U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (L) speaks as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine (R) listens during a news conference on the Iran war at the Pentagon.Alex Wong/Getty Images
It’s not true to say that the end justifies the means. Neither is it true that it never does. The true statement is: some ends justify some means.
A lot of people who ought to know better seem to have persuaded themselves that the U.S.-Israel war on Iran (in? against? with?) is a case of the end justifying the means. They include the Leader of the Opposition and, initially, the Prime Minister, though the latter swiftly retreated under cover of a barrage of contradictory statements.
That may be giving them too much credit. For the most part, the reasoning process seems to stop where it started: at the end. The government of Iran is an odious regime that oppresses its own people and attacks its neighbours, a major sponsor of state terrorism and an existential threat to Israel. Ergo, we should make war on it. Or rather – this is Canada, after all – someone should.
What objective such a war might hope to achieve, how it might be fought, what costs might be entailed, what unintended consequences might follow, how victory might be defined or how it might be brought to a close: these would appear to be immaterial. The purpose of the war is the war: war for war’s sake. It’s not even a matter of the end justifying the means. The means is the end.
But let us suppose we were to make some serious effort to compare ends and means. It would be of great help, for starters, if anyone could agree on what the war’s actual end or ends is or are. The Prime Minister may have believed, at the outset, that it was “to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.”
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But he has and had no basis for assuming those were also the ends intended by those actually prosecuting it. The Trump administration has offered at least 10 different rationales, from forestalling Iran’s nuclear ambitions to defending U.S. forces from an “imminent” attack to degrading Iran’s military capacity to regime change to retribution for Iran’s alleged history of interference in U.S. elections and beyond, which suggests a certain lack of clarity, at the least.
Not only do these conflict, but in some cases they are wholly unsupported by the evidence. U.S. intelligence agencies have found no reason to suspect an “imminent” attack by Iran on U.S. forces, let alone on the U.S. mainland, as the Trump administration has also claimed. No serious observer believes Iran is anywhere near to developing a nuclear weapon.
And these are just the stated rationales. The true objectives, assuming the administration has any (see: war for war’s sake), may include distracting attention from the Epstein files, ginning up a patriotic lift in the polls in time for the midterms, the President’s desire to be seen as a decisive leader and geopolitical mastermind, wartime profiteering, or something even lower and stupider.
The Netanyahu government, for its part, has its own ends, stated or otherwise, which may or may not correspond with the Trump administration’s, or anyone else’s.
But never mind. Suppose we could identify with clarity what purposes the war was intended to serve, or suppose we assumed that whatever we considered a compelling justification happened to coincide, even accidentally, with what the U.S. and Israel had in mind. Before you can even begin to argue that the end justifies the means, you have to at least have some basis for believing that the means will achieve the end.
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Much argument for the war seems to take this as given. Thus: the war is justified “because Iran must never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.” Or: the case for war is that the Iranian regime must be removed from power. But what if these are unlikely to be the result? What if, in fact, the war leaves even more hardline, more repressive leaders in power, even more determined to go nuclear?
These aren’t just legal or moral questions. They are hard, practical matters, informed by logic and facts.
War is not just bloody and costly. It is also highly unpredictable, a sledgehammer that may or may not hit the nail. Anyone can launch a bunch of missiles, or order troops into battle. But whether these actually achieve their intended outcome is another matter. Some missions really are impossible.
Suppose they could be achieved. For the end to justify the means, it’s not enough that the means achieves the end: it must do so at an acceptable cost – if not the minimum, then at least one that is proportional to the benefits.
Degrading Iran’s military capacity is relatively simple, given the overwhelming military superiority of the U.S. and Israel. But taking out its nuclear program? Regime change? These are not just military challenges, but technical and political. They would tax the abilities of the most sophisticated statesmen, assisted by the most judicious advisers.
But the Trump administration? Are you serious? Any assessment of the likely costs and benefits of war must take into account the abilities of those proposing to wage it. With most administrations, this would be a relatively minor variable: differences in leadership capacity are ordinarily dwarfed by the size of the challenge. Which may be why every previous administration, Republican or Democrat, has declined to go to war with Iran: not because they lacked the courage, but because they had an accurate understanding of the risks.
But the Trump gang is nothing like most administrations. It is not merely incompetent, or corrupt, or animated by a fanatical ideology. It exhibits, by its every action, a determination to destroy all that previous generations of American leaders have built. Whether this is spurred by envy, a treasonous alliance with the Russian dictator, or a sheer nihilistic delight in watching things burn, the result is the same. Of which their willingness to go to war with Iran is perhaps the surest proof.
