The present war with Iran has been negatively appraised by many Catholics. Some of the arguments advanced by these critics are of poor quality, characterized by irrational suspicion and animus, but others are serious and respectable. As a reluctant supporter of the conflict, I wish to strike a different note and contend that, on balance, the war is just, lawful, geopolitically warranted, and consistent with conservative principles and President Trump’s stated foreign policy prescriptions and objectives.
Let’s start by assessing the conflict’s justice. Fundamentally, this is a war of national defense. Since its founding in 1979, the Iranian regime has had the United States in its crosshairs, literally and figuratively. Beginning with the 444-day hostage crisis, it has persistently targeted American assets and harassed and killed American citizens. The hands of the Iranian regime are drenched in American blood. As recently as 2024, it was scheming to assassinate American citizens—including President Trump – on our own soil. Granted, some of the most infamous acts of Iranian aggression were effectuated by its proxies. But these proxies were and are trained, supplied, funded, and directed by the Iranian regime.
Therefore, far from being a hypothetical and imminent threat, Iran is a real and present threat to America’s property and people in the region and beyond. Little surprise, given the regime’s motivating ideology, an apocalyptic and messianic variety of Shia Islam, which envisions Iran as a divine instrument wielded by God against infidel powers. Against this backdrop, the regime’s shadowy nuclear program (the status of which is admittedly uncertain) represents a fearsome and persistent problem for the community of nations, and its impressive missile program stands as an intolerable hazard to the regional order and our interests therein.
However, even a defensive war must meet certain criteria to guarantee its justice. First, the damage of the aggressor must be lasting, grave, and certain. I have already shown that Iran has spent fifty years killing American citizens, destroying American property, and undermining American interests. It will not desist from this course of action, given its ideological foundations, internal dynamics, and strategic incentives. This is the indisputable teaching of history.
Second, all reasonable alternatives to war must be unavailing or untenable. Again, we have spent fifty years exhausting other remedies. Despite our carrots and sticks, the Iranian regime remains obstinate and decidedly set on exporting violence and terror abroad in furtherance of its brand of revolutionary Shia Islam. Absent drastic measures, the regime will remain essentially belligerent, paranoid, and expansionistic.
Third, there must be a genuine prospect of success. The immediate aims of this war are to punish and weaken the regime, to eliminate the remnants of its nuclear program, and to severely disrupt its missile capacity—such that it will be unwilling and unable to assail the United States in the foreseeable future. These goals are well-defined and feasible to obtain. They are even now being accomplished. In less than a month, the United States has shattered the regime’s command and control structure and considerably degraded its military. If operations continue apace, another month or so will likely find the regime significantly reduced and disintegrated, susceptible to an imposed settlement on American terms.
Fourth, a war must not create evils that are more abundant and grave than the evils it resolves. This is the hardest criterion to defend, being so speculative. It is possible that our intervention might go awry or prove ineffective, leading to chaos and instability, and intensifying the cycle of revenge, thus making a bad situation worse. Without a doubt, Trump has taken a huge gamble: high risk, high reward. However, it is not at all unlikely that the regime will emerge chastened, impoverished, stripped of its most lethal implements of war—and consequently unable to project force beyond its borders in a meaningful way. Plausibly, the regime will collapse and be succeeded by one that is relatively benign, or perhaps it will endure under the sway of more cooperative elements, after the model of Venezuela.
We have confirmed the war’s basic justice. But what of its legality? Some maintain that the Constitution reserves the authorization and initiation of military force to Congress. This is not correct. Rather, the Constitution empowers Congress to “declare War” (Article I, Section 8, Clause 11). But “authorization” and “initiation” are not within the sense of the word “declare” as used at the time of ratification, as evidenced by then-contemporary English dictionaries. Additionally, drafts of the Constitution, by Butler and Hamilton, for instance, indicate that a “field command” concept of the Presidency was entertained and discarded.
