Why the Iran conflict fails the ‘Just War’ criteria

Even as President Donald Trump launches escalating strikes on Iran, he’s found time to re-launch himself.

Gone are the Marcel Marceau hands, pulling on a long, horizontal and invisible thread in front of him, and the hair is coiffed into a more manageable desert-storm bun, perhaps to make him look more military. Imagine a peroxide blond Jason Isaacs in The Death of Stalin. 

This temporary makeover may have exhausted his capacity for taking advice. Remember, sir, to keep your hands below the podium. Got it – he seems to have done that. But the concentration required there has made him overlook another important piece of advice that was offered surely from the wiser geo-political sages in the White House on the idea of starting a war in the middle-east. Namely: Don’t. 

Short-term memory loss may be a growing West Wing worry, but the first quarter of the 21st century has offered fairly strong evidence of the quality of that pithy advice, what with the Iraq misadventure, not to mention the much more protracted object lesson of Afghanistan. 

That said, a dispassionate check on the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran does show that, technically, the cause could be a just one. Just war theory emerges from ancient Greek thought, principally Aristotle, though the Egyptians would claim to have an earlier copyright. It’s from the Hellenic school that Christian thought nicked it, along with so much else, with saints such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas developing the checklist by which those of high moral conscience can go to war. 

First up, there has to be just cause to go to war. Punishing wicked people or territory violations are not of themselves enough; innocent lives must be threatened that can only be saved by defensive intervention on their behalf. Trump’s calling Iran a “sick and sinister regime” is insufficient. But the claim that Iran is intent on nuclear capability that threatens the whole middle-east and, by extension, the US would meet the just threshold, if supported by evidence. So, a qualified tick on the clipboard. 

Second, there has to be a just authority as the belligerent. That means war can only be initiated by political jurisdictions that allow plausible distinctions of justice. At the time of writing, the US is a democracy. Land of the free and all that. Another tick, then. 

Third, just intention. This is problematic. It’s usually described as meaning there has to to be reasonable probability of success. That would require a plan, especially for after the cessation of hostilities. If there is such a plan, the US is keeping it to itself and that’s customarily not the Trump way. No ticked box here. 

Finally, a just war has to be a last resort, when all diplomatic channels have been exhausted. Trump can’t tick the box, not simply because diplomatic channels and further sanctions against Iran (unlike his tariff-mania with friends and allies) remain untested, but mainly because he tore up his predecessor Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. No tick here either. 

An ethical framework for going to war (jus ad bello) is accompanied by how the God-fearing conduct a war once they’ve started it (jus in bello). As one might hope and expect, the moral weight here is burdensome.  

Suffice to say that those who hope to adhere to principles of jus in bello might feel that a missile strike at the outbreak of hostilities, looking increasingly like an American responsibility, on an elementary school at Minab in northern Iran, killing some 180 innocents, the majority of whom were seven to 12-year-old schoolgirls, falls somewhat short of bearing that weight. Indeed, the response of observing nations towards the US might justifiably be – to coin a phrase – epic fury. 

The accountable should account for such atrocities, preferably before they meet their God. Meanwhile, the rest of us might feel that the principles of a just war could do with updating in a nuclear age, the prospect of Iran’s nuclear development being one of the American justifications for violent intervention. 

Wars have been fought for reasons of vanity and self-promotion since there were wars to fight. From Alexander the Great to Julius Caesar, from Attila the Hun to Genghis Khan, from Tamerlane to Hitler and Stalin. Perhaps they all suffered childhood traumas. No matter. They were all, in various ways, deranged, drunk with power. 

Today, we have Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin, among others. What they share in common is a propensity to start foreign conflicts to distract attention from their moral and economic failings at home. 

So perhaps we could add codicils to the demands of just war: No leaders can start a war as a proxy for their own turpitude. The latter should be easy enough to monitor. Follow the money. Follow the women (it’s tragically and invariably women). They will lead you to the causes of unjust war. 

Responsibility lies with those these leaders supposedly serve. We didn’t write the rules; Christian thinkers did. But we can make them stick.