“Peace through strength,” President Donald Trump’s often repeated phrase, was on full display over the weekend, as the commander in chief joined the Israeli attack against Iran, launching strikes on three nuclear sites within Iran’s borders.
But despite Trump’s Orwellian claims to the contrary, this unprovoked attack against a sovereign nation was neither strong nor peaceful. It was a weak-willed capitulation to our national pastime, to this country’s long-standing addiction: war and violence, especially against those who look different from our popular imagination of who is worthy of life and dignity — and who isn’t.
The dehumanization at the core of this should be obvious to everyone. Justifying the airstrikes, the Trump administration has incessantly emphasized that Iran must never obtain a nuclear weapon, but this reasoning runs in opposition to the president’s own intelligence briefings.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, testified to Congress in March that the U.S. “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” an assertion the president simply called “wrong” on Friday, the day before he gave the go-ahead to attack Iran.
But even if Iran were pursuing a nuclear weapon, acting as if we have some moral leg to stand against such an action is absurd. Considering that the U.S. has nuclear weapons, of course, and that Israel — just one of five countries that is not a signatory to the U.N. Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — is known to possess nuclear warheads, it makes sense that Iran would consider developing nuclear weapons of its own as a deterrent against its enemies.