For a short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran. Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people. It's menacing activities directly in danger. The United States are troops, our bases overseas, and are allies throughout the world. For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder targeting the United States, our troops and the innocent people in many, many countries. Among the regime's very first acts was to back a violent takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Iran, holding dozens of American hostages for 444 days. In 1983, Iran's proxies carried out the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American military personnel. In 2000, they knew and were probably involved with the attack on the USS Cole. When he died, Iranian forces killed and maimed hundreds of American service members in Iraq. The regime's proxies have continued to launch countless attacks against American forces, stationed in the Middle East in recent years, as well as U.S. naval and commercial vessels and international shipping lands. It's been mass terror, and we're not going to put up with it any longer. From Lebanon to Yemen and Syria to Iraq, the regime has armed, strained, and funded terrorist militias that have soaked the earth with blood and guts. And it was Iran's proxy Hamas that launched the monstrous October 7th attacks on Israel, slotering more than 1,000 innocent people, including 46 Americans, while taking 12 of our citizens hostage. Iraq was brutal, something like the world has never seen before. Iran is the world's number one state sponsor of terror, and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested. It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular, my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon. I'll say it again. They can never have a nuclear weapon. That is why in Operation Midnight Hammer last June, we obliterated the regime's nuclear program at Fordal, Natance, and Isfahan. After that attack, we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons, and we sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it. They didn't want to do it. Again, they wanted to do it. They didn't want to do it. They didn't know what was happening. They just wanted to practice evil. But Iran refused just as it has for decades and decades. They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can't take it anymore. Instead, they attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troop stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland. Just imagine how emboldened this regime would be if they ever had an actually were armed with nuclear weapons as they means to deliver their message. For these reasons, the United States military is undertaken a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests. We are going to destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally again obliterated. We're going to annihilate their navy. We're going to ensure that the region's terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces and no longer use their IEDs or roadside bombs as they are sometimes called to so gravely wound and kill thousands and thousands of people, including many Americans. And we will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. It's a very simple message. They will never have a nuclear weapon. 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 and my first administration, and there is no military on earth even close to its power, strength or sophistication. My administration has taken every possible step to minimize the risk to U.S. personnel in the region. Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties that often happens in war, but we're doing this not for now. We're doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission. We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans and our children will never be threatened by a nuclear armed Iran. We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm's way, and we trust that with his help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail. We have the greatest in the world, and they will prevail. To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces, and all of the police, I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or in the alternative face certain death. So lay down your arms. You will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death. Finally to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations. For many years, you have asked for America's help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let's see how you respond. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass. May God bless the brave men and women of America's armed forces. May God bless the United States of America. May God bless you all. Thank you. Today on the podcast for Cultural Reformation, I'll be joined by Dr. Joe Boot and Dr. Michael Tisen and we'll be talking about the international conflict involving Iran, Israel and the United States. Welcome back to the podcast for Cultural Reformation. I'm your host today, Pastor Nate Wright and I'm joined by my colleagues as always, Dr. Joe Boot from across the pond, Dr. Michael Tisen from the Promised Land down in Kentucky. So we have three different men from three different countries and we're planning on weighing in. We've been doing this series on thinking Christianly and we've been talking about law. We still have another chapter to talk about in terms of thinking Christianly about law. But as always, one of the goals of this podcast is to help you think through the cultural issues and apply biblical framework, biblical worldview to how you're understanding what's going on in the real world around you. So we wouldn't be doing that if we couldn't set our agenda aside and talk about what is on all the headlines today. And that is that over the weekend, we got news of an international conflict, the US and Israel coordinating some strikes against some nuclear bases and some military posts in Iran, reportedly some high level fatalities in terms of Iran's high leaders and that sparks some retaliation. So there's a lot going on in terms of international conflict and we want to help you think Christianly about it. Why don't we kind of jump right in and Joe, why don't you kind of start off maybe by just telling us a little bit about the conflict and we'll eventually get into talking about international law and what reform mind would have us think about this. But why don't you just kind of set up the conflict and what's going on? Well, I'm sure most of our listeners will be keeping a price to some degree of what's going on in the last few years. Of course, this really, in fact, you just heard in the clip that President Trump outlines incidents going back 25 years with Iran in many respects. Iran has made no secret of the fact that it's been at war with the West for a very long time. This really came to a head with the October 7 attacks four years ago and the was it three years ago, three and a half years ago. And the respond that was of course, but through Hamas, one of the known proxies of Iran, there's been action then of course with the