Operation Epic Fury and America’s Intention: Gangster or World Policeman?

“War is an act of force...that theoretically can have no limits”

Carl von Clausewitz, On War (1832)

On the 28th of February 2026, the US launched a massive bombing campaign on Iran which President Donald Trump called Operation Epic Fury. On the first day missiles targeted and killed many political leaders, including the Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, as well as 156 people, mostly girls, in an accidental strike on a school. The attack commenced without warning, and without any statement of war aims to Iran, the US Congress, or the United Nations. Iran responded immediately with missile strikes on neighbouring Gulf states, and the closure of the Straits of Hormuz – both major acts of escalation. Did the US have a right to go to war?

War has been used to justify killing almost without restraint, and for this reason it always been an important topic within moral philosophy. A criterion of ‘rightful intention’ was central to the just war doctrine as it developed in the Middle Ages, but in the modern era it has been largely discarded. I argue that criterion of rightful intention still has relevance in how we determine the legitimacy of war, and judged by this yardstick, Operation Epic Fury is an unjust war.

Just War Theory

Just war theory developed historically within the Catholic church. The fourth century bishop and theologian, St Augustine of Hippo gave moral sanction for Rome to wage war on condition that her soldiers had the ‘right intention’ in their hearts, namely, to advance the cause of good over evil. For Augustine, intention was a quality of the will, in other words an interior, psychological state. His doctrine also required that the cause was just; and that the army acted with legitimate authority. These three conditions sanctioned the declaration of war, a jus ad bellum – a Latin phrase which translates literally as the ‘right to war’.

Thomas Aquinas was a later contributor to just war theory. His moral philosophy was influenced by Aristotle, in that what is right can only be understood in the light of what is ‘good’, based on some human ideal or telos. The moral character of an action is determined by what a person aims at under an intentional description, rather than by its effects. Virtuous actions must be voluntary, deliberately chosen, and aim at the right ends. For example, Aquinas argued that a war waged with the ‘rightful intention’ of self-defence is morally permissible, a principle based on the Catholic doctrine of double effect which states that good ends can sometimes justify harmful side effects (an argument subsequently twisted to justify extreme acts such as the terror of the French revolution, and Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima).

The concept of ‘rightful intention’ largely disappeared from the modern doctrine of just war, which developed as a compromise between realists and pacifists. The former claim that in the realm of war, morality simply doesn’t apply. The latter claim that no plausible moral theory can license the horrors of war. The modern doctrine strikes a balance, holding that the declaration of war can be just, but only if it complies with three key criteria: 

i) The cause must be just (casus belli in Latin) i.e., an attempt to avert the right kind of injury.

ii) War must be a necessity. All other alternatives must have been exhausted.

iii) War must be proportionate. The likely good effects must outweigh the likely bad effects.

These three criteria have been embodied in the UN charter, under which a declaration of war is only legal when made either in self-defence against an imminent threat, or to prevent humanitarian catastrophe. Intention isn’t mentioned.

What Happened to Intention? Two Objections

The criterion of ‘rightful intention’ within just war theory met with two objections. The first was the ‘reductionist’ objection: countries are not like individuals and have no independent moral standing. Political decision-makers inevitably have mixed motives, and states’ actions cannot be judged as though they have an Augustinian interior or psychological nature.  

Against this one might reply that each nation state has its own character, that reflects its common culture and beliefs. This character can be instantiated in intentional actions that express these beliefs. For example, America has in the past welcomed the label of ‘the world’s policeman’. This is the so-called ‘irreducibility’ rebuttal, which is the view that a state has a collective political agency which cannot be broken down into individual components.

The second philosophical objection to intention treats the moral standing and intention of an agent as irrelevant in assessing their actions, and can be described with a ‘gangster’ analogy. Consider a brutal gangster who extracts protection payments from long-suffering townsfolk. One day the gangster interrupts a brutal assault, motivated not to save the victim, but to bolster his tough guy reputation. It seems counter-intuitive, even churlish, to deem the intervention itself as morally impermissible simply because of the gangster’s motives. Similarly, should an oppressed people care whether they are liberated by a multilateral UN force, or an imperialist power? Arguably it is the liberation per se that counts, and not the intention of the liberator. I will return to this objection after examining the case of Iran.

