The Handmaid's Tale: From Cuba To Iran, A Dystopian Landscape

From The Handmaid’s Tale to the politics of modern wars, the language of women’s liberation is repeatedly invoked to justify power, intervention and regime change.

Chinki Sinha
Updated on: 11 March 2026 

OUTLOOK INDIA


In Atwood’s novel, Gilead is a country that was formerly the United States, where women are treated as host bodies as a fertility crisis begins to dictate politics. Photo: Source: IMDB


Summary of this article


The slogan from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale becomes a lens to examine how women’s rights are often invoked to legitimise wars and geopolitical agendas.


From Afghanistan in 2001 to present conflicts in West Asia, political leaders have repeatedly framed military action as a mission to “liberate” women.


History shows, however, that militarised interventions rarely deliver gender justice, and often undermine feminist movements instead.

“There is more than one kind of freedom,” said Aunt Lydia. “Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.”

—Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

That’s how it all happens. Freedom from the regime. That’s the justification. There are others, but those have been refuted. Like nuclear capability that would threaten Israel’s right to exist. This also means rights are never really equal.


This book, published in 1985, must be the Bible of our times. By us, I mean mostly women. We must then be vigilant. Dystopias exist. They just haven’t been marked on the map. We know now that changing the name of a place is easy. Expansion is now only a question of military might. Nobody can ask questions. There are consequences, we are told.

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Cover Story: Bombs Do Not Liberate Women


In Atwood’s novel, Gilead is a country that was formerly the United States, where women are treated as host bodies as a fertility crisis begins to dictate politics. Fertile women are kept in captivity and must serve the mandate to produce children. They are raped and denied basic dignity. They must not talk. There will be consequences, they are told. Women are to take care of the family if they are wives. They can’t read. They can’t make decisions. Any “immoral behaviour” will not be tolerated. Atwood didn’t have to imagine it all. There was a cult called the ‘People of Hope’ that was started in 1975 by a New York stockbroker and ordained Catholic priest named Robert Gallic, that viewed at women as handmaidens of god who were to be subservient to their husbands. Then there was Canadian MP Dave Nickerson, who cited Canada’s fertility rate dropping to an all-time low and said families should have more children.

In this book, the handmaids of Gilead organise themselves despite the brutal regime.


We live in similar dystopias.

Tehran Times Publishes Faces Of Slain Children, Issues Direct Challenge To Trump

In 2023, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee honoured Iran’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” activists and awarded the coveted prize to the well-known and currently imprisoned women’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi. Women are capable. They don’t want to be rescued.

One must always write disclaimers these days. I am not an apologist for the regime in Iran. Nor do I condone this war. Not that I matter, but still, my tiny voice must find its place.

The war is streaming live. Some truths, a lot of propaganda, a lot of fake news. It is easy then to rejoice over the killings in the name of liberation. It is also easy to defend the regime that brutally crushed the protests in Iran. Black smoke, gutted buildings and sirens going off are the new normal. All spectacular images. Like 9/11 when the Twin Towers were struck.

Not much is making sense anymore. Least of all, this war on Iran in the name of regime change to ‘liberate’ women under an oppressive regime. The war, whose first act led to the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Now, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is citing Jina Mahsa Amini and her killing in Iran and the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom,” to justify his attack on Iran using ‘women’s rights’ to legitimise war, while the war on Gaza continues and women and children keep becoming casualties. Selective wars are too obvious.

The legitimate aspirations to autonomy and self-deter­mination of Iranian women have been set aside. Agency denied.

All scripts for regime changes are pre-determined and similar. The “military attack-cum-regime change” pattern based on “gender disorder” is not new. In 1898, Cuba was depicted as a “damsel in distress” by major US newspapers and the Monroe Doctrine was chalked out to justify the US claim to the Americas, which was yet another case of using women’s iconography to make war.

Former US First Lady Laura Bush had declared in 2001 that the “fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women” in the case of Afghanistan. We know what panned out in Afghanistan later.

There are many such examples. There is now another war on the horizon. A friendly takeover of Cuba.