Houthis and various other proxy groups of the Iranian regime of the Iatala. Of course for the history lesson, really the troubles with Iran go back to the 1970s with the Iranian revolution when the the Iatala basically sees power and turned what really had been a quite prosperous Persian nation that was relatively friendly to the West into a hard line Islamic cult really, a millenarian cult. So the belief of just for the religious context, the belief of the Iatolas and the Iranian regime has been that by their their Shia Muslims, so that's important for context too, which means there is hostility between them and some of the other Arab nations around them. It's not just with Israel, but the core sort of apocalyptic belief that they have is that by stirring up all kinds of trouble and difficulties by bringing on some kind of world conflagration, they will usher in the arrival of the Mardi and a sort of messianic figure within Shia Islam and will bring about the conquest really of Islam throughout the world. So this is their agenda and so that's been going on really for 40, 50 years of creating problems in that region of the world stirring up hostilities and that no, no Western government denies. In fact, not even the UAE, the the the Arab nations of the UAE would deny that Iran has been for some time the world's leading global sponsor of international terrorism. In fact, just here in the UK in the last week, our intelligence services, MI5 in particular, have said that since 2022, the intelligence services in Britain have foiled over 20 Iranian backed terror plots on the domestic soil of the United Kingdom. So you had so that a kind of flashpoint then became October 7th and then last June, people will remember that the US and Israel bombed several Iranian nuclear installations. We'll go into a bit later on in the discussion, some of the specific reasons for doing that in terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaties that Iran is in violation of, but those installations were heavily damaged and in many respects this operation right now appears to be Israel and the US seeking to finish the job. And I think the first day of the conflict, the Ayatollah was and the high command of the Iranian military were all killed in an Israeli air strike. So that is the context of the discussion and we certainly felt this week that we're all of this going on for us not to apply the question of law and sphere sovereignty to this topic while we're talking about law and I think Christianly series and just to sort of pass over it would be seen as well what's the Ezra Institute doing, why are we ignoring this particular event that everybody's talking about. So we felt while this is an important topic for us to address, but that's the, I've given something of the historical, the religious and the contemporary context now to what's actually taking place. We could say an awful lot more, but I think that that gives us enough to introduce our topic. For sure, I think that was a good overview and I think obviously anybody wants to dig deeper into any of that can do so, but I think that was a good overview. Now there's a lot of places we can go with this conversation. Like you said, we could certainly talk about the increasing hostility toward Israel as a nation within some reform circles. We could talk about the geopolitical aspect of this conversation because we're in a series on law, we kind of want to talk about how do we apply biblical law and sphere sovereignty to what's going on, how do we think through as Christians, all these things that are going on. But I think one of the first questions that will come to many of our listeners' minds is when we think through, for example, the war in Iraq several years ago and sort of the American impulse to set up democracy and things like that around the world. One of the first questions many skeptical listeners might have is this another military mission that's actually about something else. So I do want to queue up this clip from Hegseth and he kind of addresses this right on. I'll throw it over to you, Michael, right after this because you had some thoughts on this as well. Here's Hegseth addressing the nation. To the media outlets and political left screaming endless wars, stop. This is not Iraq, this is not endless. I was there for both. Our generation knows better and so does this president. He called the last 20 years of nation building wars dumb and he's right. This is the opposite. This operation is a clear, devastating, decisive mission. Destroy the missile threat, destroy the Navy, no nooks. Israel has clear missions as well for which we are grateful. Capable partners, as we've said since the beginning, capable partners are good partners. Unlike so many of our traditional allies who ring their hands and clutch their pearls, claiming and hawing about the use of force. America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history. B2s, fighters, drones, missiles, and of course, classified effects. All on our terms with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building, quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win and we don't waste time or lives. As the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties. War is hell and always will be. Are there currently any American boots on the ground in Iran? No, but we're not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do. I think it's one of those fallacies for a long time that this department or president's or others should tell the American people, and our enemies, by the way, here's exactly what we'll do. Here's exactly how long we'll go. Here's exactly how far we'll go. Here's what we're willing to do and not do. It's foolishness. And so President Trump ensures that our enemies understand we'll go as far as we need to go to advanced American interests. But we're not dumb about it. You don't have to roll 200,000 people in there and stay for 20 years. We've proven that you can achieve objectives that advance American interests without being foolish about it. Now, will we be bold about it? Are we willing to be decisive about it? Do we put months and months of planning into what kind of effects we want to achieve? Absolutely. But going forward, why in the world would we tell you, you, the enemy, anybody, what we will or will not do in pursuit of an objective? We fight to win. We fight to achieve the objectives. The President of the United States has laid out and we will do so unapologetically. So Michael, I know you have some things to say on this clip, but I do think the Lord for providentially putting Pete Hegg's death in the position that he's in and to have a man of his, I think, wisdom and Christian conviction is such a breath of fresh air. But Michael, I know you had some thoughts on that. So why don't you respond to that clip for us? Yeah, just very quickly. Pete Hegg's death addressed a concern that many Americans are feeling, right? It was Dwight Eisenhower who warned of the industrial military complex in his farewell speech as the President of the United States. He warned of the endless wars that could be. And he was, of course, a commander in the Second