Indeed, it has been compellingly argued that the power to declare war and the power to make or engage in war (and, more broadly, to undertake military action short of war) are distinct, with the latter vested squarely in the President by virtue of his role as Commander-in-Chief. Per usual, Congress relies on its control of the purse and the threat of impeachment to regulate the President’s conduct. (Ironically, the constitutionally dubious War Powers Act tacitly acknowledges the discretion of the President in this domain, insofar as it contemplates and thus permits him to unilaterally undertake military action for short periods.)
Note that the United States has only declared war eleven times in connection with five conflicts, and not once since 1942. However, since 1789, the President has overseen and carried out hundreds of military operations, some with prior congressional consent, some with subsequent congressional ratification, and some without any specific congressional input or affirmation whatsoever. As a matter of prudence, it may be preferable for the President to consult with Congress in connection with military action. But as a matter of law, the necessity of such consultation is debatable.
Not only is the war with Iran just and legal, it is also geopolitically rational and strategically warranted. We have already seen that the Iranian regime is a deadly, dedicated, and longstanding antagonist of America. However, we must appreciate that Iran is not really about Iran. Rather, it is about China. (In this, it is like Venezuela, which was also about China.) There is only one serious threat to American peace and prosperity: the People’s Republic. It alone can displace us as global hegemon and gradually turn the mechanisms and structures of the international order against our nation, with all the precariousness that entails (see post-Soviet Russia).
The “small world” of the modern age will always have a hegemon, and that hegemon will enjoy a singular degree of tranquility and abundance. Currently, we have hegemony; China wants it. This dynamic sets up a collision. We will come to blows with China in the next decade, most probably. When this tremendous conflict arrives, it must be contained to East Asia, else it will exact a horrible toll on our nation.
To ensure its confinement to that far theater, America must get the greater Western house in line, which means rolling back Chinese influence in Europe, Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East. Iran functions as a forward operating base for China, just as Venezuela did prior to the capture of Maduro. Few in the West appreciate the economic and military links between Iran and China, making it difficult for them to grasp the geopolitical import of the present struggle. Indeed, this “minor war” might well prevent a “major war,” for ultimately China’s willingness to decisively contest American hegemony depends on its ability to leverage and activate occidental strategic subordinates, chief among them Iran.
From a conservative perspective, there is good reason to question this conflict. War always consumes blood and treasure, and often enough it subverts republican institutions, feeds corporate cronyism, and aggrandizes the federal government. Yet conservatives are ultimately Augustinian realists, committed to shrewdly managing the affairs of state with an eye toward the harsh realities of fallen human nature.
In fact, the United States has been regularly engaged in armed conflict since its establishment, for we are a vast country with global interests and a keen sense of destiny. Over the past two and a half centuries, we have made war in, on, or against Britain, Mexico, Spain, Cambodia, France, Germany, Lebanon, Turkey, Russia, Vietnam, Grenada, Afghanistan, Libya, Yugoslavia, Panama, Romania, Cuba, Italy, China, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, and others besides. This is the cost and consequence of imperium, which we grasped at from day one, and finally inherited in the wake of World War II.
There is in the conservative tradition a laudable tendency to look askance at foreign adventures. But this skepticism has always been balanced by a clear-eyed view of America’s far-reaching interests in a dangerous world, and, in recent times, a dutiful recognition of our role as the key guarantor of international order. We have enemies, and when they aggress against us, they must be dealt with sharply and swiftly, else our dominion (which redounds to the benefit of the whole world) will be disturbed and havoc ensue.
Finally, we must address the odd notion that this war marks some kind of shocking betrayal by Trump. The President has been an open and avowed Iran hawk since the hostage crisis. In fact, he publicly mused about seizing Kharg Island in 1988. He stated plainly in his famous golden escalator speech that he would not abide a nuclear-armed Iran, and in his first term, he took the audacious steps of exiting the Obama-era JCPOA and assassinating top IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani.
