On US-Israel war with Iran, world leaders have displayed epic hypocrisy

An Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache attack helicopter fires rockets while flying at a position along the border between northern Israel and southern Lebanon on March 4, 2026. [AFP]

The launch of a joint attack on Iran by the United States (US) and Israel, under the so-called Operation Epic Fury, ought to have sparked epic outrage across the globe, but it hasn't, especially among the majority of the world leaders.

When President William Ruto condemned Iran's retaliatory attacks in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain, he was merely echoing what most other leaders, particularly in the West, had said.

The leaders are worried more about the spread of the war outside Iran and Israel's borders. Which is quite in order, as only five days into this war, its repercussions are being felt far beyond the Middle East. Although Iran has a right to defend itself, it has no right to attack neighbours who have nothing to do with the conflict.

However, while leaders are justified in condemning Iran for spreading the war, they have conveniently avoided censuring the US and Israel for their hasty and illegal strikes on Iran that have killed nearly 1,000 people, including Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. That's epic hypocrisy.

The US and Israel's sudden attack on Iran was unnecessary because it came in the middle of talks between the two sides. After the recent indirect nuclear negotiations in Geneva, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced that good progress had been made and talked about a "clear path ahead", which he termed as positive.

But while the world waited, hoping for a peaceful resolution to the dispute, the US and Israel struck hard without warning. This was shocking because there were no indications that Iran posed any immediate threat, although Trump talked about defending the American people "by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people" shortly after the war began. It would have been prudent for Donald Trump and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu to await the conclusion of the negotiations before acting. In any case, Trump had told the world that Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities were "completely and totally obliterated" following US strikes last year. Why then the haste to attack Iran again?

However, it is the illegal war that has been waged against Iran that should worry the world the most. The attack, which also aims at regime change, was neither approved by the UN Security Council nor by the US Congress. The Trump administration must have been emboldened by its successful invasion of Venezuela and the arrest of its leader, Nicolás Maduro, on January 3, 2026, a move which some leaders in the Western world supported.

The danger with applauding such illegal invasions of sovereign countries is that the US might be emboldened further to target other countries. World leaders, now supporting the illegal attack on Iran, should not act surprised if Trump decides to make good his threat to invade Greenland. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.