By Eric Sammons
Crisis Magazine
March 24, 2026
In the early 2000's, Crisis Magazine reached the peak of its political influence in this country. Its editor-in-chief was the most prominent Catholic advisor to the President of the United States, and Crisis was the go-to periodical for politically-conservative Catholics. Never before or since has this humble magazine wielded such immense clout.
There was just this little problem: Crisis had wedded itself to a Republican presidential administration that launched a preemptive war against a Middle Eastern country, partly at the behest of Israel-a war based on lies, including the now-debunked claims of an imminent threat of that country's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Here is one defense of that war from the pages of Crisis, made in March 2003 at the beginning of the invasion:
Trusting political leadership in a time of war is decisive; most of us have lived through a period in America's history when the moral authority of the presidency was lost. Those demons need not be loosed once again. It's the prudential judgment of our president and his advisers (whose job it is to fight terrorism) that war in this case is just. And there are those of us-myself included-who believe the president is right in seeing the Iraqi threat as "lasting, grave, and certain." As we have already seen in the case of Afghanistan, this administration can wage war in a manner that protects civilians. Certainly the prospect of an Iraq after an invasion could be no worse than what we see there now: a secular dictator with Stalinesque aspirations in a nuclear age.
Knowing what we know now-for example, over 46,000 civilians died in the 20-year War in Afghanistan, and 75% of Iraqi Christians have either fled the country or been killed since the invasion-one cannot read this paragraph without cringing in embarrassment and even shame. By closely aligning itself with a specific administration, the credibility of Crisis Magazine suffered when the credibility of that administration cratered.
To be fair, I'm sure I've written more than one article in the past that I'd now consider cringeworthy (although, I hope, nothing that involved supporting widespread death and destruction). And even though I wasn't a public figure back then, I was engaged in the comboxes of a number of Catholic blogs, and in spite of the fact that I felt uncomfortable about the war, I didn't express any public opposition to it. Many trusted conservative Catholic figures supported the war so I figured it was best to keep my reservations to myself. Although I had no real influence at the time, I regret my silence on that important issue.
Judging This War
Needless to say, I'm not going to be silent again. Since the beginning of the Israeli-US war against Iran, I've loudly opposed it on both moral and political grounds. Many in the Crisis audience have supported this opposition, but I've also received significant pushback. I'd like to explain here more in-depth why I so strongly oppose President Trump's war against Iran.
First, I want to make something clear: I am not a military expert and so I will not (and cannot) comment on the military aspects of this war. I hear lots of claims about the prospects of American success (and failure), and I have no real way to judge those claims' veracity. I do know that during a war every side trumpets its successes, even to the point of lying about them, and the United States is no different in this regard. It does appear that the US has an overwhelming military advantage over Iran, but that doesn't always equate to long-term success (see: Afghanistan). But whether this war achieves its military objectives or not-and what those objectives are isn't clear-it doesn't change or impact my analysis of my moral and political opposition to it. A war can be highly successful from a military standpoint yet be unjust and politically harmful; likewise a country could lose a war that was both morally justified and politically expedient.
More than a few conservative Catholic commentators, when offering an "analysis" of the justice of this war, have said we simply can't know for sure if it's just or unjust: we don't and can't have all the information. This is similar to what that 2003 Crisis editorial said: we just have to trust our political leaders, because they know all the facts and we don't. This reads as punting on a politically hot topic.
To claim we can't know if this conflict satisfies the criteria of a just war is an insidious error. Catholic moral teaching asserts that every individual with the use of reason can judge an action as right or wrong. Anyone can state with confidence that a woman who has an abortion has committed a grave evil. Don't we reject as fundamentally flawed the argument that we can't make that judgement without knowing the complexities of her situation ? We can know if the Iran War is just or unjust, simply by applying Catholic teaching to the public facts.
Some might argue, "But we don't know everything President Trump and his advisors know!" That's true to a certain extent, of course, but it doesn't impact our overall analysis. We do know the claims being made for why our country went to war, and so we can judge those claims based on the actual evidence and using Just War Theory. (If those claims end up being false, as happened in the Second Iraq War, then that would also weigh heavily against the justice of this war.)
