For nearly two millennia, the Christian intellectual tradition has maintained that war, while sometimes permissible, is never presumptively just. The burden of proof always falls on the party making war, not on the party resisting it. Augustine of Hippo laid the groundwork in the fifth century. Thomas Aquinas refined it in the thirteenth. Their framework has endured because it is rigorous, demanding, and difficult to satisfy. It was designed to be difficult to satisfy. War kills people, and the Christian faith holds that every human person bears the image of God.
The war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran on February 28, 2026 fails every criterion of the just war tradition. Not most of them. All of them.
Legitimate Authority
Aquinas held that war must be waged by a sovereign authority with the responsibility and competence to make such a decision. In the American constitutional order, that authority rests with Congress. Article I, Section 8 is unambiguous: Congress shall have the power to declare war. Not the president. Not the secretary of defense. Not a foreign head of state calling from Jerusalem.
On March 5, the House of Representatives voted on a War Powers Resolution to halt Trump’s unauthorized war. It failed 212–219, but the very fact that it was brought to a vote – after the bombing had already begun – tells you everything about the constitutional posture of this conflict. The war was started without congressional authorization. Only two Republicans, Thomas Massie and Warren Davidson, voted to reassert the legislature’s war powers. The executive branch launched a regime-change war against a nation of ninety million people on its own initiative, and Congress, rather than checking that power, acquiesced after the fact.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has admitted that the United States launched the war in part because Israel was planning to attack Iran unilaterally, and Washington decided to join rather than restrain. This is not sovereign deliberation. This is a tail wagging a dog into a catastrophe. The criterion of legitimate authority is not met.
Just Cause
The classical just war tradition permits war only to correct a grave, public evil – typically an act of aggression against the party going to war or against innocents it has a duty to protect. What was the grave evil that Iran inflicted on the United States?
President Trump, in his State of the Union address on February 24, accused Iran of reviving efforts to build nuclear weapons and possessing advanced missile capabilities threatening the United States and Europe. But the administration’s own intelligence community had reached the opposite conclusion. A classified National Intelligence Council report, completed roughly one week before the attack, found that even a large-scale assault was unlikely to oust the Iranian government. More critically, the intelligence community has never established that Iran was building a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s own director acknowledged on air that the Agency had no proof of a systematic Iranian effort to build a bomb.
We have seen this before. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq on the basis of claims about weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be fabricated. As multiple observers have noted, the rhetorical pattern is virtually identical: unproven allegations of WMDs, claims of imminent threat, and a rush to war that preempts the diplomatic process. The Iranian foreign minister was saying a historic deal was within reach when the bombs fell. The Omani foreign minister, mediating the talks, confirmed that Tehran had agreed to significant concessions. The United States bombed anyway.
There is no just cause here. There is a manufactured one.
Right Intention
Augustine insisted that war must be waged with the intention of establishing peace and justice, not out of hatred, greed, or the desire for domination. The stated goal of this war is regime change – overthrowing the Iranian government and replacing it with one amenable to American and Israeli interests. An Israeli official stated plainly: the goal is to create conditions for the overthrow of the Iranian regime, targeting all of Iran’s political and military leadership, past, present, and future.
This is not the language of reluctant self-defense. This is the language of empire. The Pentagon has dubbed the operation “Epic Fury,” which tells you about the spirit in which it was conceived. Pete Hegseth declared that the assault was never meant to be a fair fight. The intention is domination, not peace. The criterion is not met.
Proportionality
The principle of proportionality requires that the harm caused by war must not exceed the evil being corrected. In less than two weeks, U.S. and Israeli strikes have killed over 1,300 Iranian civilians. Over 160 girls died when a primary school was struck on the first day. Hospitals have been hit. The Grand Bazaar in Tehran – one of the oldest markets in the world – has been damaged. The Golestan Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was struck. The World Health Organization has identified thirteen Iranian health infrastructure sites hit by airstrikes. Reports indicate the use of double-tap strikes designed to maximize casualties.
On the other side, six American service members have been killed. Eleven Israelis have died. The asymmetry is staggering, and it will grow. Oil is above $100 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Gulf states are suffering strikes on their civilian infrastructure. Lebanon is being destabilized again, with nearly half a million people displaced. The war’s architects promised four weeks. The Pentagon is now planning through September.
No proportionality analysis can justify this. The cure is orders of magnitude worse than the disease.
Last Resort
This is perhaps the most damning failure. The just war tradition requires that all peaceful alternatives be exhausted before force is employed. Not merely considered. Exhausted.
On February 6, Iran and the United States held indirect nuclear negotiations in Muscat, Oman. A second round was scheduled for Geneva. On February 25 – three days before the bombing began – Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi stated publicly that a historic agreement was within reach and that diplomacy must be prioritized. The Omani mediator confirmed that Tehran had agreed to significant concessions.
The United States launched its attack while its own negotiators were in the process of making a deal. This is not a last resort. It is a first resort dressed up in the language of reluctant necessity. The bombs fell on a country that was actively suing for peace.
Discrimination
Finally, the principle of discrimination requires that combatants distinguish between military targets and civilians, and that civilians never be deliberately targeted. The strike on a primary school killing 160 girls. The strikes on hospitals. The strikes on the Grand Bazaar. The strikes on residential neighborhoods. The reported use of double-tap airstrikes. The sinking of a defenseless Iranian frigate that was returning from a multinational naval exercise and carried no ammunition – a fact the United States likely knew, since it had sent a maritime patrol aircraft to the same exercise.
These are not the marks of a military operation exercising discrimination. They are the marks of a campaign designed to break a society.
The just war tradition is not pacifist. It acknowledges that there are circumstances in which the use of force is morally permissible. But it sets the bar high, because the stakes are measured in human lives made in the image of God. This war does not clear that bar. It does not come close. And every Christian who remains silent while schools and hospitals burn in Tehran should ask whether their silence serves the Prince of Peace or the principalities and powers.
Matt Tanous is an independent scholar based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He writes on philosophy, political theory, and theology. He can be reached at matt.tanous@hey.com.
