The ethical failure of preventive striking on Iranian civilians

On 28 February 2026 the US and Israel launched a joint military attack on Iran. Combat strikes have landed on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school, very close to an Iranian military base in Minab. Air strikes are estimated to have killed about 200 people across Iran, roughly 150 of whom are reported to have been children. According to the Red Crescent, roughly 700 Iranians have been injured across 24 of the country’s 31 states.

While the US Congress has not officially declared war on Iran, US President Donald Trump has announced that this is the start of “major combat operations” in the Middle East and braced the world to expect more military action in the next few weeks.

He recently revealed: “This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States Armed Forces. I built and rebuilt our military in my first administration and there is no military on Earth even close to its power, strength or sophistication.”

The BBC reports: “The US has about 13 military bases across the Middle East, with 30,000 to 40,000 troops normally deployed between them.”

Iran has condemned the military strikes as violations of international law, announcing a plan to defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity through its armed forces. Additionally, anonymous legal analyses deem the attacks illegal and a violation of international law, and not justifiable through self-defence.

Just war theory

This coordinated armed attack on Iran is an ethical issue as much as it concerns international law. Political philosophical literature on just war theory, such as the works published by Michael Walzer, Jeff McMahan and Thaddeus Metz, would measure this attack via a handful of moral principles: proportionality and minimal force, last resort, and discrimination.

Proportionality and minimal force: The principle of proportionality requires that military defensive attacks be proportionate (meaning roughly equal and not excessive) to the initial offence. This principle holds that responsive force should not exceed the minimum amount of force necessary to ensure a peaceful resolution. On application of this principle to the current context, the attack on Iran by the US does not meet the criteria for proportionate or minimal responsive force, since the US president has cited this strike as being preventive instead of responsive.

Last resort: This principle deems military attacks unethical unless they are a very last resort. While there had been parallel (at times, indirect) attempts to reach an agreement between Iran and the US, diplomatic efforts to reach peace in June 2025 were deemed largely unsuccessful. During ongoing negotiations, in contribution to the larger conflict between Iran and Israel, the US launched air strikes on Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. These strikes were similarly classified as preventive and landed on Iranian nuclear facilities before partial agreements could be reached.

Following the 2025 attack, at a press conference in Istanbul, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the US of undermining diplomacy and violating trust, since Iran was bombed while diplomatic talks were ongoing. In February 2026, at the time of the hit on the school in Minab, peace agreements were unresolved, but active and ongoing.

Discrimination: Most notably, this principle requires that soldiers (otherwise referred to as “combatants”) discriminate between those liable to attack (combatants) under very restricted circumstances and those who must be protected (civilians). Almost all contemporary just war theorists urge strong moral responsibility to civilians who are morally innocent in the relevant sense (that is, in relation to the broader ongoing political conflict), and therefore immune to attack.

This principle urges a high level of protection of civilians by the state to which they belong. This principle also intuitively condemns the use of armed force on civilians by foreign states.

Protection of civilian lives

While philosophising about this conflict from the comfort of our desktops may seem redundant, philosophy can bring about language and structure to ethical questions that are increasingly disregarded in modern political discourse. These questions are significantly important given the high stakes of armed military action for civilians.

One of the most important questions that just war theorists can ask is: Who bears the brunt of armed military attacks on nations? Can the destruction of civilian lives, their well-being, their infrastructure and economies possibly be justified as mere collateral damage by heads of state?

Upon inspection of these principles, unsurprisingly, political philosophers call for the protection of civilian lives and are bound to reject the notion that preventive strikes on civilians are justified. DM

Ruth Linderoth is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Western Cape, with a focus on political and ethical philosophy. This research was recently presented at the Philosophical Society of Southern Africa.