Plumes of smoke rise following reported explosions in Tehran, Iran, on March 2, 2026, after the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Feb. 28 that killed Iran’s supreme leader and top military leaders, prompting retaliatory strikes on Israel and across the Gulf.
Mahsa/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images/TNS
When the United States attacks another nation, there is always a body of Americans who blindly justify whatever actions our armed forces take, no matter how horrific they may be, typically on the basis of national sovereignty within the invaded country.
Aside from the countless times throughout history, we have seen this trope play out twice since the hellish dawn of the second Trump administration: first, after the raid in Caracas, Venezuela on Jan. 3, which displaced many and reportedly killed 83 people, and now, after the U.S. and Israel struck Iran on Feb. 28.
Many across the nation and world, including members from both the Venezuelan and Iranian diasporas, justify the attacks based on notions that the nations are run by corrupt leaders.
While that may be true, I hardly find it justifiable that at least 165 people were killed in a bombing on a girls’ school by Israel and the U.S. in Minab, Iran–which is only a fraction of the reported 1,255 dead in Iran, 394 killed in Lebanon from Israeli attacks, 13 dead from Iranian retaliatory strikes in Israel, eight dead U.S. soldiers, as well as others in Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE reported to have died as a result of this conflict.
Not only do I find these deaths unjustifiable, I certainly do not believe them to be worth celebrating–even if the attacks resulted in the defeat of a dictatorship.
Americans justified the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the basis that Saddam Hussein was a dictator, especially when Iraqis notoriously tore down the statue of Hussein in Baghdad on Apr. 9, 2003, amidst other celebrations after Hussein was overthrown.
This same rationale was applied when Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured and Caracas was attacked, when celebrations broke out across Venezuela and the Venezuelan diaspora.
The same is happening now, with over 1,000 people dead in Iran because of the United States and its proud alliance with Israel, a nation whose military has admitted to killing over 70,000 people in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 2023.
We are now seeing people across the Iranian diaspora celebrating the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei despite the over 1,000 Iranian civilians killed in the invasion, and Americans using such celebrations to assert that we must accept military violence perpetrated by the U.S. abroad because individuals who have some personal or familial connection with the attacked nation are happy about one outcome of the violence.
It’s funny–you never see those directly affected by these attacks in the streets celebrating.
The conditions of people under dictatorships who are killed, injured, or displaced by attacks, domestic or foreign, does not change after the attacks–their conditions worsen.
Iraq, over twenty years after the U.S. invasion, is hardly in better condition than it was under Hussein–over one million people as of Feb. 2026 remain displaced in the nation, and over three million still rely on humanitarian aid according to numbers from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Americans must not let fear-mongering and U.S. military propaganda shield their perception of what is happening plainly in front of our very eyes: cold-blooded murder at the hands of our armed forces, under the direction of a mad, demagogic leader.