Trump is not and has never been an isolationist or non-interventionist. His highly idiosyncratic foreign policy is best described as sovereigntist or Jacksonian. His criticism of American war-making has been more or less confined to conflicts he deems “stupid” (i.e., open-ended ground operations that involve nation-building and democracy-sowing). It was entirely predictable that Trump would strike Iran, given his record and considering the relatively favorable outcomes of his earlier exercises of American might. No one who has listened carefully to his words can reasonably register outraged surprise.
A war merits our reluctant support if it is just, legal, strategically advisable, and consistent with sound principles and existing policies of a generally successful character. Such is, I think, the case here. Of course, we must not celebrate the conflict with Iran. Many have perished—men, women, children. Many more will perish. The death of a human being, even a wicked one (especially a wicked one!), cannot be adequately lamented. Moreover, we must hold our leaders accountable for mistakes made and misdeeds perpetrated in the prosecution of the endeavor. Yet we cannot shrink from the tragic necessities of circumstance, lest we give room to the schemes of malefactors, and thereby forsake any sure hope of temporal peace and prosperity.
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Thank you for this article. It will not make you popular among many Catholics. But the points you make are factual. The problem with this war is that Iran is actually very strong. We hear that its military capabilities have been destroyed, its missiles, etc etc but it is still capable of closing a key sea way! We dont know if our planners took into account that the rulers and many of their followers are motivated by a religion that, as the formidable leader Khalid told the Persians before conquering them, “You better surrender or you will meet an enemy that loves death more than you love life.” The rest is history. The Arabs defeated and conquered Persia, a superior civilization and a great military power. The points you make are echoed in this excellent article by analyst M. Rubin. Yes, Iran purpose has been and is the submission of the US and the West:
Top U.S. Official Resigns Blaming Israel, but Iran’s Decades of Terror Tell a Different Story
Joe Kent’s Claims Collapse Against Iran’s Long Record of Targeting Americans
March 24, 2026
Michael Rubin
The Australian
Top U.S. Official Resigns Blaming Israel, but Iran’s Decades of Terror Tell a Different Story – Middle East Forum
https://www.meforum.org/mef-online/top-us-official-resigns-blaming-israel-but-irans-decades-of-terror-tell-a-different-story
Agreed. I’m old enough to remember the hostage crisis of 1979 and have followed the history of Iran all of these years. No one has dared to touch Iran and it was time for this country to rethink itself. When the leaders start actually bragging about their uranium enrichment after all of the pallets of cash, the useless inspections, and the lying about their nuclear program, it’s time to do something different. I trust that our God has this situation in his hands, as He does each and everything in our world. It’s time for faith and prayer not rancorous discourse.
Iran was pursuing a nuclear hedge in order to establish deterrence. This means that Iran was not making a nuclear weapon but establishing the capability to make one in order to deter nuclear armed invaders like Israel and the U.S. from attacking due to the risk of triggering Iran into actually pursuing a nuke. Interestingly, U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea have pursued this same nuclear hedging strategy in order to establish deterrence with North Korea.
Considering this situation, the best way for the Trump administration to prevent the Iranians from enriching uranium would have been to reassure them that neither the U.S. nor Israel would invade them if they did. This, however, would have meant forcibly restraining an aggressive, expansionist Israel, which the Trump administration was unwilling to do. Trump’s negotiations with Iran therefore resulted in an impasse. Iran was unwilling to give up its enrichment capabilities, because this would have made them more vulnerable to an Israeli attack, the threat of which Trump refused to reassure them against. Had Trump been willing to restrain Israel, Iran would have agreed to his proposed deal. This war is therefore the result, not of Iranian aggression, but of Trump’s refusal to break free from Israeli control.
