In the fallen world we live in, just war must at times be waged. The War in Iran is not a just war. The US should declare victory and leave.
I’m not defending the current Iranian government. I don’t support the current Iranian government. I’m sure you could point to many, many terrible things the Iranian government has done and is doing. They kill protestors. They support terrorists proxies throughout the middle east. The Iranian government is bad.
I hope people reading this understand I in no way support or condone the government of Iran. I condemn the government of Iran.
There is a grade school version of reality, which is basically, “these people are bad so we should stop them”. This is the approach of people like Lindsey Graham. This is sometimes dressed up as the true but incomplete maxim, “The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing.”
A more mature approach is to ask the question and determine, will intervening here do more harm than good? There are sometimes ailments incurable by human effort in which to attempt to do so causes more harm than good. Consider the stage four cancer patient in which more chemotherapy treatment results only in more suffering with no chance of a cure.
What we’ve seen from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other military US endeavors is that intervening can cause more harm than good, the costs of action can outweigh inaction and there are very real limits to what can be accomplished with the sword.
One of the more recent examples: The War in Afghanistan, most importantly, this war cost many, many lives. Of lesser but notable importance, it cost untold treasure and now the Taliban is just as much in power as they were before the war, are currently being paid by the US government, through the UN and have control of a tremendous amount of US military hardware that was left behind in the badly needed, but horribly executed withdrawal.
The War in Iran will go no better, in fact it will go much worse. While not landlocked or as mountainous as Afghanistan, Iran is 2.5 times larger, twice as populated, better armed and is more closely allied with Russia and China.
I don’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Iran has been weeks away from a nuclear weapon for 40 years. Even if they weren’t, the Trump Administration, on June 25, 2025, using their own words reported, “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News” https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2025/06/irans-nuclear-facilities-have-been-obliterated-and-suggestions-otherwise-are-fake-news/
People who know more than me do not think Iran is (or at least was) an imminent threat prior to the US attack. I have listened to Joe Kent’s interview on the Tucker Carlson show and I find him to be honest, trustworthy and competent. I have not heard any compelling case being made that Iran was an imminent threat to the United States, requiring military action to stop. In fact, the reason that the US attacked Iran, according to the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was because they were afraid of an Iranian counter-attack to an Israeli attack. So basically the US knew that if Israel attacked Iran, and they knew Israel was going to attack Iran, Iran would then attack the US and others, so the US had to attack preemptively. This is absurd circular logic.
Image you are at a bar with a friend named Joe. At the bar you and Joe see Clayton. Joe doesn’t like Clayton because he is a bad guy, frankly you don’t like him either. Clayton knows Joe, hates him and frankly doesn’t like you at all either. Your friend says “I’m going to punch Clayton in the mouth.” A rational response would be, “Hey, I don’t think we should punch Clayton in the mouth and start a fight.” Instead, what the US government did is say “Well, if Joe is going to punch Clayton, Clayton will punch Joe and probably punch me too. So I’ll go ahead and attack Clayton before he can attack either one of us.” It makes no sense.
The best thing the US could do, is declare victory and go home. “We’ve degraded all of Iran’s military capabilities, they have been defeated. Mission Accomplished.” Iran will probably continue to charge tolls for transit of the straight, but that cost will be a lot less than what would come otherwise. It would still have been an immoral mistake, but Trump could talk it up as a great victory.
I fear that what the Trump Administration will continue to do instead, is escalate into what will inevitably become a protracted ground war. Congress will unlikely step into stop this. The US will likely win this war military in that they will defeat Iran’s regular military, but at great cost of most importantly of life, but also treasure and standing in the world. The Iranian civilian population will suffer significantly. Russia will have more power in their war in Ukraine and China will be better poised in general on the world stage, but specifically better equipped, due to a weakened US, to invade Taiwan. In Iran the US will be stuck fighting an unwinnable insurgency that will make Afghanistan look like a Sunday school picnic.
Maybe Trump knows what he is doing and can defeat Iran militarily, better Iranian leadership will take over and the straight of Hormuz will be reopened. But even if I’m wrong and he does pull off the Iran War, it won’t make this unjust war right and it won’t bring back the 165 school girls killed by the US/Israel missile strike .