"The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power."
- Brutus, Julius Caesar
Can we all just take a look at what actually happened in the Middle East over the past few weeks, with an objective perspective and remove the rhetoric?
On 28 February 2026, Israel unprompted and then the United States as part of apparent military obligations (although officially undocumented) launched large-scale joint strikes on Iranian military infrastructure, missile sites, and leadership; using primarily missiles and rockets.
The campaign, which never received an Authorised Use of Military Force (AUMF) directive from the United States' Congress, was very quickly named "Operation Epic Fury," and then backfilled with the objective to 'destroy Iranian missile sites and disable nuclear development'; despite the claims that "Operation Midnight Hammer" in June 2025, already destroyed Iran's nuclear program in that series of missile and rocket strikes (which also did not receive an AUMF).
This was met with Iranian retaliation, when it responded by launching its own missile and rocket strikes against Israeli and United States' targets.
Israel then opened up a border of conflict in Lebanon, fighting Hezbollah troops; which mostly resulted in civilian casualties in Beirut and southern Lebanon.
Iran further decided to cause disruption by attacking shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. As global oil prices are primarily driven by changes in Middle Eastern crude oil delivery (because of the chemistry involved in producing greases and plastics), Iranian attacks on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz almost instantly caused a spike in crude oil prices, and a moral panic over the subsequent global energy shock.
Objectively speaking, the best light to paint all of this in is that at the end of the conflict, Trump 'struck a deal' to reopen a shipping lane which was already open before the conflict began.
What Iran has done through the instrument of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, by demonstrating effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, is extract fees and sanctions relief. The costs to them, have been the lives of innocent people in Iran and Lebanon, whom they already considered as valueless.
Thousands of people in Iran and Lebanon, apparently count for nothing while the lives of 13 US Servicemen are the headline loss. The subsequent loss of United States' reputation, a minor depletion of US munitions, and the economic fallout of hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and the pull of general inflation due to supply chain disruption, is also seen as irrelevant.
My opinion:
If President Trump makes good on his threats to target civilian sites in Iran if the country does not re-open the Strait of Hormuz, then functionally this amounts to premeditated war crimes under international law.
Bombing "civilian power plants and bridges if Iran does not reopen the strait," is definitionally a war crime as making civilians or civilian objects the object of attack is a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Elements-of-Crimes.pdf
However, even the targeted destruction of innocent people, at the order of someone held to be a rapist in a court of law, is perfectly acceptable to the people of the United States and the Congress who would not even entertain any kind of restraint:
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?...It's, like, incredible."
- Donald Trump, 23 Jan 2016.
This remains true.
Behold your god,
Seated in the Oval Office.
He does what he likes.
No one will restrain him.
- Threnody 45:47