Then why has this country fueled numerous proxy wars, repeatedly lied about their production of enriched uranium and then bragged about it? Let’s compare with the Ukraine. They had a nuclear program to protect themselves from Russia. It was dismantled in 2014 with American promises of protection from Russia. That country never showed aggression like Iran has. Your perspective is a unique one but does not hold up under scrutiny. A nuclear Iran is terrifying. I don’t claim to be an expert but just a student of history.
When has Iran ever shown aggression?
Among other examples, it did when it murdered 30,000 Iranians using machine guns in January 2026.
And when it did same thing when Obama was POTUS.
And for the decades it has funded the terrorist militia occupying southern Lebanon, called Hezbollah.
To name a few.
There are three (3) possible goals:
1. Regime Change
2. Destruction of Iran’s nuclear program
3. Destruction of Iran’s military (including missiles)
We can potentially achieve goals 2 and 3, but we are not going to achieve regime change without invasion and occupation. Invasion and occupation would involve large numbers of ground troops and significant casualties. The occupation would last for months if not years.
Are we ready and willing for that? Is Trump prepared for that?
You are pasting and reposting your same arguments at this point. What specific evidence do you have from reputable sources that we’ll be sending ground troops to Iran? And I don’t mean NPR or MSNBC.
No, not NPR but various media says that the Pentagon has dispatched two (2) Marine Amphibious Units and elements of the 82nd Airborne. These are ground troops. Will they actually go into Iran? We shall see. Trump is not definitive either way.
If the Iranian people can be armed and the Iranian army turns on the regime then it can be a different outcome.
I’ve read that some of those in the army haven’t been showing up for work recently.
I’m hoping better things for Cuba’s suffering people too. They deserve it. 🙏
Don’t hold your breath. The Iranian people are not armed. There is no 2nd Amendment.
This article probably was written by Tromp himself or his boss Netanyahu.
And you need better joke writers.
Hilarious!!!
Thank you Mr. Olson, I’ll be laughing all day.
Not to mention spellcheck
Yes, those pesky Jews at it again…
🙄
You can’t keep buying off an aggressive enemy forever. “Peace in our time” said Neville Chamberlain prior to WWII. Except, it wasnt peace in our time. War came anyway, possibly in a more costly way than if the English and allies had made their intention to push back the Nazi’s known. Because by time war struck, the enemy had grown stronger.
When you have a snake in your yard, you dont wait until it bites you to do something to eliminate it, do you? The stronger Iran got the more dangerous it would be. Being able to control a tight waterway is not a measure of military prowess, or strength. The Iranians have long issued public threats against Israel and the US, threatening our eradication. Yes, the Iranians can make trouble of various sorts, at least until their munitions run out, which hopefully will be soon. Not unlike flies buzzing around elephants.
However I would like to know what has happened to citizens in the US that they cannot see that preventing a nuclear bomb from dropping on themselves is far more important than whining about the price of eggs or gasoline? Have we gotten that pathetic, that the strongest symbol of ourselves is our seventy-something president? God bless the man. The “No Kings” protestors are the weakest and most pathetic example I can imagine of those Americans, who like Chamberlain, look for “peace in our time”. They are only kicking the can down the road to our children and grandchildren. “Peace at any price” is never real peace, it is only cowardly capitulation.
There used to be a famous saying about Americans: “Americans would rather die on their feet than live on their knees”. Lets try to remember who we are, and what we stand for. America is not Switzerland.
Precisely.
In our yard…
curious way to talk about Iran, isn’t it?
I’ll owe you a beer when an iranian nuke lands on our heads. Something tells me that with or without this war, I’d never be obliged to buy that beer.
Finally, you may not realize it but there are actual poor people in this country, for whom the price of eggs and gas and heat is no trifling matter. And there are much, much poorer people all over the world who rely on the strait–which mind you is not getting unblocked–much more than we do.
Would you look at these hungry folk and tell them, “it is ok that your crop yield is terrible because you could not afford fertilizer, we saved you from the Iranian nukes.”
