[Prefatory Note: This post of mine is a much modified and expanded version of what was published on the TMS (Transcend Media Service) on its weekly listserve, July 27-August 3, 2026. Another version with a different title was published today on my Substack account.]
In the writing about how to restore hopes for the avoidance of further bloodshed, devastation, and suffering arising from frequent reescalations of the confrontation between the US/Israel and Iran it is crucially relevant to take account of the current situation as stemming from an unprovoked war of aggression started by the United States on February 28, 2026, hours later joined by Israel, and resumed from time to time since as a joint venture. This new war seemed at first a repeat of the Twelve Day June War of 2025 in which Iran failed to respond to devastating strikes against its nuclear program facilities. This prior war launched against Iran was also unprovoked and in violation of the core UN Charter and international law prohibition of non-defensive uses of force
Unlike this earlier 2025 war it was evident from the first days of the 2026 War that Iran had changed its tactics, as well as equipping itself with impressive capabilities to engage the regional interests of the United States, while along the way imposing heavy costs on U.S. dependent allies, especially Saudi Arabia, in the region. As well, Iranian counter-measures adopted to offset its vulnerability to military strikes has inflicted far greater wider harmful regional and global ramifications than originally anticipated by the aggressor governments that have been temporarily somewhat overlooked by Trump’s bluster and threats. What has happened to Iran, Israel, and the Gulf since this new war began is a more correctly perceived as a regional disaster for the West and a huge negative milestone in the struggle to attain stability in the post-Cold War world, as well posing grave questions as to the reputation of the United States as a reliable and capable protector of the national security of the Gulf countries. One tangible expression of this new atmosphere of tension, conflict, and uncertainty is the conclusion of a defensive security alliance joining Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan is a NATO-like treaty arrangement.
The original pretexts for initiating this second Iran War concerned revived allegations about Iran’s nuclear program and stockpiles of enriched uranium relevant to a possible production of a nuclear weapon. In the early days of the war Trump arrogantly ordered the Iranian people ‘to take back their country’ and have a new leadership in Tehran that acknowledged defeat and praised the total U.S. military victory with a show of gratitude for liberating the Iranian people from a repressive ruling theocracy. The preferred Washington victorious scenario was ‘a Venezuelan operation’ in which the furniture of Iranian sovereignty was preserved for all to see, and only the carpet was changed, but this would make enough difference to achieve U.S. political objectives of control and economic goals of profitable investment and management of national development of natural resources. In retrospect, some White House insider should have ear;y on whispered a simple message in Trump’s good ear, ‘Iran is not Venezuela!’
Israel was initially kept somewhat in the diplomatic background while making no secret of its additional national belligerent goals of a radical regime change in Tehran, featuring not only new faces but an enforceable commitment to end proxy relations with regional Islamic movements (Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas, Iraqi militias), and secondarily, to insist upon the destruction of Iran’s remaining missile capabilities including launchers. While the U.S. was negotiating bilaterally it tried with minimum results to separate itself from Israel’s continuing regional warmongering especially in southern Lebanon, and less dramatically in Syria, as well as its separate demands directed at Iran. This Israeli security agenda is being promoted as a matter of urgency by the Netanyahu government faced with October elections whose outcome seems to hinge in keeping the ultra-right religious parties within the Likud-led coalition.