In addition, in a supposedly transparent democratic republic, is it ever justified to go to war-the most grave and potentially destructive decision a government can make-for secret reasons ? The American Founders gave Congress the sole authority to start a war (an authority often ignored in modern times) because war is so important-and horrible. It needs to be debated in public before its initiation, not launched in the dead of night by one man, to be announced later on social media.
So is the Iran War a just war ? Let's look at the four conditions that need to be met for a just war, according to paragraph 2309 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (note: there have been many formulations of these criteria over the centuries, but the Catechism contains a good authoritative list). Before detailing each condition, we should note that all four criteria, in different ways, rests on subjective judgements. But this isn't an excuse to throw up our hands and blindly defer to our leaders, as if there's no way to evaluate the conditions in existence when the war begins. Every single leader in human history who has engaged in war, from Hitler to St. Louis IX, believed his actions were justified, so simply taking their word for it is not enough.
Conditions for a Just War
The first condition is that "the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain." Regarding Iran, then, is the damage it has inflicted on the world "lasting, grave, and certain?" Of the four conditions of Just War Theory, this one is the closest to being fulfilled, but I would still argue that the condition is not met.
There's no question that Iran has done damage to the "community of nations," and further, its government has done damage to its own people. Yet this standard is not simply "Is the country bad?" or "Has the country done bad things?" Most nations do bad things, and an honest assessment of American foreign policy over the past few decades doesn't put us in a good light on this count either.
Also, this condition isn't "Will this country one day do lasting, grave, and certain damage if we don't pre-emptively strike?" In fact, a pre-emptive strike, like the one the United States and Israel engaged in starting this war, isn't typically considered as justified in the just war tradition. If the claim that a country will one day do something lasting and grave is all it takes to justify striking first, then there's really no such thing as Just War Theory.
Yes, Iran has engaged in evil acts in the past, and it's also true that it might have done worse things in the future if we had not attacked, but it's hard to argue that it's already done lasting, grave, and certain damage to the community of nations, at least when judged proportionally to other modern countries. In spite of the hysteria that Washington leaders try to whip up every few years regarding the looming threat of Iran, it has not posed a true threat to American citizens, only to "American interests" as defined by the neocon establishment. But even if we grant that this condition applies in this case, we'll see that the rest of the justification for this war falls apart with the next three conditions.
The second condition of a just war stipulates that "all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective." It's hard to see how a preemptive war can ever qualify under this condition. On at least two separate occasions the United States was engaging in good-faith negotiations with Iran, and by all objective indications, Iran was willing to make many concessions to the United States, yet during these negotiations President Trump launched an attack on Iran. Perhaps the president didn't believe Iran was sincere. And even though it's being claimed by some that Iran was an imminent danger, just last week Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that Iran was not rebuilding its nuclear program. With no threat of an imminent attack, it's impossible to argue that "all other means" were exhausted in trying to resolve the conflict.
Further, too often American officials limit "all other means" to only what is acceptable to neoconservative foreign policy doctrine. But Just War Theory calls for truly exploring "all other means;" i.e., war must be the last resort. And "all other means" have not been explored. For example, why not consider simply leaving the Middle East ? America has 19 military bases in the region, and this presence has been the main cause of immeasurable animosity toward our country over the decades since the 1940's. This option isn't even considered, so "all other means" are not really on the table, as Just War Theory requires.
(A thought experiment: while we consider U.S. military bases in foreign countries as normal, what would we think if, say, China, had a military base located in Oregon ? Would that not harbor legitimate hostility toward China among the American people ? We began setting up military bases in the Middle East in the late 1940's, and it's no coincidence that widespread Muslim hostility toward America, which didn't really exist before this time, grew steadily afterwards until it exploded in the 1990's, which, not coincidentally, is when the U.S. began adding an increasing number of bases in the region: 16 of our 19 military bases in the region were established after 1990.)
While it might be true that "all other means" acceptable to the neocon establishment have been tried, that's not good enough.
