Can Christians Drop Bombs?

Assessing Just War Theory in the Modern Middle East

Jul 09, 2025

If Christianity is true, it should apply to every aspect of life. That means Christians should be able to engage in discussions about even the most difficult topics and have something relevant to say. Almost nothing tests that truism like the prospect of waging war. Recent news about U.S. involvement in the Middle East presents an excellent test of the relevance of a Christian-based ethic to that topic.

I have written about Just War Theory in the Christian Research Journal before (here and here). But the recent bombing of Iran and the associated conflict in that region bring the questions serious Christians should be asking themselves back to the forefront.

How do we apply the Christian worldview to what we’ve witnessed going on in the Middle East right now?

Defining Just War Theory

St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas were two of the most influential thinkers in the history of Christian theological and philosophical thought, and they are the primary architects of just war theory (JWT). It has been modified over the centuries, but JWT can be summarized as falling into three areas: (1) The reasons that would validate a nation entering into war (jus ad bellum); (2) The ethical considerations for how to conduct war once engaged in it (jus in bellum); and (3) The moral obligations for actions taken once the war is over (jus post bellum).

The justifiable reasons for going to war — jus ad bellum — must be based on a morally defensible cause. Self-defense against aggression or securing the human rights of innocents whose lives are imminently threatened are good examples of righteous causes. But the decision to go to war can only be made by a legitimate authority or governing body that does so with the right intention of establishing peace. The motivation cannot simply be the pursuit of selfish gain or revenge. Force should only be used as a last resort, and that force must be proportional to the severity of the threat. In short, war should not be entered into casually and must also include a reasonable expectation of success.

While fighting a war (jus in bellum), the focus is on the pursuit of human rights and ethical standards of conduct. It includes minimizing suffering to the greatest extent possible and demands that civilians and non-combatants should be immune from deliberate targeting.

Finally, jus post bellum focuses on the pursuit of a just and lasting peace in the aftermath of war. It includes identifying the root causes of the conflict and how they can be reconciled in its aftermath.

Ultimately, JWT acknowledges that war may be the only viable remedy for the evil intentions and actions of belligerents. But it also demands that the goal should always be a peaceful and lasting resolution.

Applying Just War Theory

Just war ethicists have argued about these issues for centuries. Their discussions have led to conclusions that span the spectrum from the demand for absolute pacifism to the view that, in some cases, going to war is the only morally justifiable position. JWT was developed because the nature of war inevitably brings objective moral principles into conflict.

We are bound by the objective moral duty to value and protect human life — an obligation that always requires us to differentiate between indiscriminate killing and justified violence. While the pacifist impulse should always appeal to our moral sensibilities, JWT attempts to identify what constitutes morally legitimate exceptions to the use of force.

My goal here is neither political nor religious. Except for the religious motivations held by the combatants, I exclude religion and politics from my analysis. In other words, I don’t blame Islam for religious reasons; I blame cold-blooded killers for human reasons. I am simply doing my best to apply an objective look at JWT to what we’ve seen going on in the Middle East. This includes the actions of Hamas/Hezbollah, Israel, Iran, and the United States.

Arab Terrorism

The main perpetrators of violence and war in the Middle East today are Hamas, Hezbollah, and their funding source, Iran. The connections and history of these three are too complicated to detail here, but a quick summary is as follows:

Hamas

Hamas is actually an acronym for the “Islamic Resistance Movement,” a political organization of Palestinian Nationalist Sunni Islamists that had its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood. The group was founded in 1987 by Ahmed Yassim, won political control over the Gaza Strip in 2006, and seized control of Gaza in 2007 through a civil war during the Battle of Gaza. Ironically, Israel secretly funded Hamas at that time because it saw it as a better option than the PLO, with whom it had been fighting for decades.

