Category Archives: War with Iran

Anatole Lieven on “The Woke Left”

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, Fatwas, moralism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

Consider a lapse (or two) into senselessness in a generally sensible piece by a generally sensible author, Anatole Lieven. The thesis:

By their shameful, spineless stance on the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran, European leaders have doomed whatever remained of their global influence and their pretensions to promote a “rules-based international order.”

They are also helping to dig the graves of their own political parties, and quite possibly of European democracy.

Fair enough. Now for the first lapse: Continue reading →

Malley and Wertheim on Iranian “Responsibility”

Posted on by under Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, War with Iran

When people commit crimes, they often invent elaborate rationalizations to conceal or dilute the moral turpitude of the offense. Rapists notoriously claim that their victims asked to be raped, or enjoyed it during the act. Murderers cite the imperatives of retributive justice. Etc. When it comes to ordinary crimes, most people can see the gaslighting involved for the deception it is. Unfortunately, this tends not to be true of crimes by nation-states. A nation-state can commit an obvious, egregious crime in the plain light of day, lie about it in an obvious way, and be believed by millions of people. Continue reading →

“The Iran War Is Unfathomably Depraved”

Posted on by under activism, moralism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, War with Iran

Notes on War and Complicity
There are many valuable criticisms and critiques of the Iran War out there, and at some point I hope to mention as many of them here as I can, but if you want one-stop shopping, the thing to read is Nathan Robinson’s “The Iran War Is Unfathomably Depraved” in the March 2026 issue of Current Affairs. I agree with literally everything in Robinson’s article except this one sentence:

We are all complicit.

No, we’re not. Continue reading →

The Fog of War

Posted on by under Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, War with Iran

An Israeli security analyst on the supposed virtues of Israeli military strategy:

When you are the one initiating–not the one caught off guard–you can fight a war on two fronts more effectively,” said Sarit Zehavi, an Israeli analyst who studied Hezbollah for over 20 years, first as an Israeli intelligence officer, then as the head of Alma, an Israeli defense think tank focusing on Syria and Lebanon (“Israel’s plans in Lebanon, prepared well in advance, include the option of a deeper incursion, officials say,” The New York Times, March 3, 2026).

Something equally obvious: when “you are the one initiating,” you’re the one engaged in aggression, and you’re the one who forfeits any right of self-defense. So the advantage you gain in strategy is one you lose in morality, which translates to a loss of sympathy in a lot of people, including the ones you call “allies.” Continue reading →

This Be the Hearse

Posted on by under activism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, War with Iran

David French on the “legal and moral justifications for war” against Iran:

There is little question that we have many legal and moral justifications for war. When Trump spoke about Americans killed by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, that struck home for me. We lost men in my own unit to Iranian-backed militias using Iranian-supplied munitions. I knew those men, and I will never forget the terrible days when they fell.

In other words, twenty years ago, the United States initiated a war of aggression against Iraq premised on florid, systematic lies. The victims fought back, killing some of the aggressors. In answer to those acts of self-defense, we’re now obliged to initiate yet another war of aggression, this time against Iran, eliciting yet another round of defensive attacks by the successors of yesteryear’s victims. Continue reading →

Iran as a “War of Choice”

Posted on by under Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, War with Iran

Wherever you go, you’ll find imperialist wars described, particularly by their self-styled liberal opponents, as “wars of choice.” Having described a given war as a “war of choice,” the critic will then go on to criticize it as ill-conceived and ill-executed while conceding the underlying reason for going to war. The unspoken implication is that the same war, conceived and executed more competently, would have been perfectly justified. It’s just that this particular iteration is not. Continue reading →

Once More Against War with Iran

Posted on by under War with Iran

I just did a quick search, and it appears that I’ve written or posted some thirty-odd items on Iran over the last dozen years, almost all of them expressing opposition to the idea of war with Iran. A few date to the years 2014-2019, but the bulk cluster in the first few months of 2020, when the first Trump Administration decided to escalate against Iran. There are then a bunch of posts in mid 2025, corresponding to the last US-Israeli offensive against Iran last June, and then a few over the last month or so, in anticipation of the latest one.undefined

Tomb of Hafez, Shiraz, Iran (photo credit: Amir Hussain Zulfaghary, Wikipedia)

Continue reading →

Iran and the Perpetuity of Empire

Posted on by under Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, War with Iran

The Intercept reports that Trump is menacing Iran with a massive armada capable of prolonged war. The Times of Israel is talking about a “countdown” to war. The Washington Post reports that satellite imagery shows a rapid increase of US military planes near Iran. Responsible Statecraft’s lead story concerns the inadequacy of airpower to achieve Trump’s stated goals in Iran: ground troops would be required. The Guardian’s top five stories concern the imminence of a US attack on Iran, same with Reuters. The Financial Times has a top story on the imminent Iran war as a crisis of Trump’s own making. Continue reading →

When Self-Defense Is “Terror”

Posted on by under Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, War with Iran

A recent article in The New York Times by its so-called “national security correspondent” is an indication of how incompetent mainstream journalists are, and how unreflectively eager they are to do the bidding of the national security establishment they supposedly cover. The article is “Iran Could Direct Proxies to Attack U.S. Targets Abroad, Officials Warn,” by Eric Schmitt. Nothing in it is newsworthy or news. All of the work in it is done by its brainless and tendentious reliance on the term “terrorism.” Continue reading →