Veterans are mobilizing in growing numbers to oppose President Donald Trump and the United States' involvement in the Iran War.

When Philadelphia canceled its official parade for the country's 250th anniversary celebrations this summer because of extreme heat, Michael McPhearson marched anyway. The 62-year-old Gulf War veteran explained in a Mother Jones profile that he was not marching to celebrate. Instead, he and other participants used the occasion to highlight what they see as a stark contradiction between America's founding ideals and the current administration's actions, unfurling a banner that read, "Veterans Against Fascism."

Since the Fourth of July, the veterans' resistance movement has continued to expand, with no intention of slowing down as the war goes on. As Marcus Green notes in Mother Jones, veterans feel that "their duty to this country may no longer be to fight, but to refuse."

McPhearson leads Veterans For Peace, a St. Louis-based nonprofit dedicated to exposing the realities of war. Founded in 1985, in the final years of the Cold War, the organization has grown into a global network of veterans and allies with more than 140 chapters. While the group has been active since its inception, it has seen rapid expansion and mounting concern since Trump's second term began.

McPhearson estimates that 1,000 of Veterans For Peace's 3,500 active members have joined since Trump returned to office in early 2025, meaning that more than a quarter of the organization's current active membership has signed on during his second term. He says veterans view war as a generational obsession, and he insists, "We can't go back to the way it was."

Active-duty troops are also involved in support organizations beyond veterans' groups, and service members and veterans alike are joining forces to push back against many of Trump's initiatives, including his war on immigration.

Lenore Yarger has spent 25 years counseling service members through the GI Rights Hotline with Quaker House, part of a national network that offers troops confidential guidance on discharges, orders, and the consequences of refusing them. She says calls surged last June after Trump announced he was deploying National Guard troops to Los Angeles to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. Since Trump's strikes in Iran, calls have continued to spike, with many callers questioning whether these actions are legal and asking what can be done — a call pattern that has made the hotline one of the few measurable gauges of the legal uncertainty now running through the ranks.

"We can't promise them that they won't be accused of doing something illegal" if they follow military orders, Yarger says, adding, "and we also can't promise them that they won't be punished if they refuse. It's a really hard time to be in the military right now."

The Iran war, Trump's immigration tactics, and the rising costs associated with the fallout from the war were a driving force in many voters choosing Democratic candidates in the 2026 midterm elections. According to Mother Jones research, the war has cost an estimated $47 billion, while U.S. and Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,500 people in Iran, many of them civilians. The Pentagon now reports that 21 U.S. service members have been killed and 865 wounded, figures that have been repeatedly revised upward without public announcements — meaning the publicly known human cost of the conflict can change at any time without notice, making the Pentagon's casualty reporting a number to watch as the war continues.

McPhearson, who comes from a legacy of military men, believes Trump is blind to the realities of how impactful these decisions have been on everyone affected on both sides. He left active duty as a captain in 1992 after serving in the Gulf War, but says his son was later deployed to Iraq a little over a decade later. Those months were "some of the worst times in [his] life," he noted, referencing that across four generations, his family had gone to war.

Furthermore, he says the wars are non-stop. "We're talking about 36 years of the U.S. being constantly at war [in the Middle East]," McPhearson says. "We're constantly killing people."