Video | Liberation Or Violation? The Legal & Moral Questions Behind The US-Israel Strike On Iran
BY Anwiti Singh


Political agendas hide conveniently behind the slogans of freedom, human rights, saving women and in desperation, we want to believe them. We want to continue hoping. But takeovers are not rescue efforts.

Militarised men do not bring freedom or equal rights. That is what past experience has shown women. Liberation cannot begin with bombs. Feminism cannot be part of the war machine. When militarised projects co-opt the language of feminism, developed through long struggles for rights, they damage movements led by women.

One should remember that during his 2016 presidential campaign, US President Donald Trump said, “You have to ban” abortion. As president, he appointed Supreme Court justices who later formed the majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling in which the US Supreme Court recognised a constitutional right protecting a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy. In 2022, the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization marked the removal of the constitutional right to abortion.

These are facts one must remember. There are many others. But readers know where to look. Who liberates whom is then the question? Who gives freedom to and freedom from?

I must quote from The Handmaid’s Tale again.

“As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.”

Hear the echoes then. And don’t let Gilead become a reality. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

Chinki Sinha is editor, outlook Magazine

This article is part of Outlook 's March 21 issue 'Bombs Do Not Liberate Women' which looks at the conflict in West Asia following US and Israel’s attacks on Iran leading to the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while the world wondered in loud silence, again, Whose War Is It Anyway?

 

Deterrence or Vulnerability? Security Dilemma of Non-Nuclear States in Great Power Rivalry

Zahoor Ahmad Mir , Hilal Ramzan  

11 Mar 2026

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If the perception spreads that nuclear weapons are the only reliable shield against external intervention, the world may drift toward a far more dangerous equilibrium.

In international politics, power rarely speaks softly. It speaks through deterrence, coercion, and occasionally through war. The escalating confrontation in West Asia, today, in 2026, marked by direct military strikes involving Iran, Israel, and the United States, has once again exposed the harsh logic that governs the global security order. Beneath the tactical details of missile strikes, drone attacks, and military retaliation lies a deeper strategic question that resonates far beyond the region: what lessons will other states draw from this crisis about the relationship between power and survival?

For many governments observing the unfolding war, the issue is not merely regional politics but the fundamental structure of the international system itself. If military power remains the ultimate arbiter of political outcomes, then states without credible deterrent capabilities may find themselves dangerously exposed.

This dilemma has long occupied scholars of international relations. In an international system defined by anarchy, where no overarching authority can reliably enforce rules, states must ultimately rely on their own capabilities for survival. The structural logic of this system was famously articulated by the realist tradition of international thought, which emphasises that security competition emerges not necessarily from aggression but from uncertainty. Even defensive actions by one state can appear threatening to another, producing what political scientist Robert Jervis described as the “security dilemma”.

For decades, the global nuclear order attempted to mitigate this dilemma through institutional arrangements. The cornerstone of that order remains the Treaty on the Non‑Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), signed in 1968, and now joined by nearly every country in the world. The treaty rests on a delicate political bargain: non-nuclear states agree not to pursue nuclear weapons, while nuclear-armed states commit to eventual disarmament and to facilitating peaceful nuclear technology.

The durability of this arrangement has been remarkable. Despite the destructive power of nuclear weapons and the strategic incentives that might encourage their spread, only nine states ultimately developed nuclear arsenals. Yet, the credibility of the non-proliferation regime has always depended on a crucial assumption: that states which refrain from acquiring nuclear weapons will not become strategically vulnerable because of that restraint. It is precisely this assumption that is increasingly under strain.

The global security environment is undergoing profound transformation. Military spending worldwide has surged to unprecedented levels, exceeding $2.4 trillion annually, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute or SIPRI. Nuclear modernisation programmes are expanding simultaneously in the US, Russia, and China. Arms control agreements that once helped stabilise strategic competition are weakening, while geopolitical rivalry is intensifying across multiple regions—from Eastern Europe to the Indo-Pacific.

In such an environment, the strategic calculations of weaker states inevitably evolve.

History provides several cases that continue to shape how governments interpret the relationship between military capability and regime survival. The 2003 invasion of Iraq demonstrated that even states suspected of possessing weapons of mass destruction or WMDs could experience regime change through external intervention.