World War. And so he had been through that and seen the tendency for lobbyists to just promote war. So that is something that I'm glad that Secretary Hegg's death addressed because that is a concern for people here in the United States that this is just endless war. But it is interesting that he made so many very specific references to doing this better and doing this boldly and specifically. And I know that for folks who are just interested in fiction writing, one of the ways that you can tell that this administration is different than previous administrations is Jack Carr, who is a fiction author and previously a frogman, previously one of the U.S. special operators, Navy SEAL. He writes on these things and they actually brought him out as a political pundit this week to comment on this. And he's been historically very critical, both in his comments and his fiction writing on political warfare. And he explicitly said that this war, this administration seems to be doing war differently and learning from previous administrations. So that's just a point of contemporary conservatives looking at this and being pleased with the methods on how the U.S. is now going to war with Iran. I think one of the criticisms that has been justified in the past is looking at some of the wars that the U.S. has gotten themselves involved in with an almost messianic nature to this view that America is going to come in. They're going to set up democracy. They're going to overthrow the current national regime and set up utopian democracy in the Middle East. And so, Joy, I want you to talk a little bit about what gives the U.S. the right to enter into this conflict. If it's not that, if we're saying it's in Pete Headset, he's very clearly saying it's not that. What's the biblical ground for the U.S. is right as an independent nation to go and attack Iran? Well, first of all, I think it is significant what Pete Hegseth said there about the objectives of what they're doing and drawing a distinction between Iraq and Afghanistan. I think we are aware, we are conscious, most people are conscious that the illusion that you can impose a Western style liberal democracy upon historically Islamic cultures has been thoroughly debunked by efforts to do that as though smart bombs alter worldviews. They don't. And precision-guided weapons don't alter people's worldview. Not overnight, that's for sure. And so, the reality is that, you know, minds and hearts, I remember a friend of mine in the British Special Forces told me of an incident because he was in Afghanistan with the Americans because of course the British were there about a conversation that he had with the Supreme U.S. commander who was asking for input from a variety of military personnel in Afghanistan at the time. And he said, my friend said it was a wonderful Christian man and former member of the SAS said, I think we need to flood Afghanistan with missionaries and bibles. And the commander laughed and said, how am I supposed to take that back to the president? But the reality is that that really is what's necessary in Afghanistan. So it's certainly the case and I think hegseth is sensitive to it that you don't change religious worldviews overnight. You can't impose Western style political order on the Islamic world simply by overwhelming military force. And actually if you look back at the history of empire, the only way to alter long term political structures is actually to engage in empire building, which is what was done in the past. My own country has a history of that as Canada and the U.S. would know as former outposts of the empire, well Canada still is really. And so this is clearly not that. They're making an effort to distinguish between the two. And of course you can't compare apples and oranges. Iran is a very different kind of country to Iraq. And in the Iraq situation you didn't have 40,000 of its civilians who had just been massacred in a popular peaceful protest on the streets. You know that this happened within the space of about 48 hours a few weeks ago. There were uprisings in the streets in Iran and 40,000 possibly more. But between 30 and 40,000 people were killed by their own government. So the context and the situation is very, very different. And I think maybe in our next segment we can talk in a little bit more detail about the justification. But maybe just a couple of thoughts at the outset. First of all, the president did lay out some of the historic reasons for the intervention. One of the questions that's immediately raised is of course about Israel. And in instances don't forget it's not just the US, it's US and Israel. Well, the Israel has more just a far more reason than anyone to deal with Iran and attack Iran. Whose public policy is the destruction of Israel and the wiping of Israel completely off the map. So you can understand if you were a neighbor, if Iran was your neighbor and you were a country the size of Wales, which is smaller than Ontario. And your neighbor was pursuing nuclear weapons, had a multi-fronted war through proxies against you. You can understand I don't think we need to talk much about Israel's justification for conflict with Iran. I think the deeper question, which let's come to it in a moment, is the justification, perhaps the legal justification for US intervention and how would that be structured? What would be the nature of that justification? Can it be justified? And especially how are the principles of sphere sovereignty that we talk about a lot as an organization and of God's law impact upon that particular question. So I think we can open that up in a moment. Yeah, so I think as we kind of just redirect our conversation in just a moment here, maybe the specific application of this first segment of our conversation would be that we ought to think through this conflict in its own terms, not to import the past sins or the past mistakes of previous administrations or previous wars and use that as a basis for rejecting what's going on now. Let's look at it as its own thing. Let's hear what they have to say about it and let's be mature enough to be able to think through it on its own terms rather than importing sins of the past. This episode of the podcast for Cultural Reformation is brought to you by Ezra Media. From in-depth lectures, conference talks, podcasts, and exclusive content like premium shows and the podcast post show, Ezra Media is the digital home for the Ezra Institutes teaching and worldview resources, helping Christians think clearly and live faithfully in every area of life. When you sign up for Premium Plus, you gain access to exclusive content like the Ezra Podcast post show where the guys dive deeper into the topics discussed in the main episode, along with Ezra Press eBooks and even the opportunity to join live recordings. You can sign up today by going to EzraMedia.tv and if you use the coupon code podcast, you'll save 15% off an annual subscription. That's using coupon code podcast and you'll save 15% off an annual subscription. Now back to the show. Well, in our last segment, we talked a little bit about the conflict and gave some context to everything that's going on between