The third condition of a just war according to the Catechism, "there must be serious prospects of success," might seem like a slam-dunk for defenders of the war. No one seriously believes that American military might can be defeated by Iran. Yes, "success" is not so easily achieved, when properly understood. Consider our failed excursion in Afghanistan. By every objective measure, the United States was far superior to the Taliban going into that 20-year war. Yet what was the result ? Hundreds of thousands dead, massive destruction of infrastructure...and a final outcome that was the same as the original state of the country. In other words, the United States did not achieve "success." This is primarily because what constituted "success" for each side was highly asymmetric: America needed a full regime change; specifically, a regime that supported America and was supported by the Afghan people. The Taliban just needed to survive.
The same calculus applies to the Iran War. America can rack up victory after victory on the battlefield, but it can't claim success unless Iran is ruled by a stable American-compliant government. Iran, on the other hand, only has to survive the bombings without a regime change. The history of the past 25+ years of American foreign policy shows we can't change countries by attacking them; democracy is not spread by bombs. Arguing that "success" is a "serious prospect" in the Iran War defies everything we should have learned over the last 80 years from American intervention in the region.
The final condition for a Just War is that "the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition." By any reasonable standard, the Iran War falls terribly short in meeting this criterion.
I've argued elsewhere that the "modern means of destruction"-in other words, the incredibly destructive power of modern weapons-makes it extremely difficult to justify modern warfare due to the significant evils and disorders they produce, so I will not repeat those arguments here. The Iran War will likely produce specific evils and disorders, ones that are incredibly predictable. The resentment we have already created among Muslims in that region toward the United States cannot be underestimated or dismissed as unimportant, and this new war will only deepen that resentment; killing a major Muslim religious leader to start the war sure didn't help.
Back in the early 2000's, Patrick Buchanan, in opposing the military actions taken by the United States and Israel in the Middle East, warned that every time a young Muslim girl is killed by U.S. or Israeli forces, it likely creates out of her brothers and cousins new warriors against our presence. So what was unleashed when, on the first day of this war, the United States bombed a school, killing over 100 young girls ? It doesn't matter if the bombing was accidental or intentional, the impact is the same: a burning hatred of the United States growing ever more intense. We're literally creating future terrorists.
Further, this war almost immediately spilled over into South Lebanon, with a Catholic priest being killed by Israeli tank fire, and the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health has reported that over 1,000 people have been killed since hostilities restarted in that area this month. The potential for South Lebanon to become another Gaza-level humanitarian disaster is real, as is the potential for fighting to expand to other areas.
While it's common among American conservatives to dismiss the opinions of non-Americans (and this is often a wise perspective), we can't just dismiss what this war is doing for international relations. The BRICS nations have already been developing a non-US-centric economic coalition for years, and the Iran War could isolate the United States further and lead more nations to flee into BRICS' welcoming arms. (And for those who dismiss BRICS as irrelevant, it represents more than 40 percent of global GDP, compared to 28 percent for the G7 countries, which is an almost exact reversal of the percentages from 20 years ago.) The stronger BRICS gets, the weaker the dollar becomes, and the entire American economy-and its global hegemony-are based on the strength of the American dollar.
And of course there's the issue of oil and energy. The closing of the Strait of Hormuz-through which 20% of the world's oil flows-and the bombing of oil and natural gas fields means that energy prices rise, which in turn means that almost everything will rise in price, from food to iPhones. While economic consequences might not seem as significant as wartime deaths and resentful relatives bent on our destruction, they can have a seriously harmful impact on all our lives, particularly those of the poor. What happens in Iran can and will impact the lower-middle-class dad in Oregon trying to put food on his kids' table.
So, despite the argument we've heard time and time again when we attack a country that "it can't get worse than now," yes, yes, it can.
Who is Responsible for Deciding?
By any analysis, then, this war fails to meet at the very least three of the four conditions necessary for a just war. However, we should also consider the final sentence of paragraph 2309 of the Catechism: "The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good." Does this mean, as that 2003 Crisis editorial suggested, that we simply trust our political leaders to know best, supporting this war, even if we personally judge it to be unjust?
