To think clearly about this war, we need to hold two sets of ideas in our minds at the same moment: the Iranian regime is evil, and the Trump administration is dangerously amoral, corrupt, and incompetent.
The Islamic Republic has tormented its own people for forty-seven years. It has hanged dissidents from cranes, crushed peaceful protests with live ammunition, tortured political prisoners, and funded jihadist proxies throughout the Middle East and beyond. When Salman Rushdie was nearly killed by a knife-wielding fanatic, after living for thirty-three years under the shadow of the Ayatollah’s imbecilic curse, this was a direct export from the theocracy in Tehran—which has grown increasingly unpopular with the Iranian people. The protests of 2025 and 2026 reminded the world, yet again, of the Iranian majority’s desperation to be free. The assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei on the first day of this war was greeted with celebrations in Tehran, Isfahan, and among the Iranian diaspora in Los Angeles and New York. Whatever else one thinks about the decision to strike Iran, it is obscene to pretend that there was no moral or pragmatic argument for doing so.
And yet, most critics of the war speak as though Iran was a peaceful nation attacked by foreign aggressors. Notions of “sovereignty” and “international law” are invoked as though the Islamic Republic were Sweden. Almost no prominent critic of this war has anything cogent to say about the decades of misery the mullahs have inflicted on their own citizens, the threat that Iran’s network of proxy militias poses to the entire region, or the inconceivability of establishing deterrence once a jihadist death cult acquires nuclear weapons. If your opposition to this war cannot acknowledge the evil we are facing, your opposition is not morally sane.
But there is a serious case to be made against this war. One might believe, along with Damon Linker, that the risk of Iran becoming a failed state—a larger, more dangerous version of post-invasion Iraq—far outweighs the benefits of toppling the regime today. One could point to the apparent absence of a credible plan for what comes next, or to the fact that three weeks of bombardment haven’t produced anything resembling the “unconditional surrender” that Trump once demanded. Iranian state media has reported that the conflict has already killed more than 1,500 people, including over 200 children. Whatever the actual numbers, there can be no doubt that the humanitarian toll is real and mounting. These are intelligible concerns, and they deserve to be taken seriously...