the US and Israel and Iran. We talked briefly about Pete Hegseth and how he said this conflict is going to be different. What I want to do to what I want to do in this segment is kind of do what we often do in this podcast and that is try to drill down into the foundational presuppositions, the foundational worldview principles that help Christians to think Christianly about this. So in order to do that, why don't I kick it over to you, Joe? And let me ask you this. What's sort of the basis for international law? I think the Bible is there's such a thing of international law. Who enforces it? And how should Christians apply the biblical principles that we talk about often, sphere sovereignty, biblical law? How do we apply those things to international conflicts between sovereign nations? Well, that's a big question and we could certainly do a show or two on a question of that sort of scope. But I think maybe a few basic, a biblical principles are important to think about the basis of let's call it international relations. The first is of course the principle of sphere sovereignty, just as we have the individual, the family, the church, the state, sovereign in their sphere, under God, free to obey and serve God. So we have to certainly say that God has established the nations, the Bible says so, that they have the right to exist to serve God and to obey God. And that might does not make right stronger, more powerful, more wealthy nations don't have the right to simply oppress and crush other nations for their own purposes and their own ends. And so that would certainly be a core principle, of course, of the law of God, of loving one's neighbor, means that one respects the normative structure. And of course the difficulty in a broken and sinful world, the reason that there is conflict, even between nation states, which emerged during the 17th century really. We can't go into long history of discussion about the different political structures as part prior to them, but let's just, we can still talk about the sovereignty of specific countries or regions. Let's talk about nation states today. The requirement certainly of God's law is first that we love God and we love our neighbor. Our neighbor means we respect God's law with regard to them. The difficulty is we live in a broken and a sinful world. And just as parents in the sphere of the family have to discipline rebellious children and churches have to discipline apostate and unrepentant members and states have to punish criminals. War in many respects, the military conflict is an extension of the police powers of the state to protect its citizenry and the interests of their people. And so you could immediately then go into a discussion about the nature of just war, but we're not going to get into justification of what attempted justification or discussion about what the US is doing right now. In modern terminology, we call it the Westphalian principle actually that there are nation states that are large and small whose sovereignty is to be recognized, equally recognized. And we have created as a result international treaties and organizations that help facilitate discussion. I think we can see biblically that the creation of organizations that will help discussion between sovereign nation status is important. So there's a difference between international relations, biblically and super national relations. So from a scriptural standpoint, we would say the nation's as being established by God and nations being able to enter into relationship and treaties with other nations. Now the basis, surely from a biblical standpoint of any so-called international law, has to be biblical law. I mean, when God gave his law to Israel, Deuteronomy 4 makes clear it was for the blessing of the nation so that they would see it, they would look at it and they would say, who has a law like this law, who has a God like this God? We want to copy that. So the basis of any international agreements, let's say international treaties and that would govern the treatment of our fellow nations, of our neighbor in other nations, neighboring nations would need to be the principles of the law of God, which is concerned with God's justice and God's righteousness. So that would be from a Christian standpoint, the basis. Now, we do have specific examples of treaties in the Bible. Again, we haven't got time to talk about them, but there was a treaty with the Ghiblianites, for example, the Israel May, there was a treaty with Tyre. Israel did make some treaties that God wasn't happy about though, like with Egypt, for example. You see, God's people entering into treaties, that was clearly lawful, but God didn't smile on them entering into treaties with some nations actually because of their apostacies and religious worldviews and attitudes towards God. And so that would have to govern how certainly from a biblical standpoint, Christian nations would think about relationships with other nations. We had, in a certain sense, that the realm, until relatively recently, it's attenuated, it survives to some degree as Western civilization, but Christendom kind of embodied that basic idea of the Christian world and the partnership, mutual support and so forth within the Christian world. And so we've seen a historical example of it in that respect. Now very quickly, there are today international bodies, and there's a difference between, as I say, international and super-national bodies. An example of a super-national body is the European Union. And that is where sovereign states seed actually some of their decision-making power and authority to a super-national body. That makes decisions on its behalf. Now, can you imagine the US in its current form ever considering entering into a super-national organization like that? The UK exited the European Union relatively recently. But international bodies that facilitate discussion and then treaties between nations that should be governed from a Christian standpoint by God's law are certainly legitimate. Now, it's very interesting to notice, actually, I noted some of this down, that the US does not participate in a number of key international treaties, and I think with good reason. Don't forget international treaties, international relationships, they operate by consent. There is no global body. That's why in one respect, when we talk about international law, it's a bit of a legal fiction, right? Because which super-national institution or body is going to enforce international law? I mean, that's up here. The only person who enforces ultimately God's law or international is God himself, and there is providence and sovereignty. So these obviously operate by consent. That's the basis of it. And some of this UN dreaming has been to kind of create a super-national body and super-national courts that would kind of enforce humanistic law around the world. And actually, the United States, interestingly enough, is part of certain treaties like NATO, which is the transatlantic mutual defense agreement. But although it's part of the UN, it is not part of the international court of justice. It's not part of the international criminal court. It's not