How crazy are the Shiite Mullahs? If they had a nuclear weapon, would they actually use it, knowing retaliation would be swift and devastating? The Soviet Union had nukes since the late 1940’s, but never used them because of “MAD” (mutually assured destruction). Do they have a death wish? Are they willing to turn Tehran into a radioactive pile of rubble?
Nuclear saber rattling by anybody is cause for alarm. Political leaders need to knock it off.
“Do they have a death wish?”
Yes. They do.
You are referring to the Islamic Revolutionary politicians.
How crazy are the Shiite mullahs? Is that a question ?
I’d say plenty crazy. Crazy like a fox , too.
“Do they have a death wish?” Yes to the great Satan America and if Iran gets hit and slaughtered doing it they would be o.k. as Allah will reward them. Years ago I heard the same question asked: Why is it different that the Soviets Union can have nuclear weapons but not Iran. Rto see Moscow or Kiev destroyed and go down in history as the leader who failed their nation. The answer then and now is Putin and his predecessors don’t want to see Moscow or Kiev destroyed and their leader go down in history as the one who failed. Radical Islamists have a very different mind set. To eradicate Satan (aka U.S.A. and Israel) is worth the destruction to the nation and their own people. It’s a hard concept for Westerners to wrap their heads around but that’s answer. Denying it won’t erase the threat. Would you negotiate with the Devil? GREAT ARTICLE btw!
Augustus – Well said. Permit me to take it a step further.
“Do they have a death wish?”
Yes they do.
Proof? 9/11 – ad nauseam
We are NOT dealing with people who are rational by OUR standards.
Which of course begs the question – are they crazy?
By our standards the answer is – YES.
“Crazy”? But, in which way? Five comments and a summary:
FIRST, he jihadist network clearly knows that killing of innocents is immoral, but they are experiencing a horrified “desire to escape reality [!] or transform it along the lines of a second reality [!] more congenial to the ‘pheumopathological’ terrorist imagination.” The italicized term applies to a spiritual sickness rather than any psychological disorder (crazy) or more rational thought process at least calculated to achieve justice, if by whatever means. They ‘know’ what they are doing; “They are not psychopaths who cannot distinguish good and evil or innocence and guilt” (Barry Cooper, “Jihadists’ and the War on Terrorism,” The Intercollegiate Review, Spring 2007”.
SECOND, that “second reality” is a God who is so totally transcendent and “other” as to be totally inscrutable, fatalistic, arbitrary and even self-contradictory. Such estrangement (the universal original sin against creaturely humility?) that there’s no opening for the incarnational Triune One. Instead, Islam REPLACES Christ with the dictated Qur’an (the “essence of God”), and Muhammad the messenger REPLACES both the virgin Mother of God and the promised Holy Spirit.
THIRD, where each of the 114 chapters (all except one) of the Qur’an does begin with “In the name of Allah, most Gracious and Merciful,” the historical fact of the Father daily touching our lives (“our daily bread”), and even of Christ personally entering concretely into universal human history (!), in Judea, is beyond the realm of any bubble-reality.
FOURTH, instead of the divine and incarnational Self-disclosure, the only thing left is a composite ‘natural religion’, e.g., the eternal “Law of Moses,” (the “germ of Islam,” or “fitrah”), but with the affirmative Commandments stripped bare of the prohibitive final six—that is, the mystery of good AND evil. No such thing as prideful original sin and our self-inflicted loss of preternatural grace–elevating the good of created natural anger, for example, into its holy application (as with the sinless Christ and the moneychangers). Instead of a redeemed interior and exterior life, the “crazy” conquest against blasphemous infidels by jihadist martyrs with their (Calvinist-like?) “predestination.” By definition, jihad IS the just war!