Libya’s decision in 2003 to abandon its nuclear and missile programmes was initially celebrated as a triumph of diplomacy, yet the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime during the NATO intervention of 2011 profoundly altered the strategic interpretation of that decision.

For policymakers concerned primarily with survival, such episodes generate what scholars sometimes call “strategic lesson drawing.” Governments observe past interventions and derive conclusions about what policies might protect them from similar outcomes.

Within this framework, the trajectory of North Korea occupies a central place in contemporary strategic debates. Despite decades of international sanctions and diplomatic isolation, North Korea has successfully developed nuclear weapons and long-range missile capabilities. Analysts estimate that the country now possesses several dozen nuclear warheads along with intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching distant continents. While tensions on the Korean Peninsula remain acute, the presence of nuclear weapons has fundamentally altered the strategic calculus surrounding the regime’s survival. Direct military intervention aimed at regime change is widely viewed as prohibitively risky.

For many observers, the contrast between Libya and North Korea illustrates what might be described as the deterrence credibility paradox: states that abandon nuclear ambitions may remain vulnerable, while those that acquire nuclear weapons may gain a degree of strategic immunity.

The ongoing confrontation involving Iran further sharpens this dilemma. Military strikes targeting Iranian nuclear infrastructure have been justified by their proponents as preventive measures designed to halt Tehran’s progress toward potential nuclear weapons capability. Yet, the strategic signals transmitted by such actions may prove far more ambiguous.

For Iranian policymakers, and for other governments observing the conflict, the lesson may be interpreted in precisely the opposite direction. If nuclear infrastructure becomes a target of military action before a country crosses the nuclear threshold, the incentive to develop a credible deterrent may only intensify.

This dynamic is particularly dangerous because it can generate what strategists describe as a proliferation cascade. When one state moves toward nuclear capability, its regional rivals may feel compelled to consider similar options. Over time, this process can transform regional security environments into multi-actor nuclear landscapes marked by heightened instability.

West Asia already exhibits many of the conditions associated with such dynamics. The ongoing conflict has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime corridor through which roughly one-fifth of global oil trade flows. Energy markets have reacted sharply, demonstrating how regional security crises involving nuclear-threshold states can produce immediate global economic consequences.

Similar strategic pressures exist elsewhere. In East Asia, North Korea’s expanding nuclear arsenal has intensified debates in South Korea and Japan about the credibility of extended deterrence. In South Asia, nuclear deterrence continues to shape the strategic relationship between India and Pakistan, where both states maintain evolving nuclear doctrines and delivery systems.

Yet nuclear weapons remain profoundly paradoxical instruments of security. These may deter large-scale invasion, but cannot guarantee comprehensive national stability. Nuclear arsenals do not resolve economic crises, internal political unrest, cyber warfare, or asymmetric conflict. Instead, these create a precarious equilibrium in which catastrophic escalation becomes the ultimate constraint on political decision-making.

In this sense, nuclear weapons function less as tools of victory than as mechanisms of mutual vulnerability. The long-term stability of the global nuclear order, therefore, depends not only on the restraint of non-nuclear states but also on the conduct of nuclear powers themselves. If major powers increasingly rely on unilateral military action, coercive sanctions, and selective interpretations of international law, the credibility of the non-proliferation regime will inevitably erode.

When weaker states conclude that international norms cannot reliably protect their sovereignty, the logic of self-help becomes difficult to resist. The challenge confronting the international community is, therefore, not merely technical or legal but fundamentally political.

Preventing nuclear proliferation requires restoring confidence that adherence to global norms enhances security rather than undermines it. This demands renewed commitment to arms control, credible security assurances, and strategic restraint by the world’s most powerful states.

The tragedy of nuclear weapons lies in the peculiar form of stability these produce. These deter war not by guaranteeing safety but by making the consequences of conflict unthinkably catastrophic. As the current crisis in West Asia demonstrates, the global nuclear order stands at a fragile crossroads. If the perception spreads that nuclear weapons are the only reliable shield against external intervention, the world may gradually drift toward a far more dangerous equilibrium.