part of the international law commission. It doesn't recognize the international court of justice, compulsory jurisdiction. It only participates on treaty-specific basis. And it's withdrawn, actually, recently from 66 international organizations and treaties, a number of them to do with humanistically conceived human rights. So that's actually an important note on all of this. These treaties are obviously by consent. Now when you look at China, Russia, Iran, you don't hear them bleeding about international law largely. Unless it particularly serves their purpose. They're not interested in being compliant with it. But you've heard people, Western leaders, like the Prime Minister in the UK at the moment, hiding behind things like international law and the legal basis for his non-participation really in this. And that certainly does raise questions about, well, what is this international law he's referring to? What's its jurisdiction? And who's part of it? So it's a thorny issue, but obviously, severe sovereignty, the law of God as the basis of all legitimate law, and then treaties which are by consent. And that would lead us naturally on a bit later to talk about, well, what's the basis? If you think about all of that, what would be the basis for the US and Israel engaging Iran in conflict right now? And I think that sets up at least some of the biblical criteria. Yeah, so just to kind of recap some of that, Joe. You know, Psalm 2, and you cited Deuteronomy 4, make it abundantly clear that God's law is for every nation, right? Psalm 2, post-crucifixion, post-resurrection. Now therefore, O Kings be wise, the rulers of the earth serve the king. How does a nation serve the king of the universe by adhering to his law? So God's law is for all nations everywhere. And one of the ways that might be helpful for some of our listeners to think through this is, you know, there's autonomy to local churches, and yet there's voluntary consent in entering into church fellowships or networks or even denominations, which seeds some level of authority to, you know, authority structures outside of the local church, that doesn't take away from the biblical right of the autonomy of the local church, and particular elders raised up within them. But there is this sort of, and it's interesting even as you talked about treaties, you mentioned the Ghibbi inites. And I think it's important for our listeners to recognize the biblical principles at play here, because it was Joshua who made a treaty with the Ghibbi inites when they actually tricked him. It was through deception that they tricked Israel into a peace treaty. And then it was Saul who broke that treaty. And it's interesting that in 2 Samuel 21, we discover that God actually punished Israel by famine for three years for their breaking of that treaty with the Ghibbi inites. And so God cares deeply about the covenants and the treaties that we make, because part of biblical law includes letting your yes be yes and your no be no. And so, you know, these things, there are biblical principles that guide our thinking on all of this stuff. And it just takes a little bit of application. Now, Michael, we obviously think very highly of Father Abraham at the Ezra Institute, and by that, of course, we mean Abraham Kuiper. What does he have to say about this? Because he's written extensively. So maybe help us think through this with the aid of Father Abraham. Yes. So as our listeners likely know, Abraham Kuiper was a significant figure in the Netherlands who wrote to help Protestant theology and to write very practically to think about political philosophy. He actually wrote a book called Our Program where you can, if you were to go out and start a political party right now, you could look to this to actually establish a very, very practical platform so that people would know what would you do if you got into government. And his foundation for the basis for international law and Joe jumped through a number of these things to Joe's comment that international law is relational. It is covenantal. It is by agreement. It is by concession. He notes that, of course, it was the baptized Europeans. It was the Christians who acknowledged, though, they had some differences in character and differences in essence that as a family of nation, they were called to a specific mission in order to interact with each other to be led by the ordinance of the holy and triune God. And so again, even the concept of international law comes from Christians thinking exactly about how to love thy neighbor nation very practically. And so he goes on to say the purpose of international law in former days was to guarantee the right to existence of the, of an existence of with honor to all nations, large and small, this guarantee rested on having the nations together submit to a higher law. So that goes to Joe's point about right, not might not being right. That goes to this point that nations enter into lawful agreements to uphold God's law. So any standard of law outside of God's law just becomes again what we're now seeing with all of these international bodies. The second thing, and Joe alluded to this, he talks specifically about specific treaties. You know, we have international trade agreements. We have, we have arms agreements and the control of nuclear weapons. We have those types of agreements. And so when you think of a conflict like the one between the United States and Iran, you have, you know, fraud, deceit, unjust scales, media manipulation, even economic manipulation. All of those things become a matter of diplomacy and potentially then need for a military instrumentation to, to be involved. And so again, Joe's reference to specific treaties, you know, we'll be able to go over that in the, in the final section as to what Iran has done. And Joe, again, you alluded to this, but specifically in his platform, Kuiper gets into a nation's right to national defense. And he actually has some really great thoughts on this. I'll read a few paragraphs. In a program of anti-revolutionary principles, defense is no appendix, but a major element in three respects. As a protest against cosmopolitanism, which we would, which we would know he's referring to globalism. As a protest against the supremacy of physical force alone, again, going to this point that might is not right. And no less a protest against ignoring God in history. And so this would be for your communist secular regimes that then grow up in the world and oppress Christian nations. So he goes on to say on the Christian historical standpoint, a sound and competent and energetic diplomatic service is as far from, is far from a luxury. It is an absolute indispensable instrument for guaranteeing our independence for maintaining our organic connection with other nations and governments. And for having each nation contribute to the communal goal that rests on Christian Europe, namely to uphold the sanctity of justice, to combat paganism and Islam. That's an interesting one. And to respect the human element in human society and to hold high the honor of God. And so he goes on to make a few statements that are very similar to our American