Is Regime Change Justifiable by Catholic Principles?

After the bombing of nuclear facilities on Saturday evening, President Trump posted a rather bizarre message on Truth Social: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”

The comments have roused fears that, contrary to the recent rhetoric of the administration, Trump might actually be mulling over a more full-scale engagement in the Israel-Iran conflict with the aim of installing new leadership, although later he did seem to backtrack on the regime change talk.

These comments about regime change, if taken at face value, obviously say nothing whatsoever about protecting America, or even “defending our interests.” It’s a blatant, unconscionable call to interfere in another country’s government.

“Make Iran Great Again”—what could such a statement even mean? Since Trump used his own campaign slogan, one can’t help but think he imagines a “great” Iran would be an Iran that somehow mirrored Trump’s own policies. With disregard for culture, history, and geopolitical reality, Trump and many Americans seem to hold the view that the only kind of successful country is one that mimics American democracy. This is the height of arrogance and ignorance. Iran, with its millennia-old Persian culture, is never going to look anything like America.

Nowhere does Catholic teaching on just war theory indicate that one nation can take military action to remove another nation’s government simply because that government isn’t “great” enough. Even if it’s true that the Iranian government is failing at its job, that still isn’t justification for war. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2309, lays out the criteria for a just war—and ensuring foreign “greatness” isn’t one of them:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

The Catechism goes on to say, “The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.” Of course, I am not privy to the classified national security information of the Trump administration; they may know something we don’t. And this makes any estimation of the justice of military action difficult for the average citizen, who isn’t the one called to make the prudential judgment in question and doesn’t have all the facts. But I still believe the American people deserve at least some rationale for military action that coincides with just war theory and goes beyond an incoherent accusation that Iran’s government needs to “make Iran great again.”

Even if somehow ethically justifiable, regime change is still an incredibly messy business that cannot be taken lightly. “It’s very clear what the U.S.’ intention is,” comments geopolitical analyst Professor Jiang Xueqin, who correctly predicted over a year ago that Trump would contemplate an attack on Iran during his second term 

because we’ve seen what the United States has done to Iraq, Libya, and Syria. They call it “regime change,” but it’s really the destruction of the society, the destruction of the capacity as a people to be a nation, to work collectively. 

Unsurprisingly, removing the leaders of a society throws that society into a state of chaos, with all sorts of unpleasant and unpredictable results.

This course of action also risks harming rather than helping America’s own geopolitical interests. It’s difficult to discern the advantage to the United States in destabilizing yet another Middle Eastern country. “There is no need for the U.S. to enter the war, and it is in neither the U.S.’s interests nor the interests of the rest of the region for it to do so,” writes Catholic philosopher Edward Feser. 

Now, as the history of the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan shows, regime change in the Middle East is likely to have catastrophic consequences for all concerned. Both of those conflicts resulted in years of civil war, tens or even hundreds of thousands of casualties, and, in the case of Afghanistan, a successor regime hostile to the U.S.

Sohrab Ahmari, writing before the bombing of the nuclear facilities, offered a similar warning, arguing that regime change 

would radiate instability into Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and elsewhere: all places where the United States has serious interests, troops or personnel, or both. An outbreak of ethno-sectarian conflict, then, would put pressure on Washington to intervene. For Europe, the civil-war scenario would almost certainly mean a massive migrant wave, potentially dwarfing the 2015-2016 exodus from Syria.

Most chilling of all, however, is Jiang’s prediction, which is that the United States will eventually commit ground troops to Iran; and that decision will prove disastrous, as American soldiers get bogged down in another unwinnable war against militias and insurgents deeply embedded in the rough terrain of the country. According to Jiang, a land invasion will inevitably fail, call down catastrophe on us, end American global hegemony, and possibly even ignite civil conflict within the United States itself. According to Jiang, a land invasion will inevitably fail, call down catastrophe on us, end American global hegemony, and possibly even ignite civil conflict within the United States itself.Tweet This

Where is the good to be found in all this? I cannot see it. Again, we don’t have all the information. But it’s difficult to even conjure up a hypothetical scenario where our use of arms will “not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated,” in the words of the Catechism.

I echo the sentiments of the Holy Father, who said on Sunday that humanity’s plea for peace “demands responsibility and reason and must not be drowned out by the roar of weapons or by rhetorical words that incite conflict.”