The highpoint of Off Ramp Diplomacy was the disclosure of a Memorandum of Understanding on June 17 that set forth a plan generated by high profile negotiations with Pakistan as the intermediary that seemed to be a formula for a permanent ceasefire and the gradual normalization of Iran as a state among states in West Asia, with assurances of Iran’s future security. The MOU left the regulation of Iran’s nuclear program and enriched uranium to further negotiations in a 60-day period. Israel’s extreme displeasure with the MOU was not hidden, and its continued attacks on Lebanon violated Iran’s quite reasonable expectations that the MOU applied to Israel as being the U.S. partner in aggressive war. Such behavior doomed diplomacy and revived an atmosphere of acute mistrust accentuated by Trump’s repeated crude and bloodthirsty threats sometimes accompanied or soon followed by new military strikes against strategic targets, including civilian infrastructure, and warnings of further and worse attacks if Iran keeps refusing to reject U.S. demands, which have not been clearly articulated beyond a repetition of the commitment to prevent Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon, and more recently, the most genuine priority of assuring future navigational freedom in the Strait of Hormuz, which presupposed an arrangement of collective regional administration that excluded Iran
Both of these goals seem questionable. In light of its aggressive behavior toward Iran ever since the Islamic Republic came to govern Iran in 1979 Israel has obstructed Iran’s peaceful nuclear program while developing a secretive nuclear arsenal of its own, thereby deftly avoiding the constraints of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). With this latest Israeli aggression, aggravated because initiated in the midst of ongoing encouraging diplomatic negotiations under the auspices of Oman, Israel destroyed any prospects of a normalized future relationship with Iran. In light of such developments, Iran although foregoing the acquisition of its own nuclear deterrent for decades, out of respect for ethical principle, which now make it seem reasonable and even prudential to develop its own nuclear deterrent capability, especially if the U.S. succeeds in its resolve to ensure that Hormuz would not be blocked to commercial shipping in the event of future crises involving Iran, supposedly ensuring that the safe daily passage of 100 that would not be impeded in the future. But why would Iran give away what has proved to be its most powerful countermeasure to the military onslaught. If the February 28 attacks were motivated even in part by anti-proliferation objectives the failed military operations may be remembered as the spark that lit the fire of a West Asian nuclear arms race.
The Iran War can be divided into six distinct phases: (1) U.S. launch of a war of aggression; (2) joint U.S./Israeli aggression; (3) effective countermeasures by Iran within the scope of reasonable acts of self-defense, including attacks against regional military bases in the Gulf region used by the U.S. to carry out its military operations and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping that disrupted energy and fertilizer supply chains; (4) bilateral U.S./Iran negotiations climaxing with the mutual acceptance of an apparent war-ending MOU; (5) Breakdown of the MOU envisioned process and resumption of threats and periodic military attacks by the two aggressor countries and continued resistance by Iran in the Hormuz context and further military actions against U.S. bases; (6) Search for a mutually acceptable Off Ramp for the U.S. and adaptations in political alignment and security arrangements throughout West Asia.
This is not the Iran War that has been portrayed to publics in the West, especially by the voices of the Western governments and even the United Nations since its initiation on February 28, 2026. The evidence and the intention of applicable law is to brand the failure to use peaceful means to resolve international disputes and to refrain from recourse to international force as a War of Aggression. This has been formally regarded as an international crime since 1928 when the Pact of Paris was signed into law, a status confirmed at the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes tribunals by their assignment of wars of aggression to the ultimate category of international crimes, Crimes Against the Peace. The aggression against Iran was aggravated by the fact that the country was previously subject to a war of aggression less than a year earlier when the so-called Twelve Day War initiated on June13, 2025. It was further aggravated in 2026 by recourse to war during ongoing negotiations in Oman that the mediating official described as being on the verge of success thus amounting to a rebuff of diplomacy, as well as the legal imperative of peaceful settlement of disputes. Both of these dimensions of prior contempt for peacemaking betraying the kind of trust among sovereign states that diplomacy depends upon,
Beyond this, was the shocking events on the first day of the Iran War that included the deliberate targeting for assassination of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini who as well as being the political leader for a long period was revered as a sacred religious figure among Sh’iite Muslims throughout the region, despite being an admittedly controversial figure within Iran. On the same day an elementary school in Minab was struck that killed at least 165 underage children. U.S. officialdom discounted the incident without issuing an apology for the attack, claiming it was as an accident of war caused by relying on obsolete targeting information. Even if this explanation is true, it hardly eliminates the symbolic impact of such tragic impacts of warmaking on the unblemished innocence of young children.
Against this background, it should shock international sensibilities that the UNSC could not mobilize the political will to condemn the aggression but instead outrageously seized the occasion to blame Iran for spreading the war by its attacks on the military bases on the territory of Gulf countries. [S/RES/2817 92026) by a vote 0f 13-0, with China, Russia abstaining] Mainstream Western media did little better, confining its coverage to speculations about which side was winning the war as if both sides were equally culpable for the advent of the chaotic conditions brought about, and war was nothing other than an international game to identify winners and losers. The UN resolution altogether refrained from criticizing the United States, and of course Israel, for this unprovoked recourse to war. It should be viewed as a major UN capitulation to geopolitics reminiscent of SC Res. 2803 last November absolving Israel altogether from the Gaza genocide while giving its blessings to the one-sided Trump 20-point Peace Plan.