statements, where the purpose of this military apparatus depends on the morality of the individual soldier and that morality coming, of course, from the soldier's confidence in the sovereignty of God and his covenant commitment to the Lord. And so in all of these ways, we have this basis for international law, where we enter into upholding God's law together. We have specific agreements that need to be upheld and every nation has the right for self-defense when another nation is about to violate their safety and the sanctity of their life. It's interesting when you listen to the words of Kuiper there, even as he talked about the purpose of defending Europe against paganism and Islam, it comes back to something that we talk about often in our programs and in our material as an institute. And that is the myth of neutrality, that there is no neutrality and religion is an inescapable concept. Every nation is religious. We've said this before. I think we said this on the last program. And therefore, every international conflict fundamentally is a religious conflict. And I think if Christians are trapped in the pluralistic multicultural ethos of the liberal West, then it's going to be hard for you to think Christianly about international conflict when you don't see the religious roots at play. Again, going back to Scripture, which is our ultimate guide, when God freed his people from oppression and slavery in Egypt, he was very clear in Exodus 1212 that he wasn't just going to war with Egypt, but he was going to war with the gods of Egypt, that the plagues were a direct judgment on Egyptian gods because there's no such thing as a non-religious conflict. So Joe, we only have a minute or so left in this segment, but why don't you talk a little bit about that about the fundamental religious nature of all international conflict? Well, you've laid it out well. I mean, if you look at the struggles in the older testament, they are of an essentially religious nature there. It's the God of Israel versus the gods of the pagans. I mean, that's the nature of it. And God's concern for the protection of His people in the older testament is the preservation of their faithfulness and their worship. And certainly, if you look at Iran today and over the last 40, 50 years or so, they've been unequivocal about the religious character of the war that they're in. They're not hidden it. Now, we'd like to pretend in the West, to put our fingers in our ears to that stuff and try and reinterpret it all sociologically and economically and everything else, but that's not the motivator for them. That's never been the motivator. You're explicit about the regime has been explicit about its motivation. And so that's very clear. And if you look at ultimately with the underlying roots of conflict are religious because if we're all obeying God's law, then we're actually not going to be at war with each other, are we? So it's when you've got, when you've got sin play that war was occur and sometimes wars need to be made because we are peace makers, not necessarily peace keepers. Yeah, that's right. And so God's laws for every nation, every nation is old, owes God ultimate allegiance and we need to think biblically about these concepts. This episode of the podcast for Cultural Reformation is brought to you by the Ezra Foundations Curriculum. The Ezra Foundations Curriculum equips churches, small groups and Christian educators with a clear biblical worldview for all of life rooted in scripture and aligned with the theology of the Ezra Institute. It's designed to help participants think, Christianly, about family, education, politics, culture, and more. Each Curriculum kit includes full access to the Ezra Foundations video courses featuring Dr. Joe Boot, Pastor Nate Wright and Dr. Michael Tisen, along with 10 printed participant guides and a comprehensive leaders guide for group facilitation. One more and get started today at EzraMedia.tv slash Foundations. Now back to the show. What we want to do is we continue to talk about this ongoing conflict and certainly our ongoing mission is to help you think Christianly about what's going on in the culture here. We kind of want to make this conversation, this segment of our show. We want to talk specifically about the conflict and the US's justification for getting involved. In the first segment, we talked a little bit about Israel's defending themselves against a neighbor that is openly hostile to them. Israel doesn't need necessarily the same justification. But the question becomes why should the US get involved in this? What right does the US have to play a part in international affairs like this one? Let's talk a little bit about what justifies the US and getting involved. I'll maybe throw this over to you first, Michael, and then we'll kick it over to Joe. Michael, if one of the congregation members in your church came to you and said, shouldn't the US just stay out of this conflict? What would your response be? I'm glad you actually came to me first on this just to talk experientially. This is a conversation that my family just had. I can look at where we were sitting around a fire, just feed away where my children asked me why is the US in the right to go to war or rephrase that, however you're going to ask it, what gives Donald Trump the right to bomb another country? My kids are all as educated. They can all quote Dr. Joe Boot in or out of context depending on how we want to play with that as a family. I have to say this one was stumping the young adults that I had around my fire. It's partly because of the pressure with what we just spoke about. Joe ended off the last segment talking very specifically about the need to... See this as it is and that if nations were upholding God's law, then we wouldn't be going to war. It's actually sin that is the problem. My first answer to that is, well, Iran is in violation of God's law as a nation because it has a stated intention, as we've already talked about in previous sections, it's stated intentions are the murder and the genocide of other nations. You can talk about that generally as Christian nations or you can talk about that specifically. The United States and Israel being the larger Satan and the smaller Satan. Right there, you have a nation that is explicitly saying our hope is to murder. I think that right there then presents America with the right to defend itself. That would be one section that I would start with. If we move to the next section, there are a number of very specific treaties that Iran is in violation of. I'll pass it to Joe now to comment on the stated violation of God's law. Mike, you and I are coming from countries, actually very surprisingly for me, where the Canadian government has come out in support of this campaign. Joe is the lone one on the call here, part of a nation who is condemning the involvement of the United States. So we'll kick it over to the Brit to see whether or not he holds allegiance to its prime minister or to God's law. I hope you don't need me to answer that question. Joe gets charged as a traitor because of the podcast. First of all, the beauty of the British system is that I can be entirely