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IRAN: THE THINGS IT WON’T DO TO SAY  
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Kevin Young
July 1, 2025
Common Dreams
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_ 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. _

Thomas L. Friedman, op-ed columnist, The New York Times speaks to the
audience during the International New York Times Global Forum
Singapore October 25, 2013, Suhaimi Abdullah/Getty Images

 

In his unpublished preface
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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
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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
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to the editorial board’s advice that “America Must Not Rush into a
War Against Iran” (6/19/25
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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
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including the near total blockade
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on humanitarian aid into Gaza [[link removed]],
daily sniper assaults
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on desperate unarmed people, and deliberate starvation of infants
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all part of what U.N. human rights experts
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and mainstream human rights organizations
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have long understood as a genocide. (A _Times _online-only piece by
David Wallace-Wells [6/25/25
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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
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treaties
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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
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the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East (partly enabled by the
United States, in violation of multiple laws
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and the refusal of the U.S. and Israel to sign the 2017 Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
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As the leading international law scholar Richard Falk observed
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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
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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
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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
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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
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plus one line in a Peter Beinart column (6/21/25
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and one in a Lydia Polgreen column (6/29/25
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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criticisms of the bombing, from Sen. Bernie Sanders
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(I-Vt.) to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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William Barber
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In another episode of the “Opinions” podcast (6/25/25
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_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
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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
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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
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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
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and 6/28/25
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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
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yet this approach somehow escapes him. A key source would be the
annual Democracy Perception Index
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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
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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
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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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Kevin Young teaches history at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst. His most recent book is Abolishing Fossil Fuels: Lessons from
Movements That Won.

* U.S. and Israel; Iran; Bombing of Iran; International Treaties;
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