With Iran on the brink of weaponizing its nuclear stockpile, Israel – and Israel alone – nobly stepped into the breach.
On Friday June 13, Israel unleashed an enormously complex campaign of strikes to thwart Iran’s imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons. A week later, at President Trump’s direction, America’s B2 bombers finished off the last underground nuclear site that lay beyond Israel’s reach.
Yet within hours of Israel’s opening salvos, several of the world’s self-appointed moral arbiters unleashed a wave of verbal attacks, condemning Israel’s and then Trump’s efforts to spare the world the nightmare of Iran’s genocidal dictators going nuclear.
From far off in peaceful Geneva, the World Council of Churches thundered its condemnation, denouncing Israeli “aggression [that] endangers the entire Middle East region.” Notably absent from that declaration was any mention of Iran’s decades of dangerous aggression, like its funding and arming terror brigades across the region, and its constant threats to genocidally obliterate Israel.
Likewise, from its plush headquarters in Washington D.C., Churches for Middle East Peace “condemn[ed] in the strongest possible terms” Israel’s having “risk[ed] the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the Middle East.” Here too Iran’s history of Mideast murder and mayhem escaped condemnation from those self-appointed voices of peace.
Democratic party leaders issued similar one-sided denunciations, including Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, who declared: “This is a disaster of Trump and Netanyahu’s own making” – as if Iran had no role in fomenting the crisis.
Similar denunciations followed America’s subsequent strike on the underground Fordo site. The U.N. Secretary General scolded Trump’s “dangerous escalation,” while Murphy returned to denounce Trump as “dangerously reckless.”
Several prominent human rights non-profits also joined the pile-on, denouncing the strikes while keeping silent about Iran’s oft-declared intent to annihilate Israel. Amnesty International, American Friends Service Committee, Foundation for Middle East Peace, and several others deployed their taxpayer-subsidized influence to defend this upside-down moral position.
In fact, the moral and geopolitical landscape is the precise opposite of what those voices of denunciation claim. And this is far from a close call: the difference between the right and wrong actors is highly visible and manifestly obvious. That difference is highlighted by the following critical facts – all neglected by the West’s army of moral scolds:
First as noted, Iran has for decades declared ad nauseum its commitment to the genocidal annihilation of Israel. Its leaders endlessly call for “the complete obliteration of the Zionist regime,” and pledge again and again “the destruction of the cancerous microbe Israel.”
Second, far from that being mere rhetoric, Iran has invested massively in this genocidal project. It financed and armed a murderous ring of terror armies encircling Israel: Hamas to the southwest, Houthis to the southeast, Syria-based militias to the northeast, and Hezbollah to the north. Intelligence sources recently revealed Iran’s plans to unleash those terror armies all at once, in a surprise attack “from all sides, with thousands of terrorists.” In other words, a massively larger replay of Hamas’s October 7 genocidal horrors.
Third, Iran’s annihilationist goals extend far beyond Israel, with America at the top of its target list. Its leaders constantly call for “Death to America.” Iran has orchestrated numerous killings of Americans, including: the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. troops; Iran’s proxy militias in Iraq that killed over 600 American soldiers; Iranian bounty payments for Taliban attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan; three Americans murdered by a drone attack in Jordan; and years of Houthi attacks on U.S. ships.
Iran’s shadow war on America also includes its brazen plots to carry out assassinations of both ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump.
Fourth, negotiating Iran off its path to nuclear capacity was never a possible option. The 2015 JCPOA – the “best” deal available – was riddled with holes: it banned no-notice inspections; and it explicitly permitted Iran to build nuclear weapons after ten years. Insisting on negotiations as the sole approach to Iran means in actuality, guaranteeing a nuclear Iran.
But fifth and most dangerous is the nuclear arms race set to take off once Iran reaches nuclear capacity. Many experts have warned that once Iran goes nuclear, the Saudis, Turks, and likely other regimes would all launch nuclear weapons efforts. By eliminating Iran’s nuclear program now, Israel and America prevented the imminent launch of a nuclear arms race across the Islamic world.
These facts illuminate the morally bankrupt reasoning of the Israel-Trump scolds. They condemn both parties for preventing a second Holocaust and for precluding a catastrophic Mideast nuclear arms race. Worse, they offer nothing else that could prevent the genocidal Iranian dictatorship from building a horrifying arsenal of nuclear weapons.
These hard realities make clear that there is one, and only one, morally serious response to Israel’s and President Trump’s take-down of Iran’s nuclear program. Namely: Thank you Israel, and thank you President Trump – for acting when no one else would, and for walking humanity back off the path to nuclear Armageddon.
Henry Kopel is a former U.S. federal prosecutor and the author of War on Hate: How to Stop Genocide, Fight Terrorism, and Defend Freedom (Lexington Books, 2021). He serves on the Global Advisory Board for the Abraham Global Peace Initiative.