Iran: The Things It Won’t Do to Say

In his unpublished preface to Animal Farm, George Orwell remarks that “the sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that, or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady.”

With the Israeli and U.S. aerial invasions of Iran on June 13 and June 21, respectively, the Victorian convention remains intact. There are certain questions it won’t do to ask. Are the invasions legal under international law? Are they morally justified? And who has the right to make those determinations?

These questions would be central in a media sphere that values legal and moral consistency. In Western media, by contrast, asking them is like mentioning trousers before a lady. Political debate focuses instead on U.S. President Donald Trump’s personality flaws or on speculation about whether the bombing will succeed in its stated aims.

It is because the world values democracy and international law that it condemns U.S. foreign policy.

The nearly universal embrace of the Victorian norm is apparent when we consider The New York Times, a liberal paper known for confronting Trump on many matters. In June 2025 the Times published over 40 opinion pieces in which Iran was a central focus. They range from unabashed praise for “Trump’s Courageous and Correct Decision” (6/23/25) to the editorial board’s advice that “America Must Not Rush into a War Against Iran” (6/19/25). Disagreements aside, however, nearly all the writers evidently consider international law irrelevant.

With just one significant exception, the paper’s editors and columnists have ignored the fact that the U.S. and Israeli bombings violate the United Nations Charter, the central document of international law. The charter prohibits the “threat or use of force” by nations that are not under attack or not authorized by the U.N. Security Council. Nor have they mentioned the multiple other international crimes which the U.S. and Israel are committing every day, including the near total blockade on humanitarian aid into Gaza, daily sniper assaults on desperate unarmed people, and deliberate starvation of infants, all part of what U.N. human rights experts and mainstream human rights organizations have long understood as a genocide. (A Times online-only piece by David Wallace-Wells [6/25/25] did cite the genocide findings.)

Furthermore, amid wall-to-wall condemnation of Iran’s possible nuclear ambitions, not a single New York Times editor or opinion writer has noted that the U.S. and Israel are in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and international treaties requiring them to help establish a “nuclear-weapons-free zone” in the Middle East and to work toward global abolition. There is universal silence on Israel’s refusal to sign the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the fact that it’s the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East (partly enabled by the United States, in violation of multiple laws), and the refusal of the U.S. and Israel to sign the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. As the leading international law scholar Richard Falk observed in an earlier era of U.S. debate over Iran, there is “a presumed total irrelevance of international law to the policy debate.”

The Times editors are following precedent. In a detailed study of Times editorial coverage of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Falk and coauthor Howard Friel found that “no space” on the opinion pages “was accorded to the broad array of international law and world-order arguments opposing the war.” The same pattern has long held true for Times coverage of Iran. Pious concern for “the rule of law”—that concept invoked by liberals to criticize Trump’s domestic authoritarianism—usually stops at the water’s edge.

The only significant exception in our Times sample was a guest column by Yale law professor Oona Hathaway (6/24/25). Hathaway notes that the U.S. bombing is an obvious violation of the U.N. Charter’s “prohibition on the unilateral resort to force,” which “is the foundational principle of the postwar legal order.” She further observes that Trump’s decision sets “an example of lawlessness” that further undermines the international rule of law, inviting other rogue actors to do the same. Apart from Hathaway’s commendable exception, only two letters-to-the-editor published on June 23, plus one line in a Peter Beinart column (6/21/25) and one in a Lydia Polgreen column (6/29/25), mentioned that the bombing violates international law.

The Times’ other authors exhibit no such ideological indiscipline. Thomas Friedman, true to form, casts the affair as a war for civilization. U.S.-Israeli aggression is part of “a global struggle between the forces of inclusion and the forces of resistance” (6/23/25). Those who promote “inclusion” include the U.S., Israel, and “pro-American governments,” who are working “to integrate global and regional markets,” as manifested in their enthusiasm for “business conferences, news organizations, elites, investment funds, tech incubators, and major trade routes.” They include Arab dictatorships like the one in Saudi Arabia, where Mohammed bin Salman is boldly remaking his country into “the biggest engine for regional trade, investment, and reform of Islam” (even if he “has made some serious mistakes”). By contrast, the “forces of resistance” want “a world safe for autocracy, safe for theocracy, safe for their corruption; a world free from the winds of personal freedoms, the rule of law, a free press.”

Others are more critical, but keep their criticisms within the bounds of polite Victorian discourse. The editors (6/19/25) urge Trump not to be “dragged into another war in the Middle East, with American lives at stake.” If he wants to bomb Iran, “he should then make the case to the nation for committing American blood and treasure.” Iranian blood and treasure do not merit a place among the possible downsides. Nicholas Kristof (6/23/25) also has reservations about the U.S. bombing, but mainly because of potential costs to the United States. Agreeing with Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, he worries the Iranians could retaliate and “threaten our armed forces in the region.” Why those forces are in the region, or have the right to be, goes unquestioned.