FIFTH, but, what too, about our own post-Christian and foggy departure from both absolute transcendence and our universal and inborn natural law, itself, into the arbitrary constructs of Logical Positivism– legalized fetal infanticide, physician assisted suicide, anti-binary gender theory and oxymoronic gay marriage, and the overall trajectory of a Consumer Culture? Where Islamic apologetics sinks into the famous and fatal “double-truth” separation of theology and philosophy…much of Secular Humanism sinks into its own ideological double-truth of imaginary “neutrality” (!) as the public domain versus subjectivized and ghettoed religion toward a God other than ourselves.
SUMMARY: In these “crazy” times— a collage of both ecumenical and interreligious incoherencies— a complexity for our Pope Leo XIV and his fourfold theme of “unity and interiority, charity and joy.” Calling for our own clarity, courage, patience, and prayers.
Catholic “conservatives” have often accused us Latin Mass types of being out of line with the Pope, even though no Pope ever banned our Mass, and none have ever called it immoral… even the late Pope Francis kept it legal.
Funny how they think about Rome’s opinion when “American interests” are at stake.
To paraphrase McHugh and Callan’s moral theology, “a war must not be entered unless it is certain that it is just, for as we need certainty to execute a criminal, we must have at least equal certainty for what is essentially a death sentence for so many.”
The article was flawed the moment any serious doubt was expressed, which it was, right here:
“Fourth, a war must not create evils that are more abundant and grave than the evils it resolves. This is the hardest criterion to defend, being so speculative. It is possible that our intervention might go awry or prove ineffective, leading to chaos and instability, and intensifying the cycle of revenge, thus making a bad situation worse.”
As the weeks drag on, as the evils multiply, as we await plunging a civilization of women and children into darkness on Easter Monday because they will not surrender, as the Islamic world is given endless Propaganda, and as the cost of the most basic essentials for the world’s poor become unaffordable, the word “possible” in this analysis reads like cope.
The regime will not fall. You studiously avoided saying that was the goal of the war, even though at the beginning both Trump and Netanyahu explicitly desired it. Why the change of tone? Because it is clear that it will not fall from this war at this point. The people are not rising up, like we fatuously hoped. The Islamic republic will remain. They will have no nuclear bombs, but they will be more enraged than ever. They will regroup in a few years, and all of this will have been for naught.
I never felt threatened by Iran, being in America. I don’t have that level of delusion.
Rejoice, though. Iran has let another 20 Pakistani tankers through. Three cheers for our leaders, who planned this debacle so well, that we gloat about an apparently neutered regime “negotiating” and “letting tankers through.
In conclusion, our ally prevented the Patriarch of Jerusalem from accessing Our Lord’s tomb today. With friends like these, who needs enemies, as the old line goes…
Blessed Holy Week.
There is no doubt the Iranians expressed contempt and hostility towards the United States. However, that is true of a lot of countries and the question is not only intent, but capacity. Islam has a long history of conquest, so its ambitions should not be dismissed. Belloc presciently warned of the day when Islamic piety would find economic resources to begin its march again. Hello oil my old friend.
With that said, there’s nothing that been made public so far that suggests the Iranians were as close to producing a weapon as Netanyahu has insisted for decades. Enriching uranium is but one step in the process. Engineering a bomb is incredibly complicated and you really don’t know what you are doing unless you test it, because there could be a failure to detonate, inadequate or excessive yield. Joining club nuclear means lighting on off as proof of concept.
If we are really concerned about hostile countries with PROVEN nuclear capability, we might want to consider what happens when all those babies being born in England and France named Mohammed attain maturity. Growing Islamic minorities in Europe are already seizing political power and and demanding privileged status. They are surely laughing at the Church of England’s Arbchbishopess of Canterbury and the effete and effeminate men that created that bizarre novelty, and no doubt see the time when they impose Sharia law on an entire European nation.
They already have nuclear capability, with France having created the largest yield (120 kt) implosion weapon. Right now, North Korea is both hostile and nuclear capable.
“I am peace-loving, but when I speak, they war against me”.