The U.S. war on Iran is manifestly unjust

Last summer the United States joined in Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear program.  Many of us warned that it would be difficult for the U.S. to participate without being drawn into an open-ended conflict.  The Trump administration and its defenders claimed vindication when the operation ended swiftly, a purported “one and done” mission that had painlessly accomplished what it set out to do.  “Iran’s nuclear facilities have been obliterated,” said the White House, “and suggestions otherwise are fake news.”  Fast forward just eight months and an administration official was issuing the dire warning that Iran was “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bombmaking material” – deploying thirty-year-old rhetorical shtick so hackneyed that it is a marvel anyone still believes it.  Now we are at war with Iran, the cocky “one and done” chatter suddenly thrust down the memory hole.

The war clearly does not meet just war conditions.  First, the U.S. cannot claim a just cause.  President Trump claims that “our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”  This is absurd.  There is no imminent threat to the United States, and no evidence for one has been produced.  Even when the U.S. killed Iran’s General Soleimani in 2020 and bombed Iran last year, the Iranians did not retaliate in any serious way.  The president presents a laundry list of past Iranian offenses, but he never took these to be a cause for war during his first administration, or for a wider war last year.  They are obviously a pretext rather than the true casus belli.

Nor is the aim of destroying Iran’s nuclear capability a plausible cause for war.  Again, we were told last year that that job had already been done, and that no one who said otherwise should be listened to.  That was either a grave intelligence error or (more likely) standard Trump-style humbug.  Why should we trust the administration now if we could not trust them then?  Nor, in any event, does Iran pose any nuclear threat to the United States.  If it poses such a threat to Israel, Israel is perfectly capable of handling the problem on its own.  Furthermore, a war with Iran could cause oil prices to spike – thus damaging the U.S. economy – and, as American military officials have been warning, will deplete U.S. munitions stockpiles, leaving us more vulnerable in other parts of the world.  U.S. involvement is neither necessary nor in our interests, and for anyone who supports the president’s “America First” rhetoric, that should be all that needs to be said. 

The administration’s defenders will nevertheless insist that war is justified because Iran could someday pose a threat to the U.S., or a threat to Israel that would require U.S. assistance to counter.  But this is not a just cause for war.  As I noted when criticizing last year’s operation, while “preemptive war” can be justifiable under just war criteria, “preventive war” cannot be.  For example, if Iran were actually in the process of preparing an attack against America, we could justifiably preempt it with an attack of our own.  But we cannot justifiably attack any country simply because it might at some point in the future decide to harm us.

The president also claims to be motivated by a desire to free the Iranian people from a tyrannical government.  In the abstract, that can certainly be a just war aim.  But it is not by itself enough for a just cause for war.  There needs to be some specific, well thought out plan for achieving this aim.  And it has to be a plan that we can reasonably believe both (a) won’t make things even worse for the Iranian people, and (b) won’t draw the U.S. into a quagmire that is against its own interests. 

We have been given no reason to believe that this condition has been met, and we have good reason to believe that it has not been met.  U.S. intervention in Venezuela was also sold as an exercise in liberation.  But so far, the people of Venezuela have seen no liberation.  Maduro is gone, but his government and its malign ideology remain in place.  The president has shown far more interest in Venezuela’s oil than in the good of its people.  Only someone very naïve could take the rhetoric about liberating Iran without a pinch of salt.  It may occur and we should certainly hope it occurs, but we cannot have confidence that U.S. operations are primarily aimed at making sure it occurs.  Furthermore, it looks likely that the U.S. hopes to achieve its ends by the use of air power alone.  That is highly unlikely to result in a successful regime change operation – where success entails that the country does not either fall into chaos or simply replace one bad regime with another.

In short, a long-term “boots on the ground” operation would manifestly be against U.S. interests, whereas more limited, short-term operations have a tendency to create problems they cannot by themselves solve.  It follows that the U.S. should simply stay out of internal Iranian affairs, which are none of our business.

The war also does not meet the “lawful authority” condition of just war.  As I argued when criticizing U.S. intervention in Venezuela, in the context of the American political system, meeting this condition requires seeking and getting congressional approval.  The Trump administration has done neither.  One can quibble over the extent to which the Constitution and War Powers Act give the president discretion to deal with imminent threats and small-scale, short-term operations.  But with Iran, we face no imminent threat, and the prospect of a major conflict aimed at regime change.  It is manifestly precisely the sort of thing the Constitution means to permit only after congressional deliberation and approval.

Of course, it could turn out that we get lucky, and the regime is toppled and replaced with a stable and significantly more just government, without grave harm to the Iranian people or U.S. casualties.  But merely crossing one’s fingers is not a rational way to enter into a war.  For a war to be morally legitimate, that there are realistic prospects of success must be established before the fact, and a lucky break cannot retroactively make just what was entered into unjustly.  Nor could a good outcome by itself suffice to justify a war in any case.  The other conditions of just war doctrine must be met as well.  To suppose otherwise is to think along consequentialist lines, or perhaps in the spirit of Nietzsche’s dictum that “a good war hallows any cause.”  No Christian or respecter of the natural law can have any truck with such a mentality.