Hamas won the 2006 election by promising a “corruption-free” government. But that government immediately began using foreign aid from mostly Sunni Muslim countries (like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and the UAE) — and from Great Britain, Germany, Italy, France, and even the U.S. — to fund its military budget instead of aiding its poverty-stricken people. It’s a long, sad story, but Hamas’ methods include:

Building an underground network of tunnels and storage facilities to house its combat personnel, rockets, and military equipment.
Launching hundreds of rockets at the civilian population of Israel.
Deploying suicide bombers to attack Israeli civilian targets.
Basing its military personnel and assets inside civilian locations like hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Hezbollah

Hezbollah has a similar background. Initially funded by Shia Muslims in Iran, Hezbollah emerged in Lebanon in 1982 as a reaction to an Israeli incursion into that country as well as to the unrepresented minority status of the Shia in the Lebanese government. One of the group’s first acts was the truck bomb attack on the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in October 1983 that killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French soldiers. One of those Marines was a classmate and friend of mine from the U.S. Naval Academy, Dave Nairn.

Hezbollah’s methods and practices parallel those of Hamas.

Stockpiling of over 100,000 missiles, many of which have been launched into Israel over the years.
Amassing an army of an estimated 60,000 soldiers.
Engaging in attacks on civilian targets, embassies, and airliners.
Plotting and carrying out assassinations all over the world.

Asymmetric Warfare

The key to summarizing all this is that both Hamas and Hezbollah are paramilitary organizations that share the same goals:

An Islamic Revolution.
The establishment of a worldwide Muslim ummah — a Quran-based, theocratic, worldwide community.
The dehumanization and killing of the Jews.
The obliteration of the nation of Israel.

To achieve their goals, these groups engage in what is known as “asymmetric warfare” — violence perpetrated by small groups of combatants who share an ideology but not a government or a nation. That is what makes it challenging to apply JWT to these types of conflicts. JWT was built to work for morally accountable governments or nation-states, not terrorist groups.

By their very nature, terrorist attacks made by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah violate almost every tenet of JWT. Their purposes are vengeful. Their targets are often non-combatant civilians. And they have no intention of seeking a “just and lasting peace.” They’re out for blood, chaos, and annihilation.

There is no better example of this than the Hamas attack on innocent concert-goers in Israel on October 7, 2023. And the immoral nature of that attack also makes it difficult to assess the Israeli response.

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Israel

Israel’s response to the unjust attack on its civilian population on October 7th was two-fold: 1) to stop the aggressors’ continuing attack on their people, and 2) to mitigate the asymmetric imbalance in moral accountability by decapitating the Hamas leadership.

The initial Israeli response was perfectly acceptable under JWT. It was an act of self-defense. But, in my opinion, those actions quickly exceeded the moral boundaries of a just war. They became disproportionate and have led to levels of civilian casualties and deaths that I do not believe are defensible within JWT.

I type those words with trepidation because I am aware of the circumstances within which Israel had to act. Hamas was holding hostages and cowardly hiding its combatants inside civilian locations. There is no doubt they did this to take advantage of what they knew to be Israel’s higher moral calculus.

Hamas blatantly disregards just war principles. But they knew Israel would be obligated to honor them.

Unfortunately, Israel didn’t do that to the extent they could have. For instance, during the initial attack, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) gave civilians a 24-hour warning to evacuate southern Gaza. However, 24 hours is not a realistic timeframe for more than a million people to exit an area that is that congested.

The IDF also employs “roof knocking” (dropping harmless, noise-making munitions on rooftops) or calls/texts civilians to warn them to evacuate buildings. Roof knocking can go unheard or be confusing. But even if some of these methods are successful at getting people to leave a building, the Israelis’ use of high-yield weapons often creates widespread damage that evacuees cannot escape, especially in densely populated urban areas.

All told, an estimate of the minimum number of civilian deaths due to Israeli attacks appears to be about 54 civilians for every 100 attacks. This is a low-end estimate; the real number is probably much higher. By comparison, when the U.S. attacked ISIS fighters in a similar kind of urban area in Raqqa, Syria, in 2017, the estimated rate was between 1.7 and 7.0 civilian deaths per 100 attacks.

Do the math.

Yes, I realize that Hamas purposefully puts civilians in harm’s way. And, yes, Hamas lies about the civilian death toll. But these estimates are based on independent data. So, by any reasonable comparison, the civilian death rate in Gaza vastly exceeds not only what has been historically obtainable, but anything that JWT would allow.

In short, I believe Israel has overplayed its hand and, by doing so, lost the moral high ground.

I realize this is an unpopular stance to take with some. But those of us who claim to be beholden to the proper conduct of war must abide by JWT even when it puts us at a disadvantage. Otherwise, JWT is nothing but another exercise in meaningless academic navel-gazing.

