The following news release of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts was published on the night of the attack, Saturday, June 21, 2025.
President Donald J. Trump, who surprised and rallied Republican primary voters in 2016, by denouncing the invasion of Iraq by George W. Bush, has now embraced the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war.
Today [Saturday, June 21], U.S. B-2 Spirit bombers struck the uranium enrichment facilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
Initial media reports did not specify the type of ordnance used, but defense analysts have suggested that the most likely choice of weapon would be the 30,000 pound GBU-57 MOP—Massive Ordnance Penetrator.
Known as the “Bunker Buster,” it is the heaviest and most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal.
Even prior to this attack, the United States was a de facto belligerent in the Iran/Israel War.
Since at least June 14th, U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet Aegis destroyers, and land based U.S. Army missile batteries—like the Patriot and the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense systems—were firing surface to air interceptors, (SAMs) at ballistic missiles headed for Israeli targets.
It now appears that President Trump’s “two weeks to decide” announcement on June 19th, was, like the proposed next round of negotiations before June 13th, a deliberate deception to lure the Iranians into relaxing their alert status.
There has been no word yet on civilian or military casualties.
The Catholic Action League called the attacks “a clear rejection of Christian just war ethics, which places the United States of America in the invidious position of waging an aggressive war against a weaker country, on behalf of the regime change objectives of another regional power.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment:
“There is no precedent in American history of a U.S. President using diplomacy as a ploy to deceive another country prior to launching a surprise military attack.
This is, precisely, the kind of perfidy resorted to by the Japanese in the days just before the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.”
“In Catholic just war ethics, the decision to wage war must be a last resort. Preemptive strikes, without the evidence of an imminent and unavoidable attack, fail to meet this standard.
War must be waged for a just cause, the premise for which, in this case, is uncertain.
The President’s own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified, under oath, before Congress in March, that the assessment of the Intelligence Community was that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program.
President Trump’s contention is that a hostile country is developing a weapon which it might use, at some unspecified time in the future, against us or against an ally.
This is identical to the argument made by the Bush Administration to justify its invasion of Iraq in 2003.
It is also a formula for international anarchy, where any country can devastate another country and assassinate its leaders and scientists because it perceives that country to be a threat.
That might be described as the Michael Corleone school of international relations.
One thing is certain. In the conflict between President Trump’s MAGA base, and his Likudnik major donor class, MAGA lost.”
Mostafameraji, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
