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iran
For a Different Kind of Apocalypse—From LA to Tehran
Instead of pushing us close to the brink of Armageddon through military escalations at home and abroad animated by religious fundamentalism, U.S. policymakers must find the courage to lead us toward world peace through diplomacy and climate repair.
Jul 03, 2025
As an Iranian American Christian from Los Angeles, I watch with alarm as a fringe religious prophecy creeps into the highest levels of American policy. What may sound like a spiritual metaphor—biblical End Times, Armageddon, divine vengeance—is now inspiring large-scale political decisions, putting lives at risk from LA to Gaza to Tehran.
After Hamas killed over a thousand Israelis and took hundreds captive on October 7, 2023, Israel has dropped the equivalent of several nuclear bombs on the Gaza Strip’s mass incarcerated Palestinian refugee enclave—with the U.S. supplying about 68% of Israel’s foreign-origin weaponry in this war. Amnesty International describes Israel’s response to October 7 as a genocide—killings “with the specific intent of destroying Palestinians in Gaza.”
In April 2024 in LA, masked vigilantes attacked UCLA’s nonviolent pro-Palestinian encampment for three hours with wood, metal, and fireworks before LAPD intervened. At the beginning of this year, Angelenos were devastated by the Eaton and Palisades Fires—worsened by global warming—taking dozens of lives, destroying thousands of homes, and creating eerie orange skies above Los Angeles.
The thought of my U.S. taxpayer dollars funding bombing campaigns of my ancestral homeland that could eventually become nuclear, threatening the beautiful ancient city of Isfahan that I visited in my childhood, is unbearable.
Now, the world is in the throes of President Donald Trump’s chaotic second term. Shortly after his inauguration, he once again withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accords—while LA was ablaze. More recently, as Angelenos have protested the federal government’s inhumane mass deportation campaign, which has lately targeted Iranian nationals, the Trump administration majorly escalated by sending in thousands of National Guard troops to Los Angeles.
On June 13, while the U.S. and Iran were in the middle of diplomatic negotiations around reinstating Obama-era restraints on Iran’s nuclear energy program, Israel under Prime Minister BenjaminNetanyahu, still waging a genocide on Gaza and facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court as of November 2024, began a large-scale attack on Iran. This represented the most significant attack on Iran since the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988—culminating in the killings of at least 600 Iranians, including many civilians and children. In response, Iran attacked Israel with retaliatory strikes that killed dozens of Israelis.
In a televised address on Sunday, June 22, President Trump reported that the United States military under his command bombed three sites in Iran housing the country’s nuclear energy program, including Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, entering the U.S. into Israel’s offensive attack. He even at one point raised the possibility of a U.S. nuclear strike on Iran in the future. On Monday, June 23, Iran retaliated against the U.S. by launching limited missile strikes directed at an American military base in Qatar, with no casualties. Later that day on social media, Trump announced a cease-fire deal between Israel and Iran. Though both nations continued to exchange fire shortly after the cease-fire went into effect, Israel and Iran are now experiencing a fragile peace. Trump and Netanyahu have purportedly agreed to end the war in Gaza within two weeks of the U.S. strikes on Iran, and the U.S. and Iran are expected to talk during the week of June 30.
This conflict has deeply impacted Angelenos, including my own family. LA is home to the largest Iranian diaspora globally, known as “Tehrangeles.” As an Iranian American, I don’t see Iran as a geopolitical adversary; it’s home to my loved ones and heritage. Israel concentrated many of its airstrikes in Tehran—the most populous city in Western Asia—including airstrikes in my own cousin’s neighborhood. The escalation of this conflict, including Trump’s call on Iranians in Tehran to “evacuate immediately,” forced my cousin and disabled U.S. citizen grandmother to flee Tehran to Northern Iran. It was a strange feeling when I last spoke to my grandmother before her internet went out, hearing her say in Farsi, “Ma ra zadan”—“They hit us.” The thought of my U.S. taxpayer dollars funding bombing campaigns of my ancestral homeland that could eventually become nuclear, threatening the beautiful ancient city of Isfahan that I visited in my childhood, is unbearable. After all, Iran is filled with rich world history—including the most widely accepted site of the tomb of Prophet Daniel of the Bible, who I am named after.