Concerns about legality, when expressed, focus on the lack of authorization from the U.S. Congress. If the president wants war, he should “make the case” to Congress. Unquestioned is the U.S. Congress’ legal right to launch a war, even an “unprovoked” war, as the editorial board observes this one to be. International law is a triviality. In an entire Times “Opinions” podcast (6/27/25) debating the legality of the U.S. bombing, none of the three discussants—Jamelle Bouie, David French, and Carlos Lozada—bothered to consider the legality under international law. The same disdain is nearly pervasive in U.S. political discourse, including in many progressive criticisms of the bombing, from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to Rev. William Barber.

In another episode of the “Opinions” podcast (6/25/25), Times columnist and “hawk” Bret Stephens debated Rosemary Kelanic, a “skeptic.” The interchange was most notable for how the skeptic spent almost as much time agreeing with her opponent as rebutting him. Although she feared the bombing could be “counterproductive” since it gives Iran “a huge incentive to build a bomb” (a self-evident causal relationship long understood by all serious observers), she stressed that Israel is right to “be extremely upset” and blamed Iranian leaders for having “put themselves in this situation.” Israel is justified in “not trusting Iran” because “Iran retaliated and killed Israelis, like, Israel should be mad at Iran.” Translation: It’s reasonable for aggressors to get mad at targets who fire back, provided the aggressors are on our side.

Kelanic also endorses Stephens’s labeling of Iran as “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.” This is a point of consensus among Stephens the hawk, Kelanic the dove, and debate moderator David Leonhardt. Leonhardt’s own intervention is telling given his position as Times editorial director. At one point he soliloquizes that Iran is “a malevolent force in the world that’s killed a lot of Americans.” The weakening of Iran and its regional allies is thus cause for rejoicing. “I look at that as an American,” he says, and it “cheers me in some ways.” Since Iran “has really caused a lot of pain and suffering over the last several decades,” its weakened condition makes it “much less able to cause that suffering.”

Leonhardt accidentally identifies part of the problem: The editorial director at the world’s leading newspaper views world affairs “as an American”—through the lens of nationalist exceptionalism, not through a set of universal standards applied equally to all actors. Were he to remove his nationalist blinders and behold the actual record of “the last several decades,” Leonhardt might reach different conclusions about the sources of “pain and suffering.”

He would, for example, see the facts compiled by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, which estimates that wars since September 11, 2001 have killed “at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting” through direct and indirect violence. Most of those people have been killed in wars that the U.S. government bears primary responsibility for initiating or enabling, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Yemen. The U,S. lead is even starker if we include the mass extermination of Palestinians since October 2023, which is not part of the Watson Institute data. No Western or Israeli intelligence agency has alleged that Iran’s violence against Western or Israeli personnel, retaliatory or otherwise, has produced even 1% of that death count. It takes real fealty to state doctrine to see Iran as “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.”

Shedding the nationalist blinders would also reveal key facts about the U.S. and Israeli bombing of Iran. Iranian human rights group HRANA reports that Israel’s bombing “targeted infrastructures, military and civilian facilities, residential areas, and industrial sites in 25 provinces,” killing a minimum of 865 people, of whom at least 363 were civilians. Civilian death estimates were mentioned only twice, in passing, in our New York Times sample (6/24/25 and 6/28/25).

A researcher not confined by nationalism might also consider global opinion, based on the novel idea that people’s preferences should matter in a democratic world. Leonhardt self-identifies as “someone who favors democracy” (6/25/25), yet this approach somehow escapes him. A key source would be the annual Democracy Perception Index (DPI). In the 2025 edition, released in May, people in 76 of the 96 countries surveyed “have a more positive view of China” than of the United States. Of major global leaders, “Donald Trump stands out with the most universally negative image,” with 82% of countries giving Trump a “net negative rating,” versus 61% for Russian President Vladimir Putin and 44% for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It’s not that people disagree with the U.S.’ professed ideals of democracy and rule of law—just the opposite. Most respondents in almost every country say democracy is “very” or “extremely important.” Most also favor the idea of a “rules-based world order.” People in 85% of countries, including the United States, say all countries “should follow international laws and agreements, even if it limits their freedom of action.” Yet surveys by DPI and many other pollsters show that the world views the United States as the top threat to democracy and peace. It is because the world values democracy and international law that it condemns U.S. foreign policy.

These findings would be important considerations for anyone who “favors democracy” and “rule of law.” But in our political culture they are inappropriate for well-mannered debate, like mentioning trousers with a lady present.

Asking impertinent questions about legality and morality could, of course, spark unhealthy scrutiny of U.S.-Israeli objectives. If Thomas Friedman’s fairytale world of light-versus-darkness were to evaporate, less noble motives for U.S. and Israeli actions might be revealed: Western control of resources, the preservation of ethno-racial supremacy in Greater Israel, and the need to eliminate all who oppose those goals. All things it won’t do to say.