Several days ago, I wrote about the double standard regarding Jewish influence on US policy (see The Ghosts of Conquest). I noted in that article that critics on both the far left and far right invoke the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as though it were uniquely influential, while never objecting to the foreign lobbies that shape US policies.
Saudi Arabia spends vast sums cultivating defense partnerships, securing access to political elites, hiring lobbyists and public relations firms, and retaining Washington consultants. China’s influence is substantial as well, extending through business interests, corporate partnerships, supply chains, technology markets, academic collaborations, and research institutions—all of which shape political and policy decisions. I identified several other foreign lobbies.
In a pluralistic political system, influence is neither unique to nor monopolized by any single foreign interest group. Yet AIPAC is singled out for special criticism—and it is a domestic lobby. Why? It’s organized by Jews to advance the unique interests of the Jewish people.
Yet another example of the double standard regarding Israel is the observation—prolific on X at present—that the international community is pretty certain (albeit this has not been officially confirmed) that the Jewish state has nuclear weapons. The objection goes up: why is Israel allowed to have nuclear weapons, but Israel and the United States are justified in preempting Iran from developing such terrible weapons?
Israel’s nuclear arsenal might be a problem if it were reasonable to believe that Israel would use nuclear weapons offensively. But since this is not a reasonable belief, why is it noteworthy? Iran is a different case. There should be no doubt in any rational person’s mind that a nuclear Iran would represent an existential threat to Israel and imperil the region and even Europe. European cities are now within reach of Iranian ballistic missiles. Such a threat also imperils the United States. US security depends on preventing dangerous countries from obtaining nuclear weapons. You have to be dangerously naïve to believe otherwise. Either that or pro-Iran—or anti-Israel.
I’m all for countries that possess nuclear weapons reducing or eliminating their arsenals, but singling out countries for criticism for possessing such weapons must concern the nature of the state in question, and whether there is a risk of offensive use. Is it reasonable to argue that Iran can have a nuclear weapon because France does? Of course not. France, for all its problems, is not (yet) an Islamic republic with designs to bring about the apocalypse. If France ever falls to Islam, those nuclear weapons become a real problem. Given the risks involved in triggering a nuclear war, it is not a problem that is easily solved. But given France as it is, it is hard to see that country using nuclear weapons offensively.
In addition to France, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, and China are among the officially recognized nuclear-weapon states under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. I’m not happy with Russia and China having these weapons, but they do, and have for a long time. This makes military confrontation with these countries especially difficult—and dangerous.
That list does not exhaust the number of nuclear powers in the world. India, Pakistan, and North Korea have openly developed and tested nuclear weapons (outside the treaty framework). Why Pakistan (first nuclear test in 1998) and North Korea (first nuclear test in 2006) were allowed to acquire such weapons was an error of historic proportions. Especially in the case of North Korea, something should have been done. Entanglement with China made matters difficult. But, in the final analysis, inaction allowed it to happen. And the world is more dangerous now.
One reason belligerent countries seek terrible weapons is not only to annihilate their neighbors but also to raise the costs of military action against them. The prospect of a nuclear Iran is the strongest possible case for preemptive military intervention. Do it now before it’s too late. It’s already bad enough. The Islamic Republic has long-range ballistic missiles and has for decades organized proxy wars, especially against Israel.
Antisemites on the left and right object: “But the Ayatollah’s fatwa!” For those who don’t know about the fatwa, Ali Khamenei declared in the 1990s that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islamic law. Then why enrich uranium to yield weapons-grade fissile material? There’s only one reason: to possess a nuclear weapon.
Iranian officials have cited that fatwa since the early 2000s as evidence that Iran’s nuclear program is intended for civilian purposes rather than for building atomic bombs. Khamenei’s fatwa was referenced in statements to the International Atomic Energy Agency and became an important part of Iran’s diplomatic position during nuclear negotiations. However, its legal status, scope, and permanence are unclear because it was not initially issued as a widely published formal legal decree and could theoretically be revised by religious authority.
But should any of that matter? The question is whether the fatwa is relevant. The fatwa is a rhetorical tool, an official statement presented by a rogue regime as a binding constraint on nuclear weapons development to prevent international action. To believe the Islamic Republic’s claims requires either a profound ignorance of the character of the regime or tacit support for Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Why would those who claim to be America First trust any fatwa or believe it mattered?
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The best arrangement for a tranquil world is a system of independent and sovereign states. However, state sovereignty depends on behavior and the capacity to use force. As for the latter, as the world’s hegemon, the United States’ military capabilities allow it to defend its sovereignty by force. However problematic the United States may become in the future, there is at the moment no other nation or coalition of nations that can bring it to heel. There’s a lesson in this: lesser states should never be allowed to possess awesome military capabilities.
States don’t have rights, but rather powers, and there must be some limiting principle on power. If this limiting principle is not internal and adequate to keep a state in line with international norms, then it must be imposed externally. Thus, as for the former, Iran is belligerent and has no internal or adequate principle to self-limit its power. It does not yet have the military capabilities to defend its sovereignty by force. It must never be allowed to develop those capabilities.
Disregarding the question of state character, those who defend Iranian behavior maintain that the United States cannot intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign state because states have a right to sovereignty. Presuming that states have an inviolable right to sovereignty, they do not subscribe to the principle of limiting state power through external force.
Christopher Hitchens cogently argued that state sovereignty is not an absolute right but a privilege that can be forfeited through certain grave actions. A state loses its claim to sovereignty when it (1) engages in persistent aggression against neighboring countries or occupies their territory, (2) violates the spirit or letter of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by pursuing prohibited weapons programs, (3) commits or enables genocide in violation of the Genocide Convention, or (4) provides sanctuary or support to international terrorists and similar non-state violent actors.
