I opposed the NATO aggression against Serbia in 1999. I opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I opposed the destruction of Libya in 2011. Each of those wars was presented as a moral crusade, and each ended in chaos and the death of large numbers of civilians. Yet even in those disasters, the rhetoric of Western governments still pretended to recognise limits. Leaders spoke of liberation, of regrettable but unintended suffering.
What we are witnessing now in the joint American–Israeli assault on Iran is something darker. The pretence has largely disappeared. What is being presented to the public is not reluctant force but triumphant destruction.
The language of the recent statement by the American Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, reveals this with disturbing clarity. He declares that the campaign has already produced “sheer destruction” for Iran and boasts that the United States and Israel will dominate the country’s skies, delivering “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” He adds, with chilling candour, that the campaign “was never meant to be a fair fight,” and celebrates that American forces are “punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”
This is not the language of reluctant self-defence. It is the language of conquest and annihilation. Hegseth proudly announced that American and Israeli aircraft will soon enjoy “complete control of Iranian skies,” flying over Tehran “every minute of every day until we decide it’s over.” He promises that American bombers will deliver “500-pound, 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound” bombs with a “nearly unlimited stockpile.”
The casual way in which this is said deserves attention. Iran is not a battlefield in some remote desert. It is a country of nearly ninety million people. It contains cities, schools, hospitals, homes, factories and transport networks. A promise to rain bombs upon it “all day, all night” is not a technical military statement. It is a promise of immense civilian suffering.
Nor is this merely rhetorical bravado. The briefing itself acknowledges that strikes have already killed civilians, including a reported attack on a girls’ school in southern Iran. Hegseth responds to this allegation with the formula that Western governments have perfected over decades: the claim that civilian targets are “never” struck, combined with a promise that the incident is “being investigated.” Anyone who remembers Baghdad, Tripoli, Belgrade or Gaza knows how these investigations end.
Every war requires a justification. In Iraq, it was weapons of mass destruction. In Libya, it was humanitarian intervention. In Serbia, it was the prevention of ethnic cleansing. In the case of Iran, the justification offered in the briefing is astonishingly thin. Hegseth claims that Iran negotiated “in bad faith” regarding nuclear weapons and that American intelligence believed it intended eventually to develop a bomb. This is the same claim that has been repeated for more than thirty years without producing proof of an imminent nuclear weapon. Indeed, many of the same officials who insisted Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in 2003 are now making similar arguments about Iran.
The Secretary also refers to Iran’s alleged involvement in past attacks on Americans and asserts that Iran has “thousands of missiles pointed at us.” Yet Iran has neither invaded nor threatened to invade the United States. Its missiles exist primarily because it lives in a region surrounded by American bases and hostile powers.
What emerges from the statement is therefore not a clear casus belli but a vague narrative: Iran is hostile, Iran might develop nuclear weapons, Iran has supported militant groups, therefore Iran must be destroyed. Such reasoning is indistinguishable from the logic that produced the Iraq catastrophe.
Perhaps the most disturbing element of the briefing is its tone. Hegseth does not speak with the grave seriousness that war ought to impose. Instead, he indulges in mockery and triumphalism. He boasts that the Iranian navy now rests “at the bottom of the Persian Gulf, combat ineffective, decimated, destroyed, defeated, pick your adjective.” When describing the sinking of an Iranian ship, he remarks with almost cinematic relish that it died a “quiet death.”
At one point he jokes about not “killing anybody with the laser pointer” while presenting the campaign on a map. The impression created is that of a military leadership intoxicated with its own believed power. The impression, indeed, is of a depraved indifference of suffering no less appalling than the Israeli Government’s genocide in Gaza.
Beyond the moral horror lies extraordinary strategic recklessness. Iran is not Serbia or Libya. It is a large, heavily populated country with a long history, a strong national identity and significant regional influence. Its destruction will not produce stability. It will produce chaos across the entire Middle East. Already the briefing admits that Iranian missiles and drones have struck civilian targets in neighbouring countries and that the conflict risks drawing in additional states. China and Russia have both condemned the attack. North Korea has declared support for Iran. If this war expands, it could easily become the largest conflict in the region since the Second World War. It may spread wider still.
The Secretary’s response to these risks is astonishingly casual. When asked about China and Russia, he dismisses them as “not really a factor here.” Such confidence might prove dangerously misplaced.
Given the weakness of the official justification, the question inevitably arises: why was this war begun? One possible explanation lies in domestic politics. The briefing itself refers to Iranian plots against President Trump and celebrates the killing of an alleged Iranian agent who supposedly sought to assassinate him. Yet even Hegseth admits this was not the primary objective of the campaign.
Another explanation is strategic pressure from Israel. American officials themselves have acknowledged that Israel intended to strike Iran regardless and that the United States chose to join the attack rather than stand aside.
A darker possibility must also be considered. Political history is full of cases where governments acted not from national interest but from private vulnerability. If the Israeli leadership possessed compromising information about Donald Trump, the pressure to support an Israeli war could become irresistible.
I cannot prove that such leverage exists. But when a war of this magnitude begins without convincing justification, speculation about hidden motives becomes unavoidable.
The greatest casualty of this war may not be Iran but the moral authority of the West. For decades Western governments claimed to represent a higher standard in international affairs. They claimed to uphold law, restraint and the protection of civilians. Those claims are becoming impossible to sustain.
When American officials openly boast of raining bombs on a country “all day long,” when they celebrate that the war is not meant to be fair, when they dismiss civilian casualties with bureaucratic indifference, the language of civilisation rings hollow.
The world is watching. Countries that once tolerated Western leadership may increasingly question whether that leadership serves any moral purpose at all.
For many years I believed that Western hegemony, though imperfect, was broadly beneficial. It provided a degree of stability and restrained the worst excesses of international conflict. That belief is becoming harder to maintain. If Western power is now used primarily for wars of destruction, justified by thin intelligence and accompanied by rhetoric of open contempt for the enemy, then the world will eventually look elsewhere for leadership.
This war against Iran may therefore prove historically decisive. It may mark the moment when the West squandered the legitimacy that sustained its global position. Empires rarely collapse because they are defeated in a single battle. They collapse because they lose the moral and political authority that once made their power acceptable. The American–Israeli assault on Iran may be remembered as one of those moments.
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“Empires rarely collapse because they are defeated in a single battle. They collapse because they lose the moral and political authority that once made their power acceptable.”
That is true on a lesser scale, too. The nation-state is out of date; way beyond last-use-by. The UN, EU and other globalist organizations are “losing it,” too. For me, the next and due age is the Age of the Human Individual. Is not a big part of the job of the LA to facilitate that change?
It is indeed part of our mission to act as the midwife of history. Our main difficulty is that the patient is otherwise occupied.
My first political actions were opposing the Vietnam War, shortly before becoming a libertarian. I marched against that war and the 2003 Iraq War. Thank you for your multiple eloquent essays regarding the current madness. The American federal government has clearly crossed the line between Stupid and Evil and is now explicitly Evil.