A self-declared Peace Prez’s war of ‘Epic Fury’ on Iran

The question is whether raw power should have a free run to achieve its objectives without accountability and by narrowing space for dialogue

The coordinated strikes on Iran launched by the United States and Israel on February 28 in open defiance of international law should not come as a surprise to anyone who understands a bit about moral hypocrisy. Not practising what one preaches, moral duplicity is an act of professing high moral standards and beliefs while behaving in ways that contradict them. President Donald Trump is a classic example of moral inconsistency, if not moral hypocrisy, or both.

His best foreign policy was supposed to be “not starting any wars”. Ironically, the self-proclaimed candidate of peace in his second term has so far bombed seven countries: Yemen, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, and Venezuela. Iran is once again Trump’s current target; next on his list, according to him, is Cuba. 

Since January 2025, the ‘America First’ president has followed an agenda that is contrary to what he promised throughout his 2024 presidential campaign. He had pitched himself as an antithesis to his Democratic opponents—Joe Biden and, later, Kamala Harris—insisting he would end multiple global conflicts that started under his predecessor, including Israel’s war on Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In his victory speech he told his supporters, “I am not going to start a war. I am going to stop wars.” In his victory address two months later, he projected himself as a global peacemaker, saying that the measure of his success would not only be the battles America wins but also the “wars we end and perhaps more importantly, the wars we never get into”.

And yet Trump chose to launch his most extensive and expensive military campaign so far—a war on Iran, which has expanded into a regional conflagration. Iran sees the joint US-Israel attack as a fight for its survival in a region that is already burdened with smouldering wars and fragile states. America’s abhorrence for a hardline regime, or the desire for “freedom” for the Iranian people, does not confer a legal justification for an unprovoked war on a sovereign country and the targeted killing of its spiritual leader.

The strikes on Iran seem to have yielded immediate results, but wars do not always unfold according to initial intent and design. Trump is seeking to decisively neutralise a long-time US adversary. Israel wants Iran to be strategically weakened either through capitulation or internal rupture. It seems unlikely that Iran will surrender so easily. 

“Operation Epic Fury” is essentially America’s war of choice. It does not need geopolitical expertise to understand why Israel wanted to attack Iran. Why Trump jumped into it is as incomprehensible as his ever-changing rationale for the war. His call to Iranian people to overthrow a sovereign government is extremely illogical and illegal in a theoretically rule-based world.

When might makes right, it grants a powerful licence to strike at will, blurring the difference between morality and hypocrisy. If Russia’s justification of its invasion of Ukraine, claiming to ward off a future threat, can be rejected, then Trump’s justification for attacking Iran is a highly implausible fairy tale—its thematic objective makes it hard to differentiate between the good and evil and diplomacy and blackmail. 

Nobody knows what is the endgame of this conflict. Conflicting claims, narratives, and rhetorical projectiles are flying in air, while Trump keeps contradicting his earlier claims and changing his objective behind the war that is getting murkier and devastating for Iran and the region. His argument, explaining why Iran is a threat, is the same old, recycled decades of US grievances about the Islamic republic’s covert activities in the Middle East: its nuclear programme, ballistic missile development, and support for regional militias like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. The truth is that nobody in the world can match the might of America’s most sophisticated military capabilities.

Many of Trump’s claims do not hold up to basic scrutiny. He claimed that Iran is close to developing long-range missiles that “could soon reach the American homeland”. But the reality is that, according to US intelligence, Iran is at least a decade away from having missiles that could possibly target America. Israel’s constant insecurity about Iran’s missiles and drones and the so-called “Axis of Resistance”, which it supports across the Middle Eastern region, is directly linked to the occupation of the West Bank, an unresolved two-state issue, and land grabs in the occupied territory through violence and the displacement of Palestinians.

Israel is a recognised UN member state; Palestine, despite being recognised by over 150 nations, operates with limited sovereignty—full statehood remains blocked by the US in the UN Security Council. 

By building a facade and a false case that Iran was much closer to developing a nuclear bomb than previously known, the war against Iran has long-lasting consequences, as Iran’s retaliation has gone beyond Israel to Arab monarchies and vassal states that rule their subjects with dictatorial laws. Various reports in Western media suggest Trump’s original plan was to carry out a military campaign for four days and then declare a ceasefire, hoping that once Iran’s supreme leader was taken out, the regime would collapse.

But large, cohesive states with entrenched political and ideological systems rarely collapse just under air assault. Removing a leader is not the same as remaking a country’s politics and ideology. This has been proved in Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq.

Trump wants a compliant regime in Tehran; the possibility seems difficult even with intensive airstrikes. Iran is a large and militarily stronger country with deeply embedded ideological institutions that can withstand external threats. With continued systematic air campaigns, the US can decapacitate Iran militarily, destroy its physical, social, and scientific infrastructure, cause extreme suffering to civilians, and eliminate leadership figures.

But whether it will force Iran into strategic capitulation remains uncertain. Trump’s aggression may weaken Iran, but the concern is whether it weakens the system of rules on which global stability depends. The question is whether raw power should have a free run to achieve its objectives without accountability and by narrowing the space for dialogue and diplomacy. Even if Trump achieves his military objectives, the consequential question is whether the US is prepared for the outcome that will follow. 

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