The Anti-War Argument Is Actually a Pro-War Argument

One does not wait to attack an irrational actor while it gets more powerful

Before the US and Israeli airstrikes, opponents of military action against Iran made a vivid and consistent case for restraint. Attack Iran, they warned, and it will close the Strait of Hormuz, unleash its proxies across the region, strike American bases, target civilian infrastructure in allied countries, and drag the entire Middle East into chaos. The retaliation would be massive, indiscriminate, and impossible to control.

They were right.

Since Operation Epic Fury began, Iran has attacked civilian infrastructure in Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, Turkey, and Cyprus. It struck a British military base. It hit airports and embassies and hotels across the region. It continued firing after its own president publicly declared it would stop. Nearly every catastrophic prediction the anti-war camp made has come to pass.

But follow the logic.

Even the doves knew — and their warnings made clear they believed — that Iran is not a rational actor responsive to logic and incentives. It cannot be reliably deterred, cannot be trusted to honor agreements, and will use any available instrument of coercion to cause maximum harm. Some of them will acknowledge privately what the regime states publicly: that Iran’s leadership genuinely believes it is hastening a divine apocalypse, that chaos serves a theological purpose, that the Mahdi arrives when the world burns. This is an eschatological project with ballistic missiles.

If that picture is accurate — and the last two weeks have done nothing to contradict it — then it is an argument for early confrontation, not endless patience. Because every year of patience was a year Iran added to its arsenal. As I showed here, Iran was producing over 100 ballistic missiles per month against the six or seven interceptors the US could manufacture in the same period. That gap compounds. An irrational actor that is also becoming militarily untouchable is not a problem that diplomacy resolves; it is a crisis that diplomacy defers until the moment of maximum danger.

The anti-war logic, followed to its own conclusion, is a pro-war logic. It establishes that Iran is dangerous, unpredictable, possibly theologically motivated, and immune to the kind of rational calculation that makes deterrence work. Having established all of that, it then argues for giving such an actor more time, more missiles, more infrastructure, and eventually the conventional umbrella behind which it completes a nuclear program.

The conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises. It contradicts them. If Iran is irrational, and it is getting more powerful, then the only rational choice is to stop it earlier rather than later.

Even without the theological argument, Iran’s actions appear designed to cause enough economic pain and regional disruption that pressure mounts on Western governments to stop the war. Iran is threatening to crash the global economy if it doesn’t get what it wants.

But think about what that means going forward. If Iran is willing to use the threat of closing the Strait of Hormuz today, it can use that same threat tomorrow. And the day after. A nuclear-armed Iran with a vastly larger missile arsenal could hold that sword over the world’s head indefinitely — not as a wartime desperation measure, but as a permanent feature of the geopolitical landscape. Every Western government, every moderate Arab state, every global shipping route would live permanently under the veto of a regime that both the hawks and doves describe as irrational, apocalyptic, and unappeasable.

Why would anyone give an irrational actor the keys to a sports car he has already promised to crash if he doesn’t get what he demands?

The anti-war camp warned us exactly what Iran would do. The lesson they should have drawn — and that events are now teaching — is that you don’t wait for such an actor to become more powerful. You act while the cost is still bearable.