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There are, as Donald Rumsfeld said, both known unknowns and unknown unknowns in war, but the Trump administration’s biggest unknown unknown going into this war was how little it knew.
Consider what has emerged since then. Not only did the Trump administration appear to have no clear objectives in mind, nor any strategy to achieve them; not only did they make no attempt to persuade the public, the Congress, or America’s allies of the rightness of their cause; but they clearly had no understanding of what they were getting into, or of where it would lead.
Among other mistakes, miscalculations, and oversights, they thought that the war would be over in a few days; that aerial bombardment alone would be enough to topple the regime; and that killing the Supreme Leader would paralyze the rest of the apparatus of state power. They did not understand either the mentality of Iran’s leaders or the structure of its government.
They did not anticipate or plan for the possibility that Iran would respond by attacking nearby Gulf states, or that it would force the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, though they were repeatedly warned of both (indeed, they are the most obvious commonplaces of Middle East policy literature). They made no advance provision for evacuating U.S. citizens from the region, nor did they top up the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve in preparation for the inevitable disruption in world oil supplies.
A billboard depicting Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center, handing the country’s flag to his son and successor Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, right, as the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stands at left, in a square in downtown Tehran.Vahid Salemi/The Associated Press
The consequence is a full-blown, still-metastasizing military disaster. The regime shows no sign of collapse. Its most extreme factions have cemented their grip on power. The Iranian public, formerly among the most pro-American (or least anti) populations in the region, have been embittered: betrayed by U.S. inaction during the popular uprising earlier this year (“help is on the way,” Donald Trump exhorted them, only to stand by as they were slaughtered by the thousands), they are now dying at the hands of the Americans and Israelis.
The price of oil has exploded, to the benefit of, among others, Russia, which has been assisting Iran in identifying U.S. targets. Nevertheless, desperate to contain the impact on world oil supplies, the Trump administration first lifted sanctions on Russian oil, and now proposes to do the same for, wait for it, Iran. More desperate still, Mr. Trump has taken to demanding other NATO countries put forces in harm’s way to clear the Strait, having spent the past year belittling their contributions and/or threatening to invade one or other of them.
Unsurprisingly, they have declined to bail Mr. Trump out, not only because they were never consulted but because the whole enterprise is contrary to the purpose of NATO, which is, remember, a defensive alliance, not a joint venture for the prosecution of wars of aggression. Mr. Trump has responded by obliquely threatening to pull out of NATO, which at this point is probably just as well: no one believes the U.S. would come to the defence of any of its members under his leadership.
Mr. Trump is now trapped. He can’t just “declare victory and get out,” as some have urged, because Iran has no incentive to do the same: with the Strait in its grip, it has lately taken to dictating its own terms for peace. Neither can he press further, if by pressing further is meant sending in the troops. Conquering a country the size and topography of Iran is out of the question. Even a mission to extract the 400 kilograms of enriched uranium in Iran’s possession is fraught with peril.
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In sum, the regime’s resistance has been hardened; Russia has been emboldened; NATO has been (further) divided; the economy has been weakened. The American military has been made to look impotent, able to inflict a pounding on Iran but not to bend it to its will. That is likely to have severe long-term consequences, not only for the region – America’s beleaguered Gulf-state allies are unlikely to trust its security guarantees again – but for the world. Already China is flexing its muscles in the seas around Taiwan.
And all of it was entirely predictable. It did not take an expert in military doctrine or Middle East politics to foresee disaster: only a passing familiarity with the Trump administration and its record. It would have been one thing if there had been a genuine emergency to avert – an imminent attack, say, or an approaching nuclear breakthrough. In such circumstances, as it might be said, you go to war with the president you have. There is less necessity then to show you have a coherent strategy, a definition of victory, a plan for after the war, and so on. You just have to act.
Conversely, if the administration had had all of these in place – if it were a different administration, in other words – its decision to go to war might have still been defensible, even in the absence of an immediate emergency, assuming it had secured the requisite approval from the public, the Congress, and the world at large. But lacking any of the usual requirements – no clear casus belli, no plan, no legal authority and next to no international support? With all of the incalculable risks of war? In the Middle East, of all regions? With Mr. Trump, of all presidents?
We know what Mr. Trump was thinking: he wasn’t. But what on earth were the rest of this war’s supporters thinking?