The Global Bullies Have Shown Their Hand

In June 2025, Israel launched a series of airstrikes against Iran, targeting nuclear facilities, military sites, senior commanders, and nuclear scientists. The strikes began on June 13—two days before Iranian and American negotiators were scheduled to meet in Oman. Diplomacy never got its chance. The talks were canceled.

Then, on February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a much larger assault against Iran. The Pentagon said nearly 900 strikes were carried out in the opening 12 hours. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed. Officials were killed. And in Minab, a strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school while classes were in session. UNICEF reported that 168 girls were killed, most of them between seven and twelve years old.

Operation Epic Fury, they called it.

Epic. Fury.

I want you to sit with that for a moment.

If Iran had launched nearly 900 strikes against the United States and Israel in 12 hours, killed a head of state, and left a school full of children dead, what would the headlines say? What would the world call it? We both know the answer. They would call it terrorism. They would call it barbarism. They would call it an attack on civilization itself.

But because the United States and Israel did it, we are told to call it national security. We are told to call it self-defense. We are told to call it necessary.

That double standard has governed the world for centuries. And it is not new to us.

The Moorish Science Temple of America was founded on the principle that a people have a right to know who they are, where they come from, and what rights belong to them under the law of nations. Noble Drew Ali taught us that the problem of the world is not a shortage of weapons. It is a shortage of truth, justice, and the courage to apply the same standard to every nation and every human life.

A child in Tehran is worth exactly as much as a child in Tel Aviv. A mother in Iran has the same right to see her children grow up as a mother in New York. The moment we accept a world where some lives count and others do not, we accept the foundation of every atrocity that has ever been committed.

What is terrorism? At its core, it is violence and intimidation used against civilians to achieve political ends. By that moral standard, the identity of the nation dropping the bomb cannot erase the terror experienced by the people underneath it. A school full of dead children does not become less horrifying because a powerful government calls the operation defensive.

I am not here to defend the Iranian government. Iran has its own record. Every government on this earth must answer for what it does. But that is not the question before us.

The question is whether the law applies equally.

The question is whether the world is governed by justice or by power.

And right now, the answer is plain for anyone willing to look.

More than 100 international-law experts warned that the American strikes violated the United Nations Charter and could constitute war crimes. The United Nations Secretary-General condemned the military escalation, reminded every nation that the Charter prohibits force against another state's territorial integrity or political independence, and called for a return to negotiations.

Meanwhile, civilians across the region have paid the price. UNHCR reported that one million people were displaced in Lebanon after the escalation began in March. Millions more were forced from their homes across Iran and neighboring countries. These are not footnotes. These are families, children, elders, homes, schools, and futures.

This is what it looks like when might makes right. This is what it looks like when powerful nations demand one set of rules for themselves and another for everyone else.

The Moorish American people must understand this clearly: a world ruled by power without justice is not a world ruled by law. It is tyranny wearing legal language.

But tyranny does not last forever. Empires built on double standards eventually collapse beneath the weight of their own contradictions. The United States and Israel are not exceptions to history. The world is watching. The Global South is watching. The youth are watching. More people are beginning to see the distance between the language of freedom and the practice of power.

Our role as Moorish Americans is not to imitate the violence of powerful nations. Our role is to speak the truth. It is to reject dishonest definitions. It is to build justice in our own communities on a different principle: every life carries equal value, every people deserves dignity, and law must apply to everyone or it is not law at all.

This is our work.

The global bullies have shown their hand. Now we must show ours.

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