How did we get to this escalating polycrisis of destruction? In part, because white Christian nationalist leaders have embraced a belief in the End Times—an extremist theology that now holds wide political sway according to religion scholar Bradley Onishi. Texas megachurch pastor, founder of influential political lobbying organization Christians United for Israel, and Trump adviser John Hagee preaches that warfare between Israel, Palestine, and Iran is part of a biblically predicted Battle of Armageddon, in which the U.S. must militarily support Israel to be reunited with God in the Rapture. He cites Ezekiel 38 and 39, an Old Testament prophecy that says a restored Israel in the End Times will be attacked by a nation called Gog, supported by Persia (modern-day Iran). In retaliation, a vengeful God of Israel would decimate Gog and Persia through brute force “to cleanse the land.” In Hagee’s words, Iran is “already in the hit list in Ezekiel 38.” This prophecy also talks of climate destruction during this violent vision of the End Times, including “torrents of rain, hailstones, and burning sulfur.” These ideas are no longer confined to pulpits—they are shaping real-world policy. Even former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that God sent Trump to save Israel from Iran.
If we must turn to apocalyptic scripture to understand the future, then why don’t we skip ahead to Revelation 21: the creation of a “new heaven and a new Earth,” including a “new Jerusalem,” where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Los Angeles and our world are enduring too much grief to bear. Instead of pushing us close to the brink of Armageddon through military escalations at home and abroad animated by religious fundamentalism, U.S. policymakers must find the courage to lead us toward world peace through diplomacy and climate repair. That means reinstating the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran of zero weaponization, as opposed to an unrealistic goal of zero enrichment. It means pushing for an immediate, permanent cease-fire between the U.S., Israel, Palestine, and Iran, and it means reentering the U.S. into the Paris climate accords.
My faith teaches redemption, not vengeance. As God promises in the Bible, “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
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Iran: The Things It Won’t Do to Say
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.
Jul 01, 2025
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.
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The Time Has Arrived for a Comprehensive Middle East Peace
The United States must recognize that its own strategic interests require a decisive break from partnering in Israel’s destructive strategy.
Jun 30, 2025
The attack by Israel and the U.S. on Iran had two significant effects. First, it once again exposed the root cause of turmoil in the region: Israel’s project to “reshape the Middle East” through regime change, aimed at maintaining its dominance and blocking a Palestinian state. Second, it highlighted the futility and recklessness of this strategy. The only path to peace is a comprehensive agreement that addresses Palestine’s statehood, Israel’s security, Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, and the economic recovery of the region.
Israel wants to topple the Iranian government because Iran has supported proxies and non-state actors aligned with the Palestinians. Israel has also consistently undermined U.S.-Iran diplomacy regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
Instead of endless wars, Israel’s security can be ensured by two key diplomatic steps—ending militancy by establishing a Palestinian state with United Nations Security Council guarantees, and lifting sanctions on Iran in exchange for a peaceful and verifiable nuclear program.
Israel has driven the region to a 4,000-kilometer swash of violence from Libya to Iran through its reckless, lawless, and warmongering actions, all ultimately aimed at preventing a State of Palestine by “remaking” the Middle East.
The far-right Israeli government’s refusal to accept a Palestinian state is the root of the problem.
When the British empire promised a Jewish homeland in Mandatory Palestine in 1917, the Palestinian Arabs constituted 90% of the population and Jews less than 10% of the population. In 1947, with intense U.S. lobbying, the U.N. General Assembly voted to grant 56% of Palestine to a new Zionist state, while the Jews were only 33% of the population. Palestinians rejected this as a violation of their right to self-determination. After the 1948 war, Israel expanded to 78% of Palestine, and in 1967, occupied the remaining 22%—Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
Instead of returning occupied lands in exchange for peace, Israeli right-wing politicians insisted on permanent control of 100% of the land, with the Likud founding charter declaring in 1977 that there would be only Israeli sovereignty “between the Sea and Jordan.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu represents this policy of domination—and has served as prime minister for a total of 17 years since 1996. When he came to power, he and his U.S. neocon allies authored the “Clean Break” strategy to block the creation of a Palestinian state. Instead of pursuing land for peace, Israel aimed to reshape the Middle East by overthrowing governments that supported the Palestinian cause. The U.S. would be the implementing partner of this strategy.