Avoiding that future will require something that has historically proven scarce in international politics: power exercised with restraint and security extended beyond the narrow circle of the nuclear armed. Because in a world where the weak feel permanently insecure, the stability of the entire system ultimately comes into question.

Zahoor Ahmed Mir is Assistant Professor at Akal University, Punjab. He holds PhD from Jamia Millia Islamia and writes on international relations, geopolitics, nuclear security, etc.  mirzahoor81.m@gmail.com. Hilal Ramzan is Assistant Professor and Head of the Social Science Department at Akal University, Bhatinda. He writes on geopolitics, soft-power, international relations etc. hilal.mphcupb@gmail.com. The views are personal.

 

Together for Iran

MARCH 14, 2O26

Over 200 pro-democracy, pro-justice and anti-war British-Iranians have signed a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling on him not to support the Israeli-US war on Iran, but to adopt a consciously pro-democracy policy instead. A video of activist Nasrin Parvaz reading the letter has been beamed onto the Houses of Parliament. Other former detainees from the notorious Evin prison Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Aras Amiri are among the signatories of the letter, reproduced below.

Dear Prime Minister,

We are British-Iranians and at this moment we are overcome with grief.

For decades we have been hoping for the day when Iranian democracy can finally flourish. Many of us have not been able to visit Iran for years for fear of imprisonment or worse. Nobody can claim to want the end of the Islamic Republic more than we do.

But attacking the country in this way will have the opposite effect. It will entrench the authoritarians and give life to the fiction that has sustained them internally for decades: that they are fighting western imperialism.

When Netanyahu – a man charged with international war crimes after killing countless civilians in Gaza – assassinates Iran’s dictator that kills the man but immortalises the myth. Iranians wanted him tried and punished for his crimes, not given the martyr ending he craved.

When Netanyahu says to Iranians “do not sit with your arms crossed” but instead to rise up and “finish the job” he reveals the racism that underpins his policy, as if 90 million people had been idly waiting several decades for his bombs.

This is of course not just Netanyahu’s war, Trump and the US are a significant part of it. But as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “The president made the very wise decision — we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties”. So the US followed Netanyahu into this war.

Britain however doesn’t have to follow Netanyahu down the path of bombing schools, hospitals, sports grounds and pharmaceuticals manufacturers. Britain doesn’t have to follow Netanyahu in smuggling weapons into the country and arming groups in the hope of sowing anarchy.

A pro-democracy policy would protect political prisoners and ensure that Israel and the US do not bomb prisons like Evin. It is in those cells where the future democratic leaders of Iran reside. A pro-democracy policy would smuggle internet devices – not weapons – across the border, and break the blackout that is blanketing the country. A pro-democracy policy would call out Israel’s assassination policy even when it targets leaders we despise.

There is so much that can be done in solidarity with Iranians. But joining in with Netanyahu’s forever wars is not it.

A full list of signatories is at togetherforiran.org where the letter can be signed.

Image: British Houses of Parliament. Source: The British Parliament and Big Ben. Author: Maurice from Zoetermeer, Netherlands,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Save Misfit Manor: A Queer Anarchist Homestead Needs Your Help

Nicky Reid

March 13, 2026

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PLEASE HELP NICKY REID.

I think a lot of people take words like ‘home’ and ‘family’ for granted, and I suppose I was one of them. I grew up in what I thought was a pretty stable home, a three-bedroom house with loving parents who never actually hit me. But I didn’t know what safety felt like until I was 33 because the stable suburban existence of my seemingly idyllic childhood was dependent on the secrets I kept. About the confusing gender identity that the church my family revered promised eternal damnation for. And about the terrible things that uniformed agents of that church did to that vexing body of mine when I was too small to comprehend it, let alone defend it.

I didn’t even feel safe enough to consciously confront these heinous truths until I met my now girlfriend, Lily, and we were taken in by our dear friends Archie and Em, along with their child, Al. I still remember the first night I spent at the rural homestead they inherited from Archie’s grandmother, sitting around a campfire surrounded by nothing but untouched Appalachian wilderness and other Queer people who understood the unfathomable. Other neurodivergent, gender diverse people who grew up with secrets and the violence they concealed. By the end of that evening, I felt downright high even though I hadn’t inhaled anything stronger than charred marshmallows.

