Bombing for Morality: How the US and Israel Lost the Right to Judge Iran

On Moral Consistency, Selective Enforcement, and Why You Can’t Be the Arsonist and the Fire Inspector

There is one test you can apply to any moral claim. Would you accept this being done to you? Not in theory. Not in some philosophy class. In practice. With real consequences. Applied to your country, your family, your sovereignty.

If the answer is no, you cannot do it to someone else.

That is not a radical idea. It is the golden rule stripped of religious packaging. No scripture required. No divine commandment. No philosophical treatise. Just empathy. The ability to imagine yourself in someone else’s position.

It is also the one test the current international order consistently fails.

Morality Has Two Layers

Morals are human constructs. We made them. That is not a weakness. That is the point. Because they are constructs, they only carry legitimacy if they apply equally to everyone. Any system that claims universal authority while applying selectively is not a moral framework. It is a control mechanism. Whether that system is religion, international law, or American foreign policy, the critique is the same.

So we need to separate two layers.

First layer: universal. Things that apply to all humans regardless of culture, geography, or power. Do not kill. Do not steal sovereignty. Do not impose your will through force. The test is simple. Would this apply to any human anywhere? If yes, it belongs here. Non negotiable.

Second layer: cultural. How you dress. What you eat. How you worship. How you organise your society. These are choices that belong to communities. They are not subject to external enforcement. The West telling Iran how to govern itself falls here. You can disagree with another society’s choices. You cannot bomb them for it.

Empathy bridges the two. You do not need a holy book to identify universal morals. You need the ability to recognise that other people are as real as you are.

The Messenger Has No Credibility

When the United States says “Iran supports terrorism” or “Iran violates human rights” or “Iran cannot be trusted with nuclear technology,” the principle might be sound in the abstract. But the messenger has zero credibility to enforce it.

Look at the record.

The CIA orchestrated the 1953 coup in Iran. Overthrew a democratically elected government. For oil. The US backed Saddam Hussein during the Iran Iraq war, the same war where Iran lost tens of thousands. The US supported apartheid South Africa. The CIA ran Operation Condor across Latin America, building the infrastructure for military dictatorships that killed tens of thousands of dissidents, unionists, students, priests, across at least six countries.

Then there is Afghanistan. The US funded and armed the mujahideen through Pakistan’s ISI to fight the Soviets. But Pakistan’s intelligence service controlled who got the money and weapons. And they chose the fundamentalists. Not the moderates. The most radical factions got the most support. When the Soviets withdrew, the US walked away entirely. Left behind a shattered country drowning in weapons. Saudi funded madrasas multiplied from 900 to over 33,000 in under two decades. The mujahideen, with no common enemy left, turned on each other in a brutal power struggle. From that chaos, from the continued ISI patronage of extremists, from the madrasas, the Taliban emerged.

The US did not create the Taliban directly. But it built the conditions. Supplied the weapons. Empowered the intermediaries who chose the worst actors. Then abandoned the consequences. Then returned decades later claiming moral authority over the very situation it helped create.

The sanctions on Iran for “supporting militant groups” come from a country that has armed, funded, and installed militant groups and dictators across the globe for decades.

You cannot be the arsonist and the fire inspector.

The Enforcer Must Go First

This is not whataboutism. Whataboutism deflects. This confronts. Universal applicability means the enforcer must meet the standard before enforcing it. The US does not. That is not a minor procedural objection. It is the whole thing.

Look at what is happening right now. The destabilisation of NATO. The contradictory postures on Ukraine. The selective treatment of sovereignty violations. When you make something lawful even though it is unlawful, you also make it lawful for others. Venezuela. Unlawful. Iran. Unlawful. Ukraine. Also unlawful. You cannot say one is yes and the other is no. The moment you carve exceptions based on strategic interest, you have abandoned the principle entirely.

What remains is not a rules based order. It is empire with better marketing.

The US position, stripped bare: we define the morals, we exempt ourselves, and we bomb you for failing to meet standards we do not meet.

Accountability starts with self examination, not projection. That is not naive idealism. It is the only logically consistent position if you actually believe in the principles you claim to enforce.