This is exactly what happened after 9/11, as the U.S. led or sponsored wars against Iraq (invasion in 2003), Lebanon (U.S. funding and arming Israeli aggressions), Libya (NATO bombing in 2011), Syria (CIA operation during 2010’s), Sudan (supporting rebels to break Sudan apart in 2011), and Somalia (backing Ethiopia’s invasion in 2006).
Contrary to the glib promises by Netanyahu to the U.S. Congress in 2002—that regime change in Iraq would bring a new day to the Middle East—the 2003 Iraq War augured the events that were to come across the region. Iraq descended into turmoil, and since then, each new war has brought death, destruction, and economic disarray.
This month, Israel attacked Iran even as negotiations between Iran and the U.S. were underway to ensure the peaceful use of Iran’s nuclear program—repeating the same WMD propaganda that Netanyahu used to justify the Iraq War.
Israel has been claiming for more than 30 years that Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. However, on June 18, 2025, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general stated that there is “no proof of a systematic effort” by Iran to develop nuclear weapons. More to the point, Iran and the U.S. were actively engaged in negotiations according to which the IAEA would monitor and verify the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.
The attack on Iran proves yet again the futility and nihilism of Netanyahu’s approach. The Israeli and U.S. attacks accomplished nothing positive. According to most analysts, Iran’s enriched uranium remains intact, but is now in a secret location rather than under IAEA monitoring. In the meantime, with Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, neither peace nor security have been achieved.
Israel has driven the region to a 4,000-kilometer swash of violence from Libya to Iran through its reckless, lawless, and warmongering actions, all ultimately aimed at preventing a State of Palestine by “remaking” the Middle East.
The solution is clear: It is time for the United States to recognize that its own strategic interests require a decisive break from partnering in Israel’s destructive strategy.
Prioritizing genuine peace in the Middle East is not only a moral imperative, but a fundamental U.S. interest—one that can only be achieved through a comprehensive peace deal. The key pillar of this deal is for the U.S. to lift its veto on a Palestinian State on the borders of June 4, 1967, and to do so at the start, not in some vague distant future that never actually arrives.
For more than 20 years, Arab nations have backed a practical peace plan. So too has the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), with its 57 member countries, and the League of Arab States (LAS), with its 22 members. So too have almost all the nations in the U.N. General Assembly. So too has the International Court of Justice in its 2024 ruling that Israel’s occupation is illegal. Only Israel, with support from the U.S. veto, has stood in the way.
Here is a seven-point peace plan in which all parties would benefit. Israel would gain peace and security. Palestine would achieve statehood. Iran would win an end to economic sanctions. The U.S. would win an end to costly and illegal wars fought on Israel’s behalf, as well as the risks of nuclear proliferation if the current violence continues. The Middle East would win economic development, security, and justice.
- First, an immediate cease-fire would apply across the entire region—and the cease-fire would include an immediate release of all hostages and prisoners.
- Second, the U.N. Security Council would vote upfront to welcome Palestine as the 194th U.N. Member State on the June 4, 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel and Palestine could subsequently agree on mutually desired border adjustments.
- Third, Israel would withdraw from all territories occupied since 1967. U.N.-mandated international forces would ensure a peaceful, orderly transition; a transfer of Palestinian territories to Palestinian authorities; and mutual security for both Israel and Palestine.
- Fourth, the territorial integrity and sovereignty would be guaranteed for Lebanon, Syria, and all states in the region. All non-state armed groups would be demilitarized, and foreign troops would be withdrawn.
- Fifth, the U.N. Security Council would adopt an updated nuclear agreement with Iran, including binding verification, and with all economic sanctions on Iran lifted alongside Iran’s verified compliance with the peaceful uses of its nuclear program.
- Sixth, Israel and all Arab and Islamic states would establish full diplomatic relations following the admission of the State of Palestine as a U.N. member state.
- Seventh, the Middle East nations would establish an international fund for rebuilding the war-torn parts of Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, with contributions coming from within the region and from external sources.
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