It took me a moment to recognize this euphoria as a simple sense of security; my body unclenching like a fist for the first time since I was five years old, and it would take me another moment still to recognize just how many years I had waited to exhale.

This was the night that my friends became family, and their one-acre property, lovingly dubbed Misfit Manor, became home. I have written about this place before; the ramshackle homestead tucked deep inside a central Pennsylvanian holler, standing defiantly for the unsung cause of Queer rural autonomy in a bastard age of climate apocalypse and imperial collapse. And I’ve written about these people before; my hacker weeb bestie, who I accidentally fell in love with during our overlapping gender transitions; the high school sweethearts who flipped genders, had a child who defied all of them, and took in another longtime friend named James as the missing piece in their polyamorous marriage.

They often form the silver lining in my Queer tribalist tirades against vanilla civilization, but today I speak of them with a tremble in my throat and glass in my chest.

You see, dearest motherfuckers, a couple of weeks ago, what appears to have been a freak electrical fire caused by ancient wiring burned Misfit Manor to the ground. Lily and I still live with our elderly parents most of the time, but Archie, Em, James, and Al barely escaped with their lives, and the flames took nearly everything else; the house, the shed, the ducks and chickens, two charming cats named Toast and Horus, and an abused but impossibly gentle pitbull named Pomni…

All gone. Up in smoke. I drove down the moment I heard, and the strongest people I’ve ever met took turns falling apart in my arms while everything they worked for lay in a smoldering heap beside us.

None of it was insured. Archie’s grandfather had built that house with his bare hands from a dilapidated barn decades ago. They own nothing but the land. However, that fire stole so much more than property. It robbed all of us of a dream of turning that acre into something more. A self-sustaining, off-grid, Queer autonomous zone. One island in what I had hoped would become an archipelago: a confederation of Misfit Manors stretching across the rural rust belt; allowing neurodivergent, gender bending hicks like us (the kind of people the cosmopolitan pride parades left behind) to build a stateless community not unlike that of our Amish neighbors; a sanctuary that would allow us to never have to rely on another straight institution ever again.

In other words, I dreamt of proliferating the safety I found one summer night around the swirling embers of a campfire and turning it into a weapon against isolation and assimilation.

I’m not going to tell you that we ever came close to this dream. I’m not going to tell you that Misfit Manor was some kind of utopian paradise before the flames cruelly turned against us. We are poor people who come from trauma, and like a family of porcupines, we have stuck each other in close quarters many times without even trying. Holding this thing together has been a constant struggle from the beginning, and it has never been easy.

However, I can also tell you that nothing tastes better than homemade bread after three rips of cheap gas station weed. I can tell you that Al taught me how to trust myself after decades of parochial indoctrination just by trusting me to be their “Auntie Anarchy”. I can tell you that I spent the best Thanksgiving of my life playing Cards Against Humanity forty minutes from the nearest Catholic Church. I can tell you that I saw the face of God one summer in a forest shimmering with the lights of a thousand fireflies.

I can also tell you that Archie, Em, and James are the hardest-working people I have ever met in my life and that they have taught me more about anarchism through their selfless kindness than any dead Russian professor ever could. And I can tell you that I am not about to allow this dream to die without a fight.

We will rebuild Misfit Manor from these ashes, but we need your help.

We have put together a pretty bare-bones GoFundMe account, and we have managed to raise enough money on it to dig a new well and install the basic electrical infrastructure, but we still need a used single-wide trailer, which will likely cost us at least another forty grand. We could also use some livestock, a couple shipping containers, and some solar panels so, I can’t tell you exactly how much we’re asking for, probably more than we’ll ever get, but we have managed to make about twenty grand in donations of less than a thousand dollars so, please give anything and we will be beyond grateful, but the greatest thing you can give is to simply spread the word far and wide.

Repost this article or the GoFundMe page attached anywhere and everywhere.

Please, help my family save our home and our dream of a Queer agrarian future amidst the ruins of a post-traumatic civilization. Help us save Misfit Manor.

