Antonia Mar stepped up to the microphone on Monday (June 23) to address dozens of protesters at the Hale Boggs Federal Building about their opposition to any further American involvement in the Middle East.
“Our position is that the U.S. does not belong in the affairs of the Iranian people,” they said. “Any U.S. involvement in the Middle East just spells more military aggression.”
Mar, a member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, spoke to supporters of a coalition of activist groups in New Orleans, including New Orleans Stop Helping Israel’s Ports and local chapters of Students for a Democratic Society, days after the United States bombed multiple sites in Iran.
The Trump administration launched the strikes on Saturday, targeting three nuclear sites in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The bombing sought to deal a blow to the country’s nuclear enrichment capabilities, according to President Donald Trump’s Saturday night address to the nation.
The American attack took place amid an Israeli campaign that has targeted Iran’s military and nuclear leadership, its nuclear facilities, state-run television and even Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, used to detain the Iranian regime’s political prisoners.
The response to Saturday’s attack has been mixed. It has sparked protests in New Orleans and elsewhere — small demonstrations sprung up across the country on Sunday denouncing the bombing. Others, like much of Louisiana’s Republican leadership and some members of the area’s Jewish community, think there are positive aspects of the combined U.S.-Israel offensive.
Shortly before Monday’s protest began, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he had brokered a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. By Tuesday (June 24) morning, Trump said both parties had violated the ceasefire.
At Monday’s protest, the protesters said that the recent bombing in Iran and U.S. support for Israel has left chaos and a string of dead bodies in their wake and called for an end to war and to U.S. aid for Israel.
But some in New Orleans disagree.
Robert French, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, said he welcomed action from the U.S. to disrupt Iran’s nuclear ambitions. For French, the fact that leaders in Iran have called to destroy Israel has highlighted Israel’s need to defend itself against a hostile neighbor.
“Israel has to live by the mantra that if someone swears to destroy you, they can’t take that anything but seriously in light of Jewish history.”
Some Louisiana’s politicians also weighed in on Saturday night’s bombings. While Republicans largely praised the move, some Democratic representatives struck a different tone.
Congressman Troy Carter, who represents Louisiana’s 2nd District, recognized the threat of nuclear proliferation but also criticized Trump in a news release, stating that the president needed to consult Congress. He also urged for diplomacy as a solution.
“Let me be clear: I strongly oppose Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. The international community must remain vigilant and united in preventing nuclear proliferation,” he said in the statement. “But even in moments of great tension, we cannot abandon the bedrock principles of our democracy.”
Mar, who also spoke with Verite News before the rally, talked about how the American intervention in Iraq in the 2000s has influenced their lack of trust in the U.S. to create a positive impact in the Middle East. They drew parallels between Trump’s claims that the U.S. bombed Iran to prevent nuclear weapons and then-President George W. Bush’s claims that a U.S. invasion of Iraq was necessary because then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.
“They used that excuse to kill millions of Iraqi people. And after that invasion, we saw the growth of extremist groups that just led to further repression of the Iraqi people,” Mar said.
The “Costs of War” project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs estimated that between 285,000 and 315,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, were directly killed in war violence since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, while other estimates range from 100,000 to more than 1 million.
Bush set up a commission to examine the intelligence on Iraq’s military capabilities that supported the invasion, but the commission found the intelligence had been wrong in asserting the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and observed that the U.S. did not find any such weapons after it invaded the country.
Mar also said that any potential build-up for war would be hypocritical given the Trump administration’s massive cuts to domestic programs spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency project.
“Trump has spent the entirety of his administration cutting funds that help Americans meet our daily needs … under the facade of DOGE,” they said. “This is a joke.”
Multiple speakers at the protest on Monday said that they believe the U.S. and Israel have played a destructive role in the Middle East.
But French, whose organization brings together members of the Jewish community of greater New Orleans with residents of other cultural backgrounds for spiritual, social and philanthropic events, said the aggressor is Iran.
“Israel would love nothing more than to live peacefully by its neighbors — its Arab neighbors and its Muslim neighbors,” he said. “And they have proven they can do that by making peace agreements with Egypt, with Jordan, the (United Arab Emirates), Morocco, Bahrain and so on.”
Egypt and Jordan signed earlier treaties with Israel. The latter agreements were part of the 2020 Abraham Accords.
French argued that the U.S. has been trying to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran for two decades, and in the meantime Iran has financed Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, groups that have all targeted Israel militarily.
While Bush offered to negotiate with Iran in 2006, President Barack Obama adopted a joint treaty in 2015 between Germany, the five members of the U.N. Security Council, the European Union, and Iran. In 2018, Trump abandoned the deal, which he described as “one of the worst” the U.S. had entered into.
Christopher Fettweis, a political science professor at Tulane University, said the American attack on Iran could have been avoided had Trump not walked away from the 2015 agreement. Under that deal, Iran had agreed to increase inspections of its nuclear program in exchange for relief from multilateral sanctions.
“The Obama administration said, essentially, if everybody gets together and sanctions Iran, they’ll come to the negotiating table and they’ll give up their program, and that’s exactly what happened,” Fettweis said. “And then we killed the deal.”
While Mar said they believe Israel is committing genocide in its war in Gaza, French said that the casualties are a result of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. He said that the casualties on both sides are horrendous, but he thinks that if Hamas surrendered, it would end the war in the region.
“To end the war,” French said, “Hamas could surrender, hand over the hostages, and leave Gaza, and it will be over by tomorrow, but they refuse to do that.”
Mar and the other protesters, who chanted “hands off Iran” and “no more money for Israel’s war” at Monday’s protest, see it differently.
“The U.S. has no business being in Iranian foreign affairs or in Israel’s foreign affairs,” Mar said. “The best that we can do as Americans, is stay out of it.”