In recent weeks I’ve come across several articles and podcasts on Catholic sites which contend that the U.S. should stay out of Israel’s war with Iran.
As it turns out, Washington didn’t take the advice. On June 21 the United States launched a massive B-2 bomber attack on key Iranian nuclear sites.
But, if the nuclear facilities have more or less disappeared, the arguments against bombing them have not gone away. One argument is that Iran never even had a nuclear weapons program, rather, its nuclear energy program was strictly for peaceful purposes. And the evidence, some say, is that Iran never tried to develop an atom bomb. Surely, if relatively backward countries such as Pakistan and North Korea could produce nuclear weapons, so could Iran — if it wanted to. According to this line of thinking, Iran never wanted nukes at all.
As Dr. Edward Fesser observes in Catholic World Report, “the claim that such acquisition [by Iran] is imminent has been made for decades now, and yet it has still not happened.”
Curiouser and Curiouser
In a similar vein, Crisis editor Eric Sammons asks if President Donald Trump truly believed “that Iran really was about to develop nuclear bombs after 30 years of claims to that effect from Benjamin Netanyahu and his neocon supporters?”
Sammons also draws an analogy to our 2003 war with Iraq. He argues, as do many others, that our leaders falsely claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in order to draw us into a war.
The same argument was advanced in a recent LifeSite News panel discussion. One panelist noted that although the U.S. claimed that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons, we now know that “none of that was true.” The implication, of course, is that if the Bush administration lied then, the Trump administration is lying now. That’s a neat rhetorical trick, but it’s not a logical argument. It’s merely an assumption — and a fragile one on which to hang the fate of the world.
All the Evidence
If, in reality, Iran was close to building nuclear bombs, it would have been naïve and foolish of us not to bomb the Fordow, Natanz, and other bomb-making facilities. The evidence suggests that the mullahs were only weeks or months away from their goal:
- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reported that the Iranians had already enriched uranium to the level where its only conceivable use is for weapons.
- The Fordow nuclear facility is located deep under a mountain. Why would the Iranians do that if the facility was intended for peaceful purposes only?
- The Iranians have allowed only limited inspections of their facilities.
- Iran has one of the world’s largest supplies of natural gas, and plenty of oil, too. Why does the country need an expensive nuclear energy program when its energy needs can be met their with existing resources? You don’t need highly enriched uranium to power electric generators.
- It’s true that Israel and the U.S. have claimed for decades that the acquisition of Iranian nuclear weapons was imminent. So why didn’t Iran make a bomb a long time ago? The answer is that each time the threat became imminent, Israel took measures to slow down the progress. For example, the famous “Stuxnet” computer worm is said to have set back Iran’s weapons program by several years.
Dead Wrong
The point is that neither Sammons nor the LifeSite panel raises any of these counterarguments to their thesis that Iran probably didn’t have a nuclear weapons program. But do you want to bet your life on that possibility? Considering the gravity of the current situation, it would seem their audiences deserve a more rounded discussion of the topic. To his credit, Fesser does reference the Stuxnet attack and other Israeli interventions that slowed down the Iranian nuclear program.
The other misleading argument that one sees in both Catholic and secular media is that the Iran-Israeli war is none of our business. Fesser writes:
It is Israel rather than the U.S. that would be threatened by such acquisition … there is no need for the U.S, to enter the war, and it is in neither the U.S. interest nor the interest of the rest of the region for it to do so.
In his Crisis editorial, Sammons upbraids Trump for breaking his promise “to not enter the United States into any new wars.” Yet this is not a “new war.” Ever since the Iranian revolution of 1979, Iran has considered itself to be at war with both Israel and America. Ayatollah Khamenei has said that “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” are not just slogans, but a policy aim. Indeed, the Islamic Republic of Iran has always looked upon America as an enemy. In effect, it declared war on the U.S. when Iranians seized the American Embassy in Tehran, took 66 Americans as hostages, and held them for more than a year.
It Started Decades Ago
Since then, Iran has frequently attacked Americans abroad, either directly or through proxies. The biggest attack was the 1982 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut by proxies of Iran, killing 240 Marines and injuring 128 others. On other occasions, Iran has captured, tortured, and killed American soldiers and officers.
The war with Iran is not just Israel’s war, it’s our war too. We are supporting Israel because Israel is fighting to prevent Iran from acquiring atomic bombs — bombs that would eventually be used against America. Israel is also fighting to cripple Iran’s advanced ballistic missile program, a part of which is devoted to producing long-range nuclear-armed missiles which, when fired from ships, would be capable of hitting targets in America.
At the beginning of World War II, many Americans argued that the war in Europe was none of our business. Yet if America had not entered the war, it’s likely that the Nazis would have conquered Europe and used it as a launching pad to attack America. And given the advances that German scientists were making in rocketry and other weapons of war, these attacks probably would have been nuclear.
Fortunately, Americans quickly understood that the war in Europe was our war, too. Unfortunately, many Americans today are far less realistic and far more prone to wishful thinking than our ancestors who fought and defeated the Nazis.
The present regime in Iran is every bit as fanatical as the Nazis were. The belief that Iran’s current leaders desire peace above all is a dangerous illusion. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian Revolution, had to say about the subject of war and peace in 1979:
Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those are witless. Islam says kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! … Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors!
Thanks for the tip.
This article originally appeare3d in the July 2, 2025 edition of The Stream.
Pictured above: B-2 Bomber
Photo credit: Pixabay