Nicky Reid is an agoraphobic anarcho-genderqueer gonzo blogger from Central Pennsylvania and assistant editor for Attack the System. You can find her online at Exile in Happy Valley.

No, Might Does Not Make Right

Bernie Sanders

 March 11, 2026

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The attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel are unraveling international law, the Geneva Conventions and the legitimacy of the United Nations. This is extremely dangerous for the future of the planet and humanity.

If the United States and Israel have the right to launch a unilateral attack against Iran, what is the moral or legal argument against China invading Taiwan, Russia attacking Poland or North Korea launching missiles into South Korea? There is none. In Trump’s world, any nation has the “right” to go to war against any other nation for any reason.

After the horrors of World War II, the international community came together to establish international law — a system of rules designed to prevent aggressive wars and hold nations accountable for violating basic human rights. Trump and Netanyahu are destroying that effort and are pushing the global community back into international anarchy — a world that produced 10 million dead in World War I and 50 million dead in World War II.

We cannot go back to a world where might makes right — where any nation can invade, bomb or destabilize another country for any reason they choose. That mentality leaves all of us, and future generations, increasingly unsafe.

Bernie Sanders is a US Senator, and the ranking member of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress.

The US-Israel Attack on Iran Violates International Law. Silence Makes Us Complicit.

Michael Zoosman

 March 13, 2026

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

US President Donald J. Trump has launched his most dangerous act of aggression yet on the world stage. Posterity will be taking copious notes on how the world responds.

Trump’s illegal February 28, 2026, attack on Iran came after he offered the Trojan horse of sham “diplomacy” to de-escalate a purported nuclear threat to the US. His action was a blatant attempt to “wag the dog,” aiming to distract from damning revelations implicating him in the Epstein files and his waning popularity at home ahead of the mid-term elections. He aspires to more control of global oil resources and to cater to his religious fundamentalist base. Trump’s incursion accordingly lacks any reasonable endgame strategy for Iran. None of this should come as a surprise given Trump’s record. Just weeks ago, he ordered the unlawful “rendition” of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela for similar reasons.

Trump has veiled his latest actions in humanitarian dissimulation. At the center of his opportunistic deflection is his claim to care about the liberation of the Iranian people from what is undeniable suffering at the hands of the reprehensible rule of the Ayatollahs. That regime’s recent repressive massacring of tens of thousands of courageous Iranian protesters created the perfect storm for Trump to initiate his nefarious plan.

On cue, Machiavellian Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seized the opportunity to once again “pre-emptively” attack Iran to lift his falling poll numbers ahead of the upcoming Israeli election, in which a victory would help him stay out of jail. As with the American onslaught, Israeli aggression is not about bringing liberty to the Iranian people. Netanyahu’s government does not wish for a free Iran; on the contrary, it hopes for a weak Iran that can no longer pose a threat to Israel. The resulting assault has led to predictable reprisals from Iran and its allies. As the United States and Israel respond to each of these retaliations in kind, the cycle of violence and killing escalates with no end in sight. It will continue to reignite old hatreds and birth new appetites for revenge on all sides.

Like each of us, I have a responsibility to myself, my children, and our descendants to explain where I stand at this fraught moment, as the world descends into an abyss. Make no mistake: no matter how this precarious situation ultimately unfolds, posterity will be paying close attention to how onlookers respond, whether with staunch support, tacit endorsement, complicit silence, or firm opposition.

Operations “Epic Fury” and “Roaring Lion” Teach Expressly the Wrong Lesson

I am an ordained Jewish cantor and Progressive Zionist who loves the people and land of Israel and who is fully cognizant of the existential threat that the Iranian theocracy presents for them and the world. Nevertheless, allow me to be abundantly clear: I am wholeheartedly opposed to the criminal acts of aggression against Iran that the United States has dubbed “Operation Epic Fury,” and that Israel calls “Operation Roaring Lion.” I similarly publicly denounced Israel’s June, 2025 “Operation Rising Lion” campaign, which targeted Iran for equally fallacious reasoning. I repeat what I exhorted then: two wrongs never make a right.