Not at all. First, in America we claim to have a representative government; i.e. officials who are elected by us to represent us. So we are duty-bound to let our officials know our views on this matter. While the final decision for going to war rests with the government, that doesn't mean we are required to support its actions if we believe what it is doing is immoral, as is the case with the Iran War. Just as we don't support legalized abortion and do everything we can to oppose it, we must do the same here.
Further, the Catechism speaks of "those who have responsibility" for these decisions, and in the case of America, that responsibility ultimately resides with Congress, not the president. Under our Constitution, a president cannot unilaterally declare war, as President Trump did on February 28, 2026 (yes, I know there's been a propaganda attempt to rename this as anything but a war, but if it walks like a duck...). Thus, it could be argued that President Trump is not the one who has the responsibility in this situation, but instead Congress.
Political Considerations
Because this war is unjust, Catholics simply cannot support it. Even if it were politically advantageous, it's a fundamental principle of Catholic moral teaching that the ends do not justify the means. But in this case, this war of choice is also likely to be politically disastrous. Initial support for this war was historically low, and as American casualties and economic consequences mount, that support will decrease. It's true that those who identify as "MAGA" overwhelmingly support the war, but that's essentially a tautology, in that "MAGA" typically means "I support Trump."
But the coalition that brought Trump victory in 2024 wasn't just MAGA—it consisted of libertarians, RFK-style MAHA advocates, and podcasters like Joe Rogan and Theo Von. One of the most prominent members of this coalition was a former Democrat who once sold campaign T-shirts proclaiming "No War with Iran." However, the non-MAGA elements of this coalition have become increasingly critical of Trump's aggressive foreign policy. At this point, it's likely this war will help the Democrats in the midterms in November, barring some major change or event before then (although never underestimate the ability of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory).
In addition, this war clearly harms J.D. Vance the most politically. He has been consistently and vocally opposed to wars like this throughout his short political career. Now's he reduced to being a cheerleader for one. How will that impact his chances in 2028 ? The same is not true for Marco Rubio, who has always advocated for a war with Iran, but if this war drags on with no real victory for the United States, his support will be a liability, not a strength.
This war also has sucked all the energy out of the room for anything else the Trump Administration wishes to accomplish. We aren't even talking about immigration reform anymore, and improvements to the economy are on the backburner now (actually, they are being burned by this war). Likewise, who even remembers DOGE ? Trump's promises to cut the size and scope of government have fallen by the wayside as he works to build the American empire. And then there's the Epstein files...
Political considerations take a backseat to moral considerations for the Catholic when evaluating support for a war, and it's always possible that this war will help Trump and the Republican Party politically somehow. Yet we've seen in recent history that warmongering does not help a party politically. In 2008, Barack Obama won easily over John McCain, in part due to his opposition to the Second Iraq War, which McCain wanted to expand to other countries. Likewise, in 2016, Donald Trump won both the Republican primaries and the general election—shockingly in both cases—in part because he condemned the interventionalism of the neocons, represented by both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. So it's hard to see how this war will be any different when it comes to political fallout.
A Damaged Witness
As I noted already, being wedded too closely to a Republican president launching a war of choice in the Middle East harmed the witness of many conservative Catholics and Catholic organizations—including Crisis Magazine—in the early 2000's. We can't allow that to happen again. When Catholics take lightly the horrors of war—talking of turning Iran into a parking lot (via nukes) or callously dismissing the murder of innocent girls as "collateral damage"—we undermine our commitment to the dignity of human lives, no matter where they live or what religion they may be.
In addition, when we align ourselves completely with a single political leader, no matter how good he may be on certain issues, we place him above our alignment with the King of Kings. Conservative Catholics' unwillingness to criticize Donald Trump, even when he's engaged in actions that clearly contradict Catholic teachings, such as his vigorous support for IVF and his unjust attack on Iran, tells the world that we put our politics above our faith.
Our credibility as Catholics is at stake. Will we be the prophetic witnesses our Lord calls us to be, or will we simply go along with the herd, even if that means supporting acts that cannot be supported by a well-formed Catholic conscience ? Will we strive for political clout, or will we strive for faithfulness to our Lord ? The choice is ours.