The Illegality and History of Bombing Iran

Israel and the United States get what they've wanted for decades.

There is a myth America tells itself, repeated so often it becomes scripture. The myth says we are the world’s moral compass, a necessary force for peace, a bringer of light into the so-called darker corners of the globe. But myths, like debts, eventually come due. And what happened on June 21, 2025 was not a reflection of righteousness or reason. It was the naked will of empire. It was the arrogance of two men, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, dragging the world closer to ruin for the sake of their own power and survival.

Bombing Iran was not a defensive act. This was not the result of a credible threat. It was not an act of desperation. This was a choice. A calculated decision by two deeply deranged men to gamble with other people’s lives in order to project strength where there is only rot. And this choice, this attack, was not only immoral. It was illegal.

Under the Constitution of the United States, the power to declare war belongs to Congress. That is not a matter of interpretation. That is the law. And under international law, particularly the Charter of the United Nations, preemptive military strikes without evidence of an imminent threat are violations. They are acts of aggression. They are war crimes.

Donald Trump knew this. His advisors knew this. The Pentagon knew this. But none of it mattered. Because power in this country, in this moment, has abandoned principle. Because Netanyahu, facing political collapse and criminal prosecution in his own country, needed a distraction. And Trump, running an administration drenched in vengeance and authoritarianism, needed a flex of imperial muscle. So they gave the order. Bombers in the sky. Tomahawk missiles in the sea. Bodies beneath rubble. Cities on fire. And a world made infinitely more dangerous in the name of nothing at all.

But to understand this moment, you must understand the long and bitter history that brought us here. America’s obsession with controlling Iran is older than many of the soldiers who will now be sent to die. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated a coup that overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, after he dared to nationalize Iran’s oil. The United States installed the Shah, a brutal autocrat who ruled with fear and crushed dissent, so long as the oil kept flowing and the West stayed pleased. For 26 years, we backed his regime, armed his secret police, and trained the men who tortured Iranians in basements and prison cells. We called it diplomacy. They called it suffering.

When the Iranian people rose up in 1979 and overthrew the Shah, we did not reflect. We did not ask how our interference created the very revolution we claimed to fear. Instead, we isolated them. We sanctioned them. We backed Saddam Hussein when he invaded Iran and used chemical weapons against its people. We shot down an Iranian passenger plane in 1988, killing 290 civilians, and never issued an apology. And we have spent every decade since punishing the Iranian people for refusing to bow to our will.

This is not new. What Trump did is not new. What Netanyahu has done is not new either. For decades, Netanyahu has used Iran as a convenient villain, a political bludgeon to distract from his corruption, his apartheid rule over Palestinians, and his growing unpopularity at home. He has sabotaged diplomacy at every turn, undermined peace agreements, and authorized the assassination of Iranian scientists. He has whipped up fear to rally votes, painting every Iranian nuclear scientist as a bombmaker and every Iranian civilian as a threat. He has done this not because it makes Israel safer, but because it makes him safer. Safer from accountability. Safer from losing power. Safer from facing the consequences of his own failings.

And now, Netanyahu and Trump have joined hands to drag the world to the edge of another war. They did not consult the people. They did not heed the law. They acted in secrecy and self-interest, cloaked in the language of deterrence, but guided only by their hunger for control.

They will claim this was necessary. But necessity is not measured in charred bodies and collapsed buildings. It is not written in the ash of cities or the tears of families. They will say Iran was provoked. But what provoked Iran more than decades of sanctions, sabotage, and assassinations? What provoked Iran more than a world where it is expected to obey while its enemies, armed with nuclear stockpiles, preach restraint?

What Trump and Netanyahu have done is not about peace. It is about performance. It is about legacy. It is about reminding the world that might still tramples law, that the West still decides who is civilized and who is collateral.

And make no mistake, the people who suffer are not the architects of war. It is the civilians buried beneath rubble in Natanz. It is the American soldiers who will be deployed to deserts they do not understand. It is the children who will grow up afraid, whose trauma will echo long after the last missile falls. War may begin with men like Trump and Netanyahu, but it is always carried by those they claim to protect.

We have done this before. We did it in Iraq, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Libya. We have painted violence as virtue so many times that we have forgotten what virtue looks like. We have sent troops to fight ghosts we invented. We have spent trillions exporting chaos while calling it peace. And now we return to the same stage, reading from the same bloody script, as if we have learned nothing.

This war is not necessary. It is not legal. It is not just. It is a failure of imagination. A failure of leadership. A failure of morality. And its cost will be measured not in speeches or soundbites but in lives.

There may come a time when this nation finally reckons with its past. When it tells the truth about what it has done. When it chooses diplomacy over dominance, justice over retribution, humanity over empire. But that day is not today.

Today, we bombed another country without cause. We violated international law. We escalated a conflict we created. And we did it because two men, drunk on power and desperate to escape accountability, decided they could.

We must be loud about this. We must not allow ourselves to be numb to the sound of sirens or seduced by the rhetoric of power. Because the world is watching. Because history is watching. And because one day, our children will ask us what we said when the bombs fell, and we must have something more to offer than silence.

Trump did this. Netanyahu did this. And the world will be forced to live with the consequences.

---

If my work has ever moved you, taught you, or simply made you feel seen—please consider ordering my New York Times bestselling novel This Thing of Ours or becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack. I keep my writing accessible because I believe in sharing freely, but sustaining that model requires support. Your investment helps me continue doing this work with care, depth, and honesty.