By pretty much all accounts, the US starting another war in the Middle East, this time in Iran, is not going well. At least 13 Americans have died while around 300–750 have been injured, and for those of us who care (I do) countless Iranian children and civilians have been killed from the US bombing schools and other non-military facilities. The price of gas is up to an average of $4.164/gallon in the United States, up from $2.98/gallon on February 26. It’s the first time in more than 4 years that the price of gas has been above $4/gallon. (Well, there is a good side to this, but more on that later.) With all of these costs, it’s hard for me to not constantly ask, “But why are we even bombing Iran?” Why did we we go bomb a country halfway across the world? Why did we start another stupid, costly, deadly war in the Middle East? Was it for some kind of supposedly noble religious reason? Did Jesus Christ not tell us “Thou shalt not kill?” The message wasn’t “Thou shalt not kill unless you feel like bombing thousands of people (kids included) halfway across the Earth because they have different beliefs from you.” It certainly isn’t a good recruitment strategy for Christianity. (And imagine if the Iranians had decided they were sick of the US president and started bombing the country after executing Donald Trump at his home in Florida.) Then there’s the idea that it’s all about oil. So, we can just go bomb a country, kill its leader, and take their oil? That’s considered acceptable, or even advisable, behavior? Just go kill a country’s leader, start a war, and expect to get the country’s oil? And does the US not have an enormous amount of oil itself? How much oil do we need to have control over? How unsustainably, illogically addicted to oil are we? There’s the argument that this was necessary to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and more military capability, and having too much influence over the region. Really? Let’s start a war with a major country and think that’s not going to lead to the country’s animosity growing towards us and people from the country deciding to actually attack us down the road — either through rogue actors who lost their families and were seeking revenge or through the whole country deciding we’re their #1 enemy of the biggest threat to their lives. Was Iran ever going to bomb us if we just left them alone? No, not likely at all. Is the country much more like to attack us now? Definitely! Because Israel wanted us to? Well, I can’t think of many dumber reasons than this, but it could definitely be part of the story. As a distraction from the release of the Epstein files showing many legitimate claims of Donald Trump raping and abusing women and girls as well as systematically supporting sex trafficking of girls? Tension with Iran has been a common distraction for decades. But talk and posturing can only grab the headlines for so long and supersede other topics to such a degree. You need to go all in and bomb the country to kill any other stories. And that’s what Trump, very surprisingly at the time, did. Like with most explanations, the answer is likely a mixture of these things, with some weighing more heavily — or much more heavily — than others. But let’s be clear: none of them are good reasons to have bombed Iran. None of them are good reasons to have started another war in the Middle East, and stimulated more terrorism no doubt. This article is also being published on our Substack channel. Featured photo by محمدعلی برنو | Avash Media (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license)