Just before we all left for spring break, the leaders of the U.S. and Israel, President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coordinated and carried out a wave of strikes on Iran, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This targeted attack came after years of information-gathering by the Israelis, with recent assistance from the CIA and other US intelligence services. It was allegedly performed with the intent of weakening Iran. Trump had stated specifically that their goal was “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,” specifically military and nuclear capabilities. 

Netanyahu could get no other leader on board to launch this attack prior to Trump. Now, the action looks more like a continuation of the U.S.’s obedience to Israel than anything.

The situation was exacerbated when the U.S. launched an attack on a school in Iran, killing at least 175 people. More than half of this death toll consisted of children. 

This attack was the result of carelessness. The maps being used to plot this attack were outdated– the school had been part of a military base 10 years prior. There was no evidence that military operations were happening in the school, so the attack was one of the greatest military errors in American history … one that took the lives of over 100 children. 

This is not the first time the U.S. and Israel have been responsible for murdering children abroad–both countries are all too familiar with the concept–yet it is a reminder that they will not inconvenience themselves to avoid such grave tragedies. In the Israel-Gaza conflict, a war that the U.S. has spent years funding, it has been estimated that at least 21,000 children have been murdered.

That is not to say that the lives of children are more valuable than anyone else’s, but rather that the U.S. and Israel are being careless and potentially deceptive about their true intentions in the war. Do they actually care about protecting themselves from Iran’s offensive potential? Do they genuinely believe that Iran even poses a genuine threat? Or is it wealth and world domination that they want? 

When the Trump administration supports a “pro-life” agenda at home and proceeds to commit heinous acts of murder against children abroad, the answer to the latter question becomes heavily apparent. Innocent lives are being lost for the sake of an essentially imaginary threat– the U.S. and Israel have been saying that Iran was on the cusp of possessing nuclear weapons since 2012. While the lack of transparency in this war makes it difficult to say with certainty that Iran does not actually possess these weapons, we can infer that there is a level of dramatization in the framing of the conflict. 

It is clear that greed is driving this war– it has driven the actions of both countries since their beginnings. This war reminds us to maintain a level of skepticism when our country’s leaders urge us to support their violent actions against other countries. If the U.S. and Israel are involved in any way, it is almost certain that supporting it will leave us with the blood of innocent civilians on our hands.