If Thomas Friedman’s fairytale world of light-versus-darkness were to evaporate, less noble motives for US and Israeli actions might be revealed.

In his unpublished  preface to Animal Farm, George Orwell remarks that “the sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.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 US aerial invasions of Iran on 13 June and 21 June, 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 US President Donald Trump’s personality flaws or on speculation about whether the bombing will succeed in its stated aims.

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 more than 40 opinion pieces in which Iran was a central focus. They range from unabashed praise for “Trump’s Courageous and Correct Decision” ( 23/6/25) to the editorial board’s advice that “America Must Not Rush into a War Against Iran” ( 19/6/25). 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 US 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 authorised by the UN Security Council. Nor have they mentioned the multiple other international crimes which the US 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  UN human rights experts and mainstream  human rights organisations have long understood as a genocide. (A Times online-only piece by David Wallace-Wells [ 25/6/25] 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 US and Israel are in violation of UN 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 US 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 US 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 US invasion of Iraq, Falk and co-author 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 criticise 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 ( 24/6/25). Hathaway notes the US bombing is an obvious violation of the UN 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 ( 21/6/25) and one in a Lydia Polgreen column ( 29/6/25), 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 civilisation. US-Israeli aggression is part of “a global struggle between the forces of inclusion and the forces of resistance” ( 23/6/25). Those who promote “inclusion” include the US, Israel, and “pro-American governments”, who are working “to integrate global and regional markets”, as manifested in their enthusiasm for “business conferences, news organisations, 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 ( 19/6/25) 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 ( 23/6/25) also has reservations about the US 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 authorisation from the US Congress. If the president wants war, he should “make the case” to Congress. Unquestioned is the US 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 ( 27/6/25) debating the legality of the US 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 US 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 ( 25/6/25), Times columnist and “hawk” Bret Stephens debated Rosemary Kelanic, a “sceptic”. The interchange was most notable for how the sceptic 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’ labelling 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 soliloquises 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 11 September 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 US Government bears primary responsibility for initiating or enabling, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Yemen. The US 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 US 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 ( 24/6/25 and  28/6/25).

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 favours democracy” ( 25/6/25), yet this approach somehow escapes him. A key source would be the annual  Democracy Perception Index. 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 US. 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 US’ 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 favour the idea of a “rules-based world order”. People in 85% of countries, including the US, 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 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 US foreign policy.

These findings would be important considerations for anyone who “favours 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 US-Israeli objectives. If Friedman’s fairytale world of light-versus-darkness were to evaporate, less noble motives for US 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.

Republished from Common Dreams, 1 July 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.