Operation Epic Fury

Iran posed no imminent threat to the US, but its ally Israel justifiably claimed that Iran’s nuclear weapons programme provided a casus belli on grounds of self-defence.  Was this therefore a ‘just war’? I argue that the best description of US actions on the 28th February reveals that its intention was not the elimination of the nuclear threat, but rather to effect regime change in Iran. The remainder of the discussion will examine the evidence for this assertion, and why this intention makes the war morally wrong, first on instrumental grounds, and then for intrinsic reasons.

After the bombing began, President Trump went on television to reel-off a jumble of objectives. He vowed to “eliminate imminent threats from the Iranian regime”, destroy its nuclear capabilities, and end its missile programme. He also urged the Iranian people to “take over their government” because “the hour of your freedom is at hand”. The US later addressed the UN to justify military action under a right to self-defense under Article 51.

Whether these mixed statements can be taken at face value or not, Iran responded immediately with maximum escalation. This reaction can best be explained as a direct reaction to an attack by an enemy intent on regime change.  Was this America’s intention?

The Oxford philosopher Elizabeth Anscome defined intentional actions as those to which the ‘Why?’ question is applicable. Intentional actions are ‘made under a description’, that orients the action towards some end. For Anscombe (like her forbears Aristotle and Aquinas) this intended goal is what matters for morality, rather than subsequent verbal claims about ‘private acts of mind’.

One foreseeable outcome of the assassination of the Supreme leader and other senior officials might have been regime change. Perhaps the US calculated that a political vacuum would lead to a revolution, or a palace coup. The description ‘to bring about regime change’ is a strong answer to Anscombe’s ‘Why?’ question, and hence we can reasonably argue that was America’s intention. The surviving Iranian leaders certainly drew that conclusion and, facing an existential threat, responded immediately with full force. Thus, the effect of America’s ‘intention’ was a wider and more prolonged conflict than might have been the case. For this instrumental reason, the US actions were morally wrong – as German general Von Moltke said, ‘the greatest kindness in war is to bring it to a speedy conclusion’.

Defenders of President Trump might reply that the ill effects of his war were not foreseeable, and that what matters morally is that he acted with a ‘rightful intention’ to remove an undeniably evil Iranian theocracy. Indeed, Anscombe might have agreed, as she upheld the view that what matters for the moral character of an act is the agent’s intention, not its effects, whether foreseen or unforeseen. It can be argued, however, that a goal of regime change is wrong intrinsically.

In 1859 John Stuart Mill drew an analogy between the individual and the state, describing the latter as a self-determining community. Self-determination for a state is a good thing that encompasses not just an institutional arrangement, but the process whereby a community achieves that arrangement. For Mill, political communities and individuals alike cannot be set free by any external force, but only through ‘an arduous struggle to become free on their own efforts’. Foreign intervention is thus the wrong way to free the Iranian people, irrespective of whether America is an imperialist power, or a legitimate actor acting on behalf of the multilateral community. The US intention of regime change therefore cannot be justified intrinsically, because it conflicts with the principle of self-determination.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the case of Operation Epic Fury shows that a criterion of ‘rightful intention’ should retain its place in the doctrine of just war. America’s actions reveal an intention of regime change, which was wrong intrinsically, and for its immediate consequences, providing strong arguments that the war was unjust. The ‘reductionist’ objection was met by noting that Operation Epic Fury is only the latest action in a long history that has established America’s character as a power that believes in interventionism. But what does the Iran case say about the ‘gangster’ objection?

Pace Mill, acting with the intention of regime change is wrong because it conflicts with the principle of self-determination, and any agent that acts consistently with wrongful intentions is more likely to develop a reputation as a ‘gangster’ than a ‘world policeman’. Undermining America’s moral standing is no way to make the country ‘Great Again’.