I have come to understand the lethal implications of that deceptively simple lesson in my work as an activist striving to end the vengeful practice of capital punishment. Just as that lesson applies to Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza in response to the horrific Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, so, too, does it apply to Trump and Netanyahu’s latest military offensive against Iran.

Even if, against all odds, the current conflict leads to regime change and does not snowball into a broader regional war, the ends of this offensive do not justify the means. It may be that Mojtaba Khamenei, or any subsequent ayatollah that the mullahs (or Trump himself) elect, will miraculously change course from Ali Khamenei’s violent fanaticism. Alternatively, the hoi polloi might still somehow manage to topple the government once and for all. Then again, perhaps the incursion will be over in only “four to five weeks,” as per Trump’s already recantedpromise. (That fantastical timetable is contrary to many signs on the ground, including the Pentagon’s preparations for continuing war through September and the opening of new fronts in the ever-expanding conflict.) Maybe, once this campaign’s dust eventually settles, the world will be safer, with a saner governing model at Iran’s helm.

Still, none of these outcomes would legitimize Trump and Netanyahu’s manifestly illicit actions. Every ship that the US and Israel sink, each jet they shoot down, and any tactical advantage they gain in this war only further deepens the grave they dig for the prospect of gaining the moral high ground and halting the cycle of killings that their very actions fuel.

Regrettably, countless individuals feel otherwise. Some conclude that Trump and Netanyahu’s acts of aggression in Iran are legal and appropriate responses to Iran’s deplorable history of proxy wars and direct missile attacks. Others specifically misapply international law, erroneously citing it as a justification for this unprovoked attack. Their errors are perilous, at best; catastrophic, at worst. Their failure to hold the ethical line in this pivotal moment endangers the international rule of law.

There are, of course, occasions that do legally justify war. I myself would have enlisted to fight against Hitler, Napoleon, and other aggressors throughout history. This latest foray into Iran, despite the real threat that the regime poses, categorically does not qualify. The vast majority of international political and legal scholars agreethat it is an obvious abrogation of international humanitarian law.

Empathizing with Victims of the Iranian Regime

Before returning to the legal case, it is worth pausing on the human one. Those of us who oppose this attack must remember that many individuals whom the Iranian regime has harmed have legitimate reasons for welcoming the assault. One can only imagine how those with victimized loved ones would celebrate the attacks that began on February 28. As a dedicated death penalty abolitionist, I am keenly aware of the mortal danger that Iranian mullahs have posed for their own citizens through the use of politically-motivated capital punishment, including public hangings, and other barbaric “criminal justice” practices. Examples include the state killings of Iranian Jews like Nethanel ben Ziona Ghahremani, (of blessed memory), who Iran put to death for a clear act of self-defense, and of non-Jews like Mahsa Amini, (of blessed memory), whose unjustifiable murder at the hands of Iranian authorities sparked the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. I have many dear Iranian friends who have been applauding these efforts to “liberate” their homeland.

We should extend the same latitude to individuals in the line of Iranian fire in Israel and in other locations throughout the Middle East. If I were living in Israel or if the Iranian government had targeted my own family, I, too, likely would welcome the recent attacks on Iran. I therefore do not judge anyone whose loved ones the Iranian regime has assailed. The world has a responsibility to balance protecting these individuals’ needs as much as possible while observing international law. Trump and Netanyahu’s gamble rejects that balance entirely.

There are no so-called “good guys” in this conflict. Neither can there be two sets of rules: not for Trump and Netanyahu, nor for my fellow Jews and Gentile neighbors. It is more imperative than ever for civilized humanity to cling to the underlying ethical standards that hold us afloat, however delicately. The world must continue to seek to remove the threat of the current Iranian regime legally and justly through continued binding negotiation.

“The March of Folly”

The illegal actions of megalomaniacs like Trump and Netanyahu serve as but the latest installment in what acclaimed historian Barbara Tuchman has dubbed “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam,” namely, humanity’s repeated pattern of amassing more wrongs in the purported attempt to make things right. History may assert that I am incorrect in applying this calculus here; yet, it is often the victors who write history. No matter how the history books ultimately frame it, Trump and Netanyahu’s recent deadly strikes were politically-motivated attacks that rationalized war-mongering under the grossly misapplied flag of “self-defense.” It is moot to ask whether it was strategically advantageous to attack Iran when it was weak and isolated; the ethical argument must always outweigh the strategic one.