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Iran

Behind this entire sordid catastrophe lies the diabolical Islamic “Republic” of Iran. And by that, I mean the morally bankrupt theocratic leadership of that nation. This is not about the Iranian people — the Persians, as they like to be called. These are human beings made in the image of God, just like all of us.

Neither is this about the religion of Islam. The Persians should be free to practice their religion just like us, no matter how false or corrupted I believe it to be.

What I am talking about is the radical Ayatollahs. I purposefully noted above that Hamas is a Sunni religious organization, while Hezbollah is Shiite. These two divisions within Islam are often at odds with one another, and many times violently at odds. Iraq (then Sunni under Saddam Hussein) went to war with Iran (Shia) back in the 1980s for that very reason.

Yet Shiite Iran funds and arms both Hezbollah and Hamas for one reason — they share a mutual disdain for Israel and want to obliterate the Jewish people from the face of the Earth. It’s a liaison founded in hatred for Jews and that rejects any limits to what it can do to achieve that goal. It’s a regime that certainly cares nothing for JWT.

Actually, it’s even worse than that. The endgame of every Shiite Ayatollah is world domination. They share the view that the so-called “Twelfth Imam” lies hidden in waiting to oversee a future Islamic state that will rule the entire world. And they believe this Imam will emerge to bring peace through Islam when the world is plunged into chaos.

In other words, to them, world chaos sounds like a dreamy future.

Which brings us to the United States.

Bombing Iran

When seven B-2 bombers left Whiteman AFB in Missouri on June 21, 2025, en route to targets in Iran, anyone with a shred of respect for JWT should have been in a state of existential turmoil. Preemptive attacks are very difficult to justify under JWT for one simple reason — going to war is supposed to be a “last resort.”

For that reason, I tread lightly here again. We have been fed intelligence reports in the past (see: “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and the Iraq War in 2003) that were used to justify wars that turned out not only to be started on false premises, but that also the became poorly thought-out conflicts that led to disastrous consequences for America, its warfighters, and the people of the other countries involved.

In this case, the intelligence that was reported was that Iran was “very close” to obtaining a nuclear weapon. If that is true (big “if”) — and with all of the above as background — this may be a rare case where JWT does justify a preemptive strike.

The Iran-Hamas-Hezbollah axis is a cesspool of evil that is, and has been, wreaking havoc in the Middle East. Not only so, but the participants would like nothing better than to spread their chaos to the ends of the Earth. If Iran were to obtain a nuclear capability, the threat to any hope for peace in that region — or around the world — would disintegrate.

With all that said, when assessing the decision to launch that mission from a JWT standpoint, it falls well within the boundaries of a morally justifiable preemptive attack based on the following;

The action was meant to avoid a greater threat to millions of human beings.
The action was limited to nuclear facility enrichment and production sites. To the best of our knowledge, there were zero human casualties.
The action was limited in scope and location.
The president specifically stated that we have nothing but love for the people of Iran.
There is no indication that we will continue (as we have in the past) to pursue “regime change,” “nation-building,” insert ourselves into the internal politics of another nation, or put any American troops on the ground for any of those purposes.

If we find that the threat of a nuclear Iran was well-founded — and if all these things remain true — I believe the U.S. attack on Iran fits within the boundaries of just war doctrine. If not, anyone who claims to value JWT needs to stop what they’re doing and be honest with themselves. Do we honor the tenets of JWT or do we mock them?

The Ugly Thing

In 1848, the political philosopher John Stuart Mill, in his book The Principles of Political Economy, commented on the difficulty in assessing war for those who value liberty and peace.

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse … A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

Speaking as a father of five sons who have served, and who continue to serve, in the armed forces, there is nothing in this life I despise more than war. We should avoid it in every way possible. It should always be a last resort.

However, sometimes a proper view of morality dictates that pacifism is not the proper solution. Sometimes, the good guys need to stop evil in its tracks. God instituted governments for that purpose.

“… whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”
Romans 13:2-4

When those times come, we are duty-bound to take the principles of Just War — and the objective morality on which it stands — seriously.

There are some things worth going to war for, but they are few and far between. And when we face them, we owe it to those who will suffer war’s consequences to know we are doing it for the right reasons.

God help us if we’re not.