Moral dimensions of war

There are no good sides in current middle eastern conflict

Alok Tiwari

Like practically everything these days, the US and Israeli war on Iran too has divided the world. In India as much as elsewhere. You could be a typical Hindutva nut and applaud the aggression simply because those getting killed in large numbers are Muslims. You could be a typical liberal and go to your default anti-American setting and condemn the unprovoked violation of Iranian sovereignty and killing of its supreme leader. You could be a typical Islamist hothead and chant death to Trump and America just because a Muslim country has been attacked. Anything more nuanced than that and you risk being called names, not just by those opposed but even by those otherwise on your side.

The age of social media and trolls thrives on easy choices. We are getting programmed to see everything in black and white. There is little space for grey. Everything is us versus them. As former US President George W. Bush so memorably said at the launch of his war on terror, “If you are not with us then you are against us.” That mentality now rules and it is dumbing down the discourse. Everything is explained, lauded, or ridiculed by memes.

Reality, of course, is a bit more complex than that. Trying to find a moral way through it is messy and fraught. There is no good versus evil narrative here. At some point almost every player is evil. The only thing that is unequivocally sad and condemnable is loss of innocent lives that inevitably happens in such circumstances. That includes not just the civilians but also soldiers. They too are sacrificed for causes that they did not sign up for.

It is easy to condemn the US-Israel attack on Iran. No nation should have its sovereignty violated in this manner. Especially because this time around there is not even the fig leaf of imaginary WMDs that was touted at the time of second Gulf War. Just a few weeks back US had attacked the Iranian nuclear sites and claimed that those facilities were “obliterated”. Moreover, US had engaged Iran in talks about future of its nuclear programme but attacked while the talks were still on.

But if you condemn the attack and disregard of international law, are you on the side of Iran? With the Iranian people, yes. With the Iranian regime? That is a good question because again just a few days ago you were outraged by its brutal suppression of protests. Thousands of protesters were reportedly killed and their families persecuted. Not just during those protests, but the overall record of the regime over the decades is despicable. It has harassed, tortured, and subjugated vast number of its own people under the garb of strict Islamic rule.

Also, consider if Iran itself had been a model international citizen. Across the middle east, it had set up proxies that meddled in the affairs of other nations. That includes Hamas in Gaza whose attack on Israel in Oct 2024 started the current round of troubles. Even if you excuse that as its long-standing support for Palestinian cause, how do you explain Iran’s propping up of Hezbollah in Lebanon, or Houthi rebels in Yemen, or Shia militias in Iraq? Those acts do not look like respecting national sovereignty. So, anything that loosens the grip of this regime should be a good thing, right?

Bring this up and you would be told that national sovereignty must be sacrosanct. Dislodging or reforming the regime should be left to Iranian people, like it happened in Nepal or Bangladesh. Funnily, among the set of people arguing this are those who were obliquely justifying Russian invasion of Ukraine four years ago. They then blamed US and Europeans for provoking Russia by trying to integrate Ukraine into NATO even though Ukraine had been a far better international citizen than Iran. Similarly, Vladimir Putin’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty moved Europeans not only to take hundreds of thousands of refugees but also supply Ukraine with arms and ammunitions to fight off aggression. No such luck for Iran or Iranians.

That also raises the question why national sovereignty is so important. A nation-state is, after all, an artificial construct. Its boundaries keep changing with time. Most of us do not choose to be citizen of a particular country. Yet the modern world seems to attach more importance to those borders than to people within them. Dictators often take shield of inviolable sovereignty as they oppress and suppress people. Those people can sometimes overthrow them but usually uprisings do not end well for rebels as Iran itself has shown us recently. There is no internationally recognized mechanism to depose such rulers. What is wrong then if an external power takes it upon itself to do that?

Think about the nuclear question itself. Why is Iran trying to get them so unthinkable? After all, even N Korea has them and nobody has invaded them. Given the behaviour of both US and Russia internationally, those two are least deserving custodians of WMDs. Will it be morally right for another country to take out their heads of state for this reason?

The only thing we can say with certainty is that politicians will start a war if it serves their interests. That is the only real rationale for any war. Any moral patina they put over it is just that, a ruse, an excuse, a façade. While some wars may be unavoidable, at least for one of the parties, there is no war that is morally right or justifiable. The only moral view on war can be that it is inherently evil. Almost all the lives lost in it are of innocent people. All the resources it uses up and destroys are taken from common people, not the elite. Those who start them profit politically from it; their friends profit financially. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors.

This column appeared in Lokmat Times on Mar 12, 2026