The coordinated strikes on Iran launched by the United States and Israel on February 28 in open defiance of international law should not come as a surprise to anyone who understands a bit about moral hypocrisy. Not practising what one preaches, moral duplicity is an act of professing high moral standards and beliefs while behaving in ways that contradict them. President Donald Trump is a classic example of moral inconsistency, if not moral hypocrisy, or both. His best foreign policy was supposed to be “not starting any wars”. Ironically, the self-proclaimed candidate of peace in his second term has so far bombed seven countries: Yemen, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, and Venezuela. Iran is once again Trump’s current target; next on his list, according to him, is Cuba.

Since January 2025, the ‘America First’ president has followed an agenda that is contrary to what he promised throughout his 2024 presidential campaign. He had pitched himself as an antithesis to his Democratic opponents—Joe Biden and, later, Kamala Harris—insisting he would end multiple global conflicts that started under his predecessor, including Israel’s war on Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In his victory speech he told his supporters, “I am not going to start a war. I am going to stop wars.” In his victory address two months later, he projected himself as a global peacemaker, saying that the measure of his success would not only be the battles America wins but also the “wars we end and perhaps more importantly, the wars we never get into”.

And yet Trump chose to launch his most extensive and expensive military campaign so........

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