An Apologetic Explanation on the US and Israel’s War with Iran

How do I respond as a follower of Jesus to this crisis?

Due to my last few FB posts on the US and Iranian negotiations, broken off with the US and Israel’s unilateral attack on Iran, people have asked me:

Do you support Iran? Are you now pro-Iran? Should you not be happy for the liberation that the US-Israeli war will bring to the people of Iran? Especially for our fellow Christians, freeing them to worship Jesus publicly?

Here is my answer for everyone to know.

As Iranian author, Sahar Delijani, says from personal painful experience: The Iranian regime has done evil, but “That doesn’t mean I want my people bombed, maimed, killed, their homes in ruins. If your vision of liberation comes only through the destruction of innocent lives, then it’s not freedom you’re after.”

I respond expressly as a follower of Jesus. It’s not about siding with Iran, or with the US and Israel, or saying God is on Israel’s side and “blessing Israel that God will bless you”. We learn from Joshua 5:13-14 that God is on neither side. Are we on God’s side? That is, the side of truth, justice, ethics, human dignity, morality, right and wrong.

I follow Jesus in his worldview and teachings of God’s Kingdom and it’s ethics, which evaluates and responds to all issues of life - including socio-political happenings - just as Jesus and his forerunner did: “But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, AND ALL THE OTHER evil things he had done, Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison” (Luke 3:19-20).

First, I do not support the repressive Iranian regime. My FB posts (here and here) simply show the duplicity of the US negotiations and Trump’s stated reasons for attacking Iran. The US brought Iran to the negotiating table in good faith. They came within a day of a significant agreement with huge Iranian concessions, verified by Oman Foreign minister Badr Al Busaidi, the chief negotiator. While still supposedly negotiating, Trump unilaterally attacked Iran. What bad faith. A damning ethical commentary on ’The Art of the Steal’, on Witkoff and Kushner, including Israel.

Second, two wrongs don’t make a right. To unilaterally attack (against international law, without congressional approval, for many wrong contradictory reasons) the repressive Iranian regime with all its repressive rule, does not justify the US attack or make it morally right, let alone laudable. I would love for the Iranian people to be free, but to attack and murder oppressive leaders “to free the Iranian people”, so that “Christians can worship Jesus publicly”, is light years away from the spirit and teachings of Jesus.

Jesus didn’t try to overthrow the Romans. He taught Israel to “love your enemies”, warning that the Zealot option of nationalist violence would result in judgement - he prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70. The Early Christians suffered martyrdom as Jesus did, without seeking a hero to assassinate Caesar and overthrow the oppressive Roman regime to be free to worship Jesus publicly.

As evil as Delcy Rodríguez Maduro was, it does not make Trump’s unilateral deposing of him to free Venezuela morally or legally right. If it’s morally correct, then he must be consistent: WHY has he not violently deposed the Russian dictator Putin, with his unilateral four year reign of death on Ukraine, to free the Russian people from their oppressor? But Trump’s selective ‘morality’ indulges and supports Putin. To be consistent, he should also depose the North Korean dictator, and so on, and so on.

Trump has abandoned international institutions and all laws of justice creating his own new world order: “My might is right! I decide what’s right and wrong and I unilaterally do it, and THAT makes it right no matter what you say or do!”

AND he does it as a ‘Christian’ for a ‘Christian’ nation, claiming at the prayer breakfast “a great religious renewal”, supposedly representing ‘Christian’ values!

Not in my name as a follower of Christ. I cannot go along with such immoral unilateral Christian Nationalist use of power. More and more people will die on both sides of this war, not only over 160 Iranian school girls massacred, the Red Cross hospital in Tehran being bombed, and the nine Israelis killed in Tel Aviv by an Iranian missile, and… and… and…

This war will only breed more radicalised hatred and much more terrorism from both sides. Violence ALWAYS begets more violence. We will never build a better world, let alone a secure Middle East, by killing other people’s children. If we take up the sword we will die by the sword.

EVERY life, no matter which side or nationality, is sacred to God. The only winner is the devil, who is rubbing his hands in glee at this war.

Christians are peacemakers - NOT warmongers - who live the nature and character of their Father (Matthew 5:9), revealed in his Son Jesus of Nazareth, the ultimate peacemaker by self-sacrifice.