opposed to my government, but in favor of my nation because the head of state is actually the king, not the prime minister. We have a lame duck prime minister right now who is a socialist who is appeasing the Islamist vote in the United Kingdom. They just, it's been all in the news this past week that the radical green party, which is a Marxist Islamist party. So it's a combination of Marxists and Islamists just one. I'm a mad combination. Sorry. It's very odd, isn't it? But it's the coalition is there. And they just won a major bi-election victory over the Labour Party. And we're seeing a lot of these Labour, the socialist constituency swinging to the radical left. And the PM is very worried about his domestic situation. So he's been sort of getting splinters in his backside by sitting on the fence on this. And steadily, he of course, he being forced off the fence by circumstance. But if you hear the debate in the House, I mean, he's roundly condemned by the conservatives and reform UK, which is the leading party in the polls in the United Kingdom. We will support the US action against Iran. So he's embarrassing. He is a national embarrassment. And actually a lot of the commentators are saying, hang on a second, like Canada and Australia are supporting this action. What on earth are you doing? The two ugly sisters are supporting what's wrong with us. Yeah. This will probably be another one of the things that the SYNC is both the Chegos surrender deal, which is something else we won't go into now. British listeners will know what I'm talking about. And we'll further sink this lame duck Prime Minister, who's the most unpopular Prime Minister possibly in the history of our country, actually. And anyway, let me move on from that. In terms of justification, the first thing that's important to say is that the world in which we now live is not as simple as the medieval world of Christendom. In the medieval world of Christendom, if there were Islamic hordes coming over the brow of the mountain, armed to the teeth, you knew you had to, they're on the border. We need a defensive, we need to pursue a defensive war. Although you do have, of course, Pope Urban the Second preaching the first crusade, which was in defense, actually, of Byzantium and Constantinople and was a in a sense of foreign war, but with Christian allies. But at least in those days, you knew that an arrow shot from an Islamic army in modern Turkey wasn't going to hit you in the arm in London or Washington. The difficulty now in the nuclear age and in the long-range ballistic missile world, which Iran was developing and it was in the process of a huge ballistic missile development program and the concern was that it was, Michael correctly talks about the small and the great Satan. So the chance of the regime of often being death to Israel, death to America, death to Britain, seeing those as their natural enemy. And so they're in, been in pursuit of the ballistic missile capability to reach even the United States. Now when you can stick nuclear weapons in the tip of these ballistic missiles, the world is very different from the days of the bow and arrow and the siege warfare of the times from when our most of our just war arguments originate at least. So when you've got countries that can launch ballistic missiles and are seeking the capability to launch them in such a fashion that they go basically under the lower edge of space, traveling at incredible speeds and with nuclear tips, then the issue of defense and preemption becomes an entirely different sort of calculus. And that of course has been an issue since the end of the Second World War. It's what the Cold War was all about. In a sense proxy wars of the Cold War were fought in places like Vietnam, then you had the Cuban missile crisis and so on. Where that in a sense that conflict went on asymmetrically in all kinds of different ways without a direct military confrontation of armies in the field, if you will. So the first thing I would say is that, and Michael alluded to it, that Iran has been in direct violation of agreements that it signed. For example, it's not incumpliant with the nuclear non-proferation treaty which it signed. There's been a lack of access for inspection to its sites. We know that it's enriched uranium well beyond the level needed for domestic nuclear power. They've got undeclared nuclear material all over the place and they've threatened repeatedly to withdraw from the treaty and they're developing long-range ballistic missiles. This standoff has been going on forever. Let's not forget President Obama and Biden sent the Iranians billions in appeasement money to try and get them to abandon their nuclear weapons program. In the false belief that this is not religious worldview issue. This is just about economics. And if you can just do enough national development, if you can just pump enough money, enough appeasement money, then they'll abandon the goal of the destruction of Israel, the destruction of the greatest Satan as well, and having nuclear weapons with which you can threaten its neighbors and everyone else. And actually, interestingly enough, it's been people like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and other Arab states that have been urging the U.S. to continue this action. That's how afraid they are of the regime in Iran. So you've got explicit violation of treaties involved. You've got the complexity of preemption because of ballistic missile capability and nuclear weapons. You've also got the fact that the America, I think the American isolation is talking about what this, this is a long way away, it's got nothing to do with us. The Middle East is strewn with U.S. bases, U.S. embassies and U.S. personnel. Iran still has all kinds of outposts of the old empire in the Middle East. And so no American interests, American people, American sovereign territory can be struck in the Middle East by the threats of the regime in Iran. There's no question about that. So there is a threat to regional security and stability as well. And as Trump alluded to in the speech we played in the first segment, Iran has been at war through its proxies with U.S. interests, U.S. civilians, U.S. military for 30 years. But there's also, I should add, some agreements that the U.S. has speaking of treaties and agreements with Israel. Now Israel is not part of NATO, but it is considered a non-NATO ally. So it's considered a strategic ally of the United States, even though it's not the part of NATO. And there is a 10 year MOU of military aid that doesn't expire until 2028 with Israel right now in terms of military support and funding. The U.S. is also authorized to have a war reserve stockpile in Israel. So the United States has a significant reserve of weapons and a war stockpile, which is classified in Israel. So if Israel were to be overrun, defeated, sunk, if you will, by its regional enemies, then that would have a major impact on U.S. national defense. And then there is a qualitative military edge agreement between Israel and the U.S., which ensures that Israel maintains the military advantage over its enemies in the region. There are all kinds