Nobody Has the Right to Enforce Through Force

Everyone has the right to say something is wrong. Nobody has the right to act on that judgement against a sovereign entity through force.

Follow the alternative to its logical end. The moment you grant enforcement rights to external actors, you have recreated the entire problem. Who decides which killings justify intervention? The US, which killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq? Russia, which flattened Chechnya? The powerful decide. They decide selectively. And you are back to morality as a control mechanism.

The counterargument is predictable. What about genocide? What about Rwanda? Surely someone must act.

1. The system that grants that actor unilateral authority is already illegitimate.
2. That actor’s history shows intervention follows interest, not urgency.
3. Therefore, the claimed rescue is embedded in selective enforcement.
4. Selective enforcement undermines universality.
5. Undermined universality guarantees future injustice.

Fine. Let us talk about Rwanda.

In 1994, 800,000 people were killed in 100 days. The United States and France used their positions on the UN Security Council to block intervention. Not because the moral case was unclear. Because they considered it contrary to their strategic interests. The Security Council could not even pass a resolution containing the word “genocide” because that would have triggered obligations under the 1951 Genocide Convention. This is supposed to be the example that breaks the case for sovereignty and moral consistency. In reality it is the strongest evidence for it.

Think about it. If universal morality had been genuinely applied, no veto would have been cast. Blocking intervention during genocide fails the most basic empathy test. Would you accept being abandoned during your own genocide? The failure was not in the framework. The failure was that the actors inside the system violated the framework. The same way they violate it when they bomb Iran. When they invade Iraq. When they exempt themselves from everything they impose on others.

Rwanda is not a counterexample. It is exhibit A.

The Pragmatists Have No Leg to Stand On

The people who argue for unilateral intervention as a backstop, the pragmatists who say sometimes a powerful country must step in alone, need to answer one question. Why did that powerful country choose not to step in during Rwanda, and then choose to step in when it suited its interests in Iraq and Libya? The US did not fail to act in Rwanda because it lacked the authority to act alone. It failed because it lacked the will. Then it acted with enormous force, unilaterally, decisively, in theatres where the moral case was far less clear but the strategic payoff was real.

So the practical argument collapses. Unilateral enforcers do not intervene based on moral urgency. They intervene based on interest. Which is the entire point of this essay.

The Trade Off

Honesty demands acknowledging the cost of this position.

A framework built on moral consistency, empathy, and collective accountability rather than unilateral force means accepting something uncomfortable. When empathy fails and collective will collapses, as it did in Rwanda, there is no backstop. No single power rides in.

That is the trade off. And it is worth making.

Because the alternative has been tried. Granting a single power the right to selectively enforce morality produced the 1953 Iran coup. Produced Operation Condor. Produced the arming of fundamentalists in Afghanistan. Produced the invasion of Iraq on false pretences. Produced the current posture of bombing countries whose internal affairs are not the bomber’s business. Instead of engaging Iran through diplomacy over decades, the US isolated it, strangled its economy, empowered hardliners, and is now bombing the country while telling civilians to overthrow their own government between explosions. That is not moral enforcement. That is opportunism wearing a moral mask.

The uncomfortable truth is that a morally consistent world will sometimes fail to prevent atrocities. But a morally inconsistent world, the one we actually live in, does not prevent them either. It just chooses which atrocities to tolerate and which to weaponise for strategic gain.

Between a framework that sometimes fails and one that is designed to fail selectively, the choice is clear.

The Framework

Morals are human constructs identified through empathy. They are universal when they pass the test of applying to all humans everywhere. Cultural practices that do not harm others are sovereign. Enforcement of universal morals is each society’s internal responsibility. External intervention is only legitimate at collectively agreed thresholds. And that intervention must be multilateral, not unilateral. The enforcer must meet its own standards before acting.

When the collective mechanism fails, as it did in Rwanda, as it does whenever powerful states put interest above principle, that failure is not evidence against the framework. It is evidence of the same disease the framework diagnoses. The selective application of morals by those with the power to choose who they apply to.

The cure is not more selective enforcement. The cure is consistency.

And consistency starts at home.