“Ethics.”

“International humanitarian law.”

“Human rights.”

These terms all matter. They are not simply words on a page or ideas to ponder or heed when convenient. They serve as underpinnings to the rule of law. Society ignores that law and these foundational values at its peril. Doing so leaves an opening for others to manipulate for their own felonious ends.

I have a responsibility as a global citizen and proud Jew to do my part to uphold the evolving standards of human rights that I believe my spiritual tradition has been striving to carve out since its founding. To remain silent or toe the party line in the face of the erosion of this ethical thin red line is to be complicit in its destruction. To do so strains credulity, especially now, when opening salvos in this conflict have already resulted in well over eleven hundred Iranian civilian deaths in Iran, a devastating majority of the roughly thirteen hundred reported deaths thus far.

As of this writing, just over a week into this war, that death toll includes 168 seven-to-twelve-year-old girls and staff at Shajareh Tayyebeh, a bombed-out primary school in Minab, and mounting deaths from other retaliatory attacks in Israel and across the Middle East. This tally says nothing of the deaths of combatants, including at least seven American soldiers killed, with many more on all sides of this conflict likely to follow. Meanwhile, hospitals across the region overflow with the wounded. This war has also displaced over a million civilians and cost billions of dollars, promising to wreak havoc on the world economy. While there can be some room for flexibility, even bending the “rules of war” when adhering to such ideals in the service of ultimate peace and balance, cutting corners on any casus belli (cause for war) or jus ad bellum (justification for war) when human lives are at stake is not viable, by definition.

Sounding the Alarm for Future Generations, no Matter the Cost 

I recently reposted a statement on social media from T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights that stridently opposes the illegitimate attack against Iran. In response, a fellow Jewish clergyperson who endorses the assaults on Iran stated disparagingly that future generations will remember where I stood in this moment and will “never forget” my traitorous attitude.

I expect nothing less.

Posterity will rightfully judge us all for how we respond to these wanton acts, the consequences of which will most likely have a ripple effect upon them years from now. The U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran threatens the very foundation of collective ethics and international law. The disgraceful flaunting of the rule of law sets a calamitous precedent moving forward. It opens a Pandora’s Box of potential lawlessness on a global scale, one in which “might makes right.” It may very well take years for civilization to claw its way back to the ethical baseline that tenuously existed before February 28. Our children absolutely should hold us accountable for our stance and public response today.

We, in turn, should demand the same from our leaders, including the shameful initial endorsements of this illegality from middle powers such as the E3 and Australia. Here in Canada, the best that my own Prime Minister, Mark Carney, could muster in walking back his tacit support for the February 28 attacks was to add that he did so “with some regret” over its apparent violation of international order. He then subsequently indicated that he would not rule out Canada’s participation in this criminal endeavor.

When I publicly opposed the Gaza genocide last year, many others treated me as if I wore a veritable “Mark of Cain.” A similar pattern is likely to emerge now, once many colleagues in the circles I frequent read this commentary. Already, I have lost count of how many times my coreligionists have labelled me a “kapo” for my views, comparing me to Jewish concentration camp inmates who served the SS guards and betrayed their fellow Jews. If I end up reprising a villainous role in the minds of such critics, so be it. There is far too much at stake for humanity’s welfare to remain silent and risk normalizing such egregious, opportunistic displays of power.

If we cannot unravel this tightening Gordian knot of tyranny in our lifetimes, the very least we can do is proclaim our response in the public record as fervently as possible. The hope is that our pleas might inspire our progeny to find a way to mend the broken world we will have left them. This testament is my best attempt at that implicit charge to posterity.

There is a well-known aphorism from an ancient Jewish text entitled Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers). Rabbi Tarfon asserts: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.” (2:16) May we each do our part in sounding the alarm loudly enough to motivate our descendants to help reckon with the disastrous fallout of this latest chapter in humanity’s ruinous march of folly, once and for all.

And may our offspring heed this call.

This first appeared on The Jurist.