of reasons for that. We don't want to get into, we've done some programs on the Israel question before, but of course, Israel is the only Western style democracy in the Middle East. Interestingly, it's the only country in the Middle East where an Arab can vote, where Christians can worship openly and freely. So there's all kinds of reasons why Israel is a valuable ally to the United States and beyond. And of course, you can look at what happened on October 7th. You can look at what happened during the efforts by the U.S. and Israeli military to destroy the nuclear facilities. You can look at what Iran has just done. I mean, talking about sort of international law, can you imagine a situation in which the Canadian government turned on one of the provinces because they were, imagine the truck of convoys were put down, not by horses and the violence of the police, which they were. But by the Canadian military, killing 30 or 40,000 people in the streets of Ottawa. That's what happened a few weeks ago in Iran. Now does the world have any kind of obligation in a context where an open and villainous sponsor of terror, the world's most prolific global sponsor of terror, massacres 30 or more than 40,000 of its own people in the street because they protested against the regime? I'm not sure that we can just turn the blind eye to that kind of behavior from a Christian standpoint. There are millions of Christians in Iran. In many respects, Iran is not a naturally Islamist nation at all. And the church was prosperous and growing prior to the current regime. So there are those kinds of other reasons as well, they're outside of the treaties specifically, including now unprovoked attacks on regional neighbours that I think from my perspective and from a biblical perspective more than justify the limited action that the US is taking. And Israel is taking not against the Iranian people who hate the regime in which they're under, but against the apparatus of the regime itself, which is held down and oppressed the people there for a very, very long time. This would be a much more difficult case if you were dealing with a nation as a whole that was hostile to the Americans and to Israel, that where it was open warfare between the two countries. But that is actually not the case. This is a very specific kind of operation that's targeted at the destruction of their military capability in the hopes that the people will now take charge of their own country if that regime can be degraded sufficiently. And that is a possible, not inevitable, but a possible byproduct of the crushing of Iran's military capability. I mean, the US is destroying its navy as we speak. And frankly, in my view, that's where the Iranian navy belongs at the bottom of the sea. As we think about this, Joe, I just sometimes I think when we think categorically and biblically, it can help us in an area where we're not thinking clearly. So what I mean by that is, you know, you alluded to a few things and you're talking about international policy and the sovereignty of nations. But if you apply that to a different sphere, right, we're still, sphere sovereignty is still one of the big overarching guiding posts of how we're thinking. If there was a neighbor who lived next to you and that neighbor had stated publicly and openly that the mission of that family was to kill your family. And then that family's father killed one of its own children who said, maybe that's not right, Dad. You know, do we think that, you know, the sovereignty of that family can be violated in some way in order to come in and save the rest of that family from that oppressive tyrannical father and to protect the family that has been explicitly threatened by that family. And when you start thinking about things in those kinds of categories, it becomes a little bit more clear. And I know that there's international politics and all that kind of stuff that play into that. But I think that's what when we think biblically and we have categories to think in, we can begin to do the difficult process of thinking through a very convoluted issue by simplifying it and applying it to a different sphere. Mike, I want to come back to you. You're the guy on the ground in the US right now. And let's not pretend that the US isn't fractured, right? We see all kinds of pro-Aranian and pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses in the US. But I want you to talk a little bit about that in terms of, let's take a few minutes at the end of this segment and try to get practical with our listeners. How would you, what kind of advice would you give to Christians on the ground in the US who are having these conversations as families around the campfire like you said or as Christians trying to be a light for the gospel on campus or pastors talking to the congregations or congregation members talking to the pastors. Let's give us some practical advice on what we hope this episode does for you. Well, as I think about applying what we've just talked about, I do have to violate one of my own very heartfelt personal convictions and that is we shouldn't mention the British too much on this podcast. But if we actually look at the British commonwealth, that has a charter and you just think of all of those words, commonwealth, the word common, agreed upon values, agreed upon aspirations, good for the common citizen, wealth, accumulating, thriving, producing, trading, all of those things. We have the example of the British commonwealth charter that is a document. Of course, that's changing over the years away from its original text. But the values and aspirations that would unite a commonwealth. And so I would encourage everybody very, very specifically. Joe said very forcefully that comment about the Iranian navy being the need for it to be defeated. We have to be very, very careful not to be seduced by secular appeals to international law. I think this is just such a common bait and a bait and switch where we can look at the British commonwealth as an example. We can look at the charter and go, that is good for member nations. That is good for member states as they come together as equal members, as they come together as a lawfulness to one another. But then there's just this little switch and the switch is, but the secularists really need to drive the agenda to the meaning of what the commonwealth is. So as Americans are debating over this, as the world is debating over this, I think a very practical application is just again, Christians. And when we're thinking about concepts of international law or a, Nate, your illustration there with the family, that sphere was so helpful. We are ruled by appeals to God's law at the international level, at the national level, at the regional level. It is his law that binds us together for commonwealth. So let's promote a clearly Christian commonwealth. Let's promote clearly Christian constitutions and clearly Christian visions of law. Amen. And so we want to thank you for tuning in today and we want to remind you as always that by him and through him and to him are all things. May Christ be glorified in our families, our churches and our nations. Amen. Amen.