Greg Landsman: A Mouthpiece for Militarism
Smoke rises from a building in Tehran after an Israeli airstrike.
U.S. Representative OH-1 Greg Landsman’s recent endorsement of Israel’s June 13 strike on Iran — a massive aerial assault on nuclear infrastructure — is not an isolated policy opinion. It is part of a broader pattern: uncritical support for Israeli militarism, impunity for U.S. allies, and contempt for dissent.
Israel framed the June 13 military operation, dubbed “Operation Rising Lion,” as a "preemptive" strike aimed squarely at Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Israeli aircrafts dropped more than 330 munitions on about 100 targets, including uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, along with key military command centers and nuclear scientists. The strikes killed several top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders and at least nine nuclear scientists, triggering immediate retaliatory missile and drone attacks from Iran.
In his statement, Landsman claims Iran poses an "existential threat" and that "diplomacy has been given every opportunity." But he provides no evidence of imminent Iranian aggression, nor does he interrogate whether diplomatic paths were genuinely pursued or instead sidelined by U.S. and Israeli policymaking.
This moment is more than just a policy stance; it reflects a broader ideological posture. It follows a history in which Landsman's ideological alignment with Israeli leadership has repeatedly shut down dissenting views. In Nov. 2023, he voted to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib — the only Palestinian-American in Congress — for criticizing Israel. That vote served to stifle any critical discourse on Israeli policy and equated it with disloyalty.
Landsman collapses complex realities into a one-sided narrative. He calls on Iran to dismantle “terror armies," referring to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, but says nothing of Israeli settler militias, military raids, or apartheid policies. His framing ignores the systemic violence endured by Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Iranian civilians under siege, displacement, and bombardment. Any form of resistance by oppressed peoples is labeled "terrorism," while Israeli aggression is recast as self-defense or omitted altogether.
Most egregious is Landsman's demand that Iran abandon its nuclear program and enriched uranium, even though Iran is bound by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and subject to international inspections. Israel, which has never signed the NPT and possesses a clandestine nuclear arsenal, receives no such scrutiny. The contrast reveals the truth: Landsman's concern isn't nuclear security, but strategic allegiance.
Even as Landsman applauds a large-scale military strike by a foreign power, he shows no concern for its consequences: no mention of civilian casualties, no inquiry into the potential for regional escalation, and no call for restraint or renewed diplomacy. Instead, he offers blanket justification, declaring the strike not only defensible but necessary, all without presenting evidence or grappling with the human cost.
While Congress does not oversee Israeli military actions, U.S. lawmakers have a responsibility to exercise moral and political judgment, especially when those actions are backed by billions in U.S. military aid and risk entangling the U.S. in yet another catastrophic conflict. A representative truly concerned with peace and stability would ask: What exactly is the strategic goal of these strikes? What intelligence supports their necessity? How many civilians have been killed or displaced? How many more will be? What alternatives were abandoned?
Landsman does none of this. His statement reflects not careful leadership, but ideological allegiance that treats Israeli violence as inherently justified to it and any resistance as terrorism. This is not moral clarity; it is moral evasion.
Normally, we would demand accountability from our elected officials, but Landsman has made clear, time and again, that he does not serve his constituents. Instead, we call on the people to abandon Landsman, who continues to stand with empire, apartheid, and unending war.
We also urge people to ask: How does someone so out of touch with public will keep getting elected? The answer is simple. The interests of the poor, the oppressed, and the working class are fundamentally at odds with those of Landsman and with the entire U.S. government. Anything less than full-throated allegiance to Israeli militarism would jeopardize his standing as an agent of AIPAC and the donor class he serves. The U.S. government solely represents the interests of the capitalist class, of those who pursue profit through war and the exploitation of the global proletariat. Elections are held, with some veneer of democratic process, but the outcomes are determined by money, media, and elite consensus.
Landsman may brand himself a "progressive," but his record tells the truth. He persists in power because the system rewards loyalty to capital, not to people. We should not only abandon Landsman, but we should abandon the very system that keeps him in power altogether: capitalism itself.