Cardinal McElroy: Iran attacks fails just war criteria

While spelling out the Church’s conditions for a just war, the cardinal went on to say that the US decision to go to war against Iran fails to meet that threshold in at least three requirements.

The Archbishop of Washington said the United States’ war with Iran is “not morally legitimate” because it fails several tenets of Catholic just war principles.

Responding to questions in The Catholic Standard on 9 March, Cardinal Robert McElroy expressed several concerns over US and Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran that began on 28 February.

“I have encountered a very significant level of anxiety about the war in Iran, and many parishioners have spoken to me about their worries,” McElroy said.

While spelling out the Catholic Church’s conditions for a just war, the cardinal went on to say that the US decision to go to war against Iran fails to meet that threshold in at least three requirements.

First, McElroy said, the criterion of a just cause is not met because the United States was not responding to “an existing or imminent and objectively verifiable attack by Iran”.

“If preventative war were to be accepted morally, then all limits to the cause for going to war would be put in extreme jeopardy,” McElroy said.

Second, the cardinal added that the war on Iran fails to satisfy the just war criterion of “right intention”.

“One of the most worrying elements of these first days of the war in Iran is that our goals and intentions are absolutely unclear, ranging from the destruction of Iran’s conventional and nuclear weapons potential to the overthrow of its regime to the establishment of a democratic government to unconditional surrender,” McElroy said.

On his third point, McElroy said the Iran war also fails to meet just war teaching “because it is far from clear that the benefits of this war will outweigh the harm which will be done”.

“The Middle East is the most unstable region in the world, and the most unpredictable,” the cardinal said, adding that the war has already had several unintended consequences.

“Iran’s morally despicable decision to target its neighbors in the region has spread the expanse of destruction,” he said.

The divided Middle East – a war rooted in false promises

An unjust war

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