The NY Times and other liberal media platforms characterized the war from a Western perspective as ‘a war of choice,’ implicitly admitting that it was not initiated or waged because of a credible security threat, much less as a legal response to a prior armed attack. The media did by and large counter U.S. governmental propaganda that its recourse to war produced an immediate and decisive victory and that the White House was running out of patience with Iran’s refusal to admit as much. Yet the influential media soon countered this rare display of journalistic objectivity in the treatment of foreign policy by also giving a respectful nod to the views of notorious foreign policy hawks such as John Bolton who in a NY Times Opinion Piece called upon Washington ‘to finish the job’ as if assuming that crimes of the aggressor are legitimate international undertakings. [Bolton, “Finish the Job: How Trump Can Still Win in Iran, NY Times, April 4, 2026.]
Peace can only be restored by taking account of the identity of the aggressor and not through a false symmetry of both sides diplomacy. At minimum, this would require taking Iran’s future security requirement into serious account given its total vulnerability to military assaults by its enemies. As with the Gaza Genocide Trump’s ‘peacemaking’ in the Iran setting analogously rewards the perpetrators of a war of aggression and inflict further punishment on its victims.
More independent good will proposed diplomatic initiatives are also non-judgmental as to the two sides when setting forth plans to put in place measures to end the Iran War coupled with arrangements that will establish a more stable future for the region. Such proposals have tended to focus on assurances of future freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz by some sort of joint management of this waterway that is a choke point of globally vital supply chains. These proposals often fail to take account of Iranian vulnerability to future aggression or to impose punitive accountability of the aggressors for the devastation and the betrayals of trust seem unworthy of sympathetic consideration. It is impossible to expect Iran to accept an arrangement for Hormuz that doesn’t include some reliable alternative nationally effective means of deterrent and self-defense in the likely event of further attacks. At present, there is no foundation or justification for Iran to rely on the U.S.’s, much less Israel’s, professions of peaceful intention without assured access to reliable deterrent capabilities or retaliatory countermeasures. Without such features a peace agreement would almost certainly become a death trap for Iran. At present, the only plausible way of achieving Iran’s future security, absent a presently unthinkable willingness to standback if Iran chooses to develop a nuclear deterrent, would be equally unthinkable. It would authorize Iran’s managerial access to Hormuz in the event of a future national security emergency. Similarly unthinkable would be a total withdrawal by the United States from its post-colonial willingness after the failed Suez Operation of 1956 to maintain a Western hegemonic presence in West Asia, increasingly after 1967 in tacit partnership with Israel. If such viable and benevolent off-ramps were ever to become feasible they could be helpfully reinforced by the demilitarization of the U.S. presence in the form of alliances and arms sales and supplies. It would also be facilitated by a radical revision of Israeli foreign policy in the region, which is even more unthinkable now than the other stabilizing arrangements involving humbling adaptations by the United States.
This disastrous Iran War has many lessons that need to be learned by liberal democracies that continue to voice rhetorical praise for an international rule of law while Atlanticist governments deny the relevance of international law whenever compliance becomes strategically inconvenient. While international law retains its usefulness as a policy instrument (rather than a regulatory regime) when assailing the behavior of adversaries as in the 2022 Russian attack upon Ukraine, it should not be allowed to distract U.S. foreign policy advisors steeped in ‘realism’ from pursuing strategic ambitions in the domain of global security. As we have seen in the mainstream policy debates among ‘realists,’ ‘wars of choice’ are a convenient substitute for ‘international law’ in situations where the adherence to law is at odds with geopolitical priorities and behavior. So long as this normative polarization is operative, lawless governments will have a coherent basis in international practice, also evident in formal UN actions, in deflecting criticism, without regard to whether or not formulated in legal language, as nothing more than hostile propaganda. If this geopolitical practice remains ineffectively challenged it likely prefigures a wartorn future for humanity.
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