Is ‘Just War’ Ethical?

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, April 14, 2026

 

In a roundtable interview with U.S. cardinals, CBS News provides us with an illuminating exchange prompted by the dustup between Pope Leo and President Donald Trump over the moral righteousness of the war against the Islamic Republic:

 

Pope Leo warned that Jesus, quote “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.”

 

Norah O’Donnell: Is this a just war?

 

Cardinal Robert McElroy: No, in the Catholic teaching this is not a just war. The Catholic faith teaches us there are certain prerequisites for a just war. You can’t go for a variety of different aims. You have to have a focused aim, which is to restore justice and restore peace. That’s it.

 

Norah O’Donnell: Iran has been the chief exporter of terror. Is there no scenario in which preventing that can be a just war?

 

Cardinal Robert McElroy: It’s an abominable regime, and it should be removed. But this is a war of choice that we went to, and I think it’s embedded in a wider moment in the United States that’s worrying, which is this: We’re seeing before us the possibility of war after war after war.

 

Cardinal McElroy’s qualifiers here are worth exploring. Irrespective of whether the regime is “abominable” and “should be removed,” the actions necessary to remove it must nevertheless flow from a specific set of circumstances.

 

In my exchange with Father Edward Beck on CNN last night, I asked him about those specifics. He maintained that, even if Iran represents an imminent threat to the United States, this war did not begin with an attack by Iran on America — specifically, “on our territory.”

 

I’m by no means qualified to opine on Catholic dogma, but it seems suboptimal that Americans or the citizens of its allies should have to meet their maker before the U.S. would act in their defense for such an action to be construed as morally righteous.

 

Leave aside the evils practiced by the Iranian regime. Forget that it wantonly slaughters tens of thousands of its own citizens merely for petitioning their government for redress. Ignore for now the state-sponsored practice of disfiguring and even blinding women for the offense of wearing the wrong clothes, the summary and public execution of homosexuals, the impressment of children to serve as cannon fodder in armed conflicts, and so on. Few would dispute that Iran represents not just a direct threat to American security but an ever-present threat.

 

The Iranian regime has killed hundreds of Americans over the decades. It executes plots on U.S. soil to kill its elected officials, civil servants, and foreign dignitaries. It sponsors Islamist terrorist activity all over the globe, the foremost design of which is to shed the blood of Americans and their allies and to undermine its geopolitical objectives (the sacrifice of which would put even more Americans at risk).

 

Is it inherently nobler to placidly await inevitable acts of murder before preempting the would-be murderer? Are Americans as a people immoral for demanding inquiries into the intelligence failures that lead to bloody catastrophes? Should they not accept their fates in anticipation of a belated response to their untimely deaths?

 

In Iran’s case, would it not have been more ethical to await a day in which Iran possessed the capacity to detonate a fissionable device, a day in which it was armed with an intimidating arsenal of ballistic missiles that would render any operation aimed at neutralizing its nuclear capacity cost-prohibitive? Would proper ethics have compelled the U.S. to accept a future in which the world’s foremost exporter of terrorism could continue that practice while holding a nuclear gun to the world’s temple?

 

Again, the theological principles here may be beyond me, but those principles appear to be in tension with elementary best practices in statecraft. Surely, the American public would regard the lethargy apparently prescribed by dogma as unacceptable if that lethargy led to an Iran that could not be disarmed with the speed and efficacy that has so far typified this war. Righteous or not, asking any American president to observe that kind of passivity would be asking quite a lot.