The U.S. risks losing more than the moral high ground by bombing Iran | Opinion

Does Iran have the right to defend itself?

After Hamas unleashed an act of terror on Israel in 2023, the country responded with a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced just about everyone in Gaza. Critics, myself included, have argued that Israel has gone too far, that it has been committing an ungodly level of atrocities.

The rebuttal has always been that Israel has a right to defend itself.

It obviously does.

Israel had a right to defend itself from attack, as it did after Hamas’ ambush on Oct. 7, 2023.

The United States had a right to defend itself from attacks, as it did after Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida killed thousands of Americans on Sept. 11, 2001.

Over the course of a week, Iran has been attacked by two countries.

It was first attacked by Israel, which has the strongest military in the region and is widely believed to have a nuclear arsenal of at least 90 warheads, ostensibly to prevent Iran from becoming the second nuclear-armed nation in the Middle East.

Iran was attacked days later by the U.S. and the most powerful military in the world after President Donald Trump authorized a fleet of B-2 bombers to attack three Iranian nuclear sites where Israeli and American officials claim Iran has been preparing to develop nukes. American intelligence officials earlier this year said Iran was not.

After being attacked by two countries, does Iran have a right to defend itself?

To hear men like South Carolina’s senior U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, it doesn’t. That’s the thrust of what I got from his Sunday morning “Meet the Press” appearance.

Graham declared Trump had the right to bomb Iran without congressional authorization and that the decision was “bold” and “brilliant militarily, necessary, and, most importantly, effective.” Graham also pushed for Iranian regime change and said Israel should have done it “a long time ago.”

As he praised the Trump decision to attack Iran, Graham oddly, if unaware of the dark irony, lamented Russia’s “brutal invasion of Ukraine.”

Most revealingly, he conveyed this message from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

“He wanted me to tell the American people, Israel is not going to live this way anymore,” Graham said. “They’re not going to live under threat from Iran anymore. Last night, they were attacked. The early morning hours of today, after the attack by President Trump, [Iran] fired ballistic missiles into Israel, wounding Israeli citizens. Twenty-four have been killed. ‘This regime is not going to be tolerated by Israel,’ is what he told me.”

For the past couple of years, Israel has been bombarding Gaza with American-made bombs, including leveling hospitals and other vital infrastructure. Israel has claimed those hospitals were legit military targets because Hamas was using the buildings for military purposes, but the UN Human Rights Office has raised serious concerns. When Iran struck a hospital in Israel on Thursday and said it had intended to hit a nearby military target instead, Netanyahu criticized the strike.

I don’t want a nuclear-armed Iran. I wish there were no nuclear-armed nations, not even ours. But does Iran have a right to defend itself against attack? Does it have the right to kill as many people as Israel has in Gaza, or since it began attacking Iran? Given the stomach-churningly large number of civilians Israel has killed and declared unfortunate collateral damage, can Iran make a similar case during its response?

I don’t know if Saturday’s attack on Iran will lead to peace or spark a region-wide war.

I don’t know if the Iranian people will do what Graham and Netanyahu want and overthrow their government, or back it more fiercely because of national pride, the way Americans rallied around President George W. Bush, who had been unpopular before al-Qaida attacked us.

But I know it is growing increasingly difficult for Israel and the U.S. to continue claiming the moral high ground after attacking a nation unprovoked.

The Iranian regime is as awful as Saddam Hussein’s was before we attacked Iraq unprovoked. We lost the moral high ground then, too. We risk losing even more this time.