President Trump’s decision to join the Israeli attack on Iran was a long time coming.
Tehran would get nuclear weapons very soon if we didn’t take action, US and Israeli officials warned in The New York Times—in 1995. George W. Bush tasked the Pentagon with studying strike options to “stop the bomb clock, at least temporarily,” and on the campaign trail in 2008, John McCain jokingly sang, “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” Israel said a bomb was imminent during the Obama administration—perhaps less than three years away, per the country’s defense minister in 2011—and the Biden administration reportedly prepared plans to bomb Iranian nuclear sites early this year.
That long run-up may lend US participation in this war an air of inevitability. In my view, it shouldn’t. This is a war of choice, and it is the wrong choice. These US strikes on Iran are unlawful, unnecessary, unpopular, risky, and of dubious strategic value. They may or may not succeed in temporarily stopping the bomb clock, but they are a strategic gamble. For those of us eager for the freedom and safety of Christians and other oppressed people in Iran, this is a moment to pray for wisdom and peace.
Vice President JD Vance—likely aware that a majority of the American public, including a majority of Republicans, opposes US war with Iran—insists that the Trump administration does not want to escalate this conflict to boots on the ground. Indeed, he insists that the US isn’t at war with Iran at all.
That latter claim is laughable. (If Iran bombed Fort Bragg, would we accept the claim that they weren’t at war with us?) It also points us toward the legal problem, which is that the US Constitution assigns the power to declare war to Congress, not the president, and Congress did not declare this war.
Notes on the Constitutional Convention from James Madison, which include comments from “father of the Bill of Rights” George Mason, make the intent here inescapably clear: The framers of our Constitution thought no single man was “safely to be trusted” with this enormous power. They were interested in “clogging rather than facilitating war [and instead] facilitating peace,” permitting the president to act alone only “to repel sudden attacks.” We are not under sudden attack.
I believe this attack also violates the War Powers Act of 1973, which was passed over the veto of Richard Nixon in an effort to constrain lawless presidential warmaking.
The War Powers Act has three scenarios under which the president can initiate military action: “(1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” None of these conditions are applicable here.
Even if these strikes were necessary, the president—like many presidents before him, Democrat and Republican alike, who deemed themselves trustworthy with power that was never theirs—is breaking his oath to the Constitution. As the prophet Habakkuk warns of abuse of power, “Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails” (1:4).
But my contention is that the strikes weren’t necessary. A clip of a conversation between pundit Tucker Carlson and Republican Senator Ted Cruz circulated online in recent days because Cruz, who supports forcible regime change in Iran, couldn’t say how many people live there. Here’s a more important number: Iran’s gross domestic product ($341 billion as of 2025) is less than half of US defense spending ($850 billion in 2024).
That is, the money we spend on our military every year is more than twice as much as the Iranian economy. That’s not Iran’s entire government budget. It’s all of Iran’s economy. The whole thing.
This isn’t to say Iran can’t do anything to harm US interests—and especially US forces stationed around the Middle East. But Iran cannot pose anything like an existential threat to America, not even if its nuclear program were much further along than it was before these strikes. This is a poor, weak country half a world away, separated from the US by an ocean and surrounded by hostile powers. There is no scenario in which Iran somehow conquers the United States.
Yet there is a scenario in which the US loses this war in the style of the last two decades’ losses in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. There is a more-than-plausible scenario in which this is the beginning of another yearslong quagmire that destabilizes a society and leaves tens or hundreds of thousands of innocents dead with little or nothing to show for it. We should know by now that US-orchestrated regime change does not reliably lead to liberty and peace.
I think in particular of the danger war brings to Christians in Iran. Already a persecuted minority subjected to imprisonment, raids, fines, beatings, and other cruelties for their faith, Iranian Christians will be even more vulnerable if this war is prolonged. It’s not like bombs will bypass all the Christians’ houses. Moreover, tyrannical regimes under pressure often grow more tyrannical, especially toward dissidents and ideological minorities like Christians under an autocratic Islamist state.
And while we may hope that the conflict could bring to power a new, more lenient government in Tehran, there’s no guarantee of that outcome—quite the opposite. The number of Christians in Iraq shrank by more than 80 percent due to the US-initiated war and its aftermath.
“Iraq was estimated to have nearly 1.5 million Christians before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion,” the Associated Press reported in 2021. Those ancient churches had roots stretching all the way to the early church. But today, “church officials estimate only a few hundred thousand [Christians], or even less, remain within Iraq’s borders,” many of them feeling “abandoned, bitter and helpless,” less free to worship than they were under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. We should all want freedom for Iranian Christians, but it is naive to imagine that an American war is a sure-fire way to get it.
Looking ahead, I hope Vance’s yes is yes in his promise about escalation (Matt. 5:37). I want to trust that he’s telling us the truth (1 Cor. 13:6–7). I pray for Trump and Vance “and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness,” in the US, Israel, and Iran alike (1 Tim. 2:2).
And still, I admit I’m skeptical of the prudence of our leaders and worried about where we go from here. With the writer of Ecclesiastes, I suspect that “what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again” (1:9).
“The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools,” he says (9:17). But all I hear is shouting. “Wisdom is better than weapons of war” (9:18). But we fallen people are better at building weapons than being wise.
Someday, God himself “will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore” (Isa. 2:4). But that day doesn’t seem to be coming this week.
Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today.