In Hitchens’s view, a regime that commits these offenses places itself “outside the law” of the international community, weakening the normal protections of sovereignty and justifying outside intervention. Iran has committed one or more of these offenses and has therefore forfeited its sovereign immunity from foreign action.
Some states are sound members of the international community, and thus retain their sovereignty. Other states are anything but sound and have therefore lost theirs. Iran is a paradigm of the latter case. The argument that Iran’s nuclear program should be immune from external force is irrational.
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Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has been quite obsessed lately with Israel’s alleged nuclear weapons. Deploying a bizarre moral calculus, she uses the Israel case to suggest that preemptive war in Iran is wrong. Presuming a rational moral terrain, can one imagine Trump, the shoulders upon whom the task has fallen to protect the world from a belligerent regime, going down in history as the president who allowed Iran to obtain such terrible weapons? Sounds insane, doesn’t it? So why would these Blue Hat American Firsters criticize action preventing another nuclear state in Central Asia, especially one that chants “Death to America! Death to Israel!” and murders its own citizens? Because they are insane.
This is yet one more way antisemitism deranges people. I find it hard to believe that Greene and her ilk don’t want a nuclear-armed Iran, and the only reason I can see for this desire is that it makes the demise of the only Jewish state in the world more likely. What else explains why Greene would stand with Iran? Of all countries in the world, why would any good and decent person defend the worst regime on the planet? If Greene were genuinely American First, she would applaud Trump for finally doing something about Iran’s nuclear program.
Instead, she walks away from America First loudly. She elevates Joe Kent, a former US Army Special Forces warrant officer, CIA paramilitary officer, and Republican political figure who served more than two decades in military and counterterrorism roles. In the Trump administration, Kent served as acting chief of staff to the outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. He was later confirmed as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. In that role, he oversaw the integration of US counterterrorism intelligence agencies and served as a principal adviser on counterterrorism matters. For the antisemitic crowd, Kent’s credentials make his position a valid one.
Kent’s wife, Navy cryptologic technician Shannon Kent, was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019, so one would think he grasps the problem of Islamic terrorism for global tranquility. Yet, when he resigned as NCTC director in March 2026, he argued that Iran poses “no imminent threat” to the United States and said he could not support what he viewed as an unnecessary war.
His resignation letter maintained that the conflict departed from the non-interventionist, “America First” foreign policy he believed Donald Trump had previously championed. But Trump never said he would not intervene militarily to protect United States interests, and his actions during his first term made that abundantly clear. Knowing that the President was not shy about asserting US military prowess, why would Kent have joined the Trump administration?
Every time Greene and Kent talk about Israel, they expose their deep-seated loathing of Jews to the world. They claim they believe in national sovereignty, but they could not possibly believe this in principle, and the signaling out of Israel betrays the pretense. They believe in sovereignty only selectively—and only then based on ideology. There’s no principle in that. It’s just rhetoric disguising Jew-hatred. For them, “America First” is code for “Fuck Israel.” Did they believe Trump hated Jews, too?
I get it. I know how these people think. Jews don’t have the right to defend themselves because Jews are sinister. For these lunatics, world Jewry is a puppetmaster pulling the strings that animate the United States. It’s the old Jewish cabal theory. It’s a sick bunch—Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candice Owens, and the rest.
The antisemites decry, “Why is Israel beyond criticism?” It’s not. All states are subject to criticism. Who doesn’t believe that? But singling out Israel for special criticism is a hallmark of antisemitism.
Antisemitism is often dressed in the rhetoric of anti-Zionism. “We’re not anti-Jewish. We’re anti-Zionist.” But what is Zionism? Zionism emerged in Europe in the 1800s as a response to widespread antisemitism and persecution of Jews. The main goal of the movement was to secure the Jewish homeland. This led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, following the attempt to exterminate the Jews in Europe. Jews needed a restored Israel to be safe from the eliminationist sentiment that surrounds them.
Israel existed long before the resurrection of the Jewish state. As I explain in Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism (see the embedded links for a deeper dive), Jewish presence in the land that the Romans later called “Palestina” goes back more than 3,000 years. Zionism is, at its core, the fight for Israel as a Jewish state in the ancestral homeland of these people.
To be sure, when people tell you that they are not antisemitic but anti-Zionist, they may be speaking from ignorance. There are many ignorant people out on the streets chanting pro-Palestinian slogans. However rooted in ignorance, what guides them to this denial is an ancient antipathy towards the Jews. This antipathy is amplified by the convergence of far-right ideology and Islamophilia on the left. Third Worldism at the United Nations has infected that body with this ancient hatred. This makes the organization useful to those who one might expect to reject transnational authority.
The threat Jews face has been continual for millennia, and today it is reaching yet another fever pitch. Preventing Iran from possessing nuclear weapons is an imperative for Israel. But the threat of Islam is not just a problem for Jews. Islam threatens Western civilization, which is grounded in Jewish law and sensibilities. Christians, whose origins lie in the Jewish faith, whose ethical system is based on that ancient religion, should be involved in the struggle against Israel and the West.
Those Christians who turn their backs on Israel turn their back on their own religion. Jews and Christians must be a united front against Islam and the reactionary politics on the left and the right. Greene and her ilk claim to be Christians, yet they cast Israel and the Jewish people in the role of historical evil. That puts this bunch outside any decent moral order.
freedom and reason 