Like all war, the Iran War is senseless. It doesn’t have to be this way
An Iranian flag is planted in the rubble of a police station, damaged in airstrikes on March 3, 2026, in Tehran. The United States and Israel have continued the joint attack on Iran that began on Feb. 28. Iran retaliated by firing waves of missiles and drones at Israel, and targeting U.S. allies in the region. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
The senseless Iran War has already claimed the lives of two young Kentuckians. The promise of their lives ended when President Trump gave up negotiations with Iran over nuclear weapons in favor of military destruction and death. How tragic.
Their deaths are part of a much older and recurring human tragedy: the tendency of nations to turn to war even when peaceful alternatives exist.
Thucydides (460-400 BCE), the Greek historian and general, observed that the strong do what they want unless they are stopped by others who are just as strong and greedy. The centuries of violence that followed his observation have caused many to wonder whether such a bleak view of human conflict was correct.
More than two millennia later, the world wars of the 20th Century showed just how destructive struggles between countries could become. Sophisticated and civilized nations engaged in the most destructive conflicts in human history, killing more than one hundred million people, half of them civilians.
By the end of 1945 it seemed humans had had enough. The United Nations was established by enlightened, practical world leaders as a forum for peacefully settling differences. International laws would be set and followed. These international systems would protect the world from further self-destruction in the nuclear age
But in less than a decade the two great post-war powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, bypassed the UN in violation of international law by invading North Korea without authorization (US) and invading Eastern and Central Europe (USSR). Later came Viet Nam (US), Cambodia (US), Laos (US), and Afghanistan (USSR). And so it goes, either by direct action or by proxy: Kuwait, Iraq, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nepal, Tibet, Congo, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, on and on.
More madness
The latest venture of madness is the Israeli-American partnership to control Iran. President Trump and his minions say this has been a 47-year war initiated by Iran. Only those ignorant of history would make such a statement. This has been a 73-year war between the US and Iran, shaped by intervention, retaliation, sanctions, and violence.
In 1953, the CIA and Britain helped overthrow Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mossadegh, after he nationalized the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi then ruled Iran with strong support from the United States while crushing opposition through a feared secret police force.
In 1979, the Shah was overthrown and replaced by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held American hostages for more than a year. Decades of sanctions, hostility, proxy conflicts, and bloodshed followed. Today the cycle continues with no clear end and little regard for the human consequences, including the recent slaughter by our military of 166 school children in Tehran.
So, in the 81 years since the founding of the UN as the place to settle international conflicts, must we conclude that Thucydides was correct? Is war inevitable? Is the propensity to solve differences by mutual killing so ingrained in human DNA that we are hopeless to contain it, even when faced with nuclear Armageddon?
That question has occupied philosophers, spiritual leaders, and scientists. In the 1980s, the United Nations commissioned an international group of behavioral scientists to examine whether violence is truly part of immutable human nature. After years of research, the group produced an important document known as The Seville Statement on Violence.
Its conclusion was profound: violence is a learned behavior, not an unavoidable human trait.
The research confirms what mystics from diverse spiritual traditions have believed for centuries: as our consciousness evolves, differences can be settled without violence. Compassion, cooperation, and peaceful coexistence are not signs of weakness or naïve idealism. They are part of humanity’s potential evolution.
That moral challenge remains urgent today as wars spread, civilians die, and political leaders speak more easily of military action than diplomacy.
When Pope Leo condemns the current war, he stands within both a moral tradition and a growing body of human understanding that rejects violence as destiny. His message is simple but urgently needed, and world leaders would be wise to heed it: no more spilled human blood.