response to these sanctions, including invocation of the European Union’s ‘blocking statute’ to prevent compliance with U.S. sanctions with extraterritorial reach.”
