The Mirror in Tehran: America’s Hypocrisy on Iran and the Nuclear Question

Nancy O'Brien Simpson

Photo: Mehr News Agency by Мохаммадреза Аббаси, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Военные учения «Зульфикар-99»

In a recent campaign appearance, Donald Trump declared, “You can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon.” It’s a line calibrated to tap into decades of Western anxiety, one that implies American military action is not only inevitable but morally justified. But such proclamations deserve to be met with something far stronger than applause—they demand scrutiny, honesty, and a long, uncomfortable look in the mirror.

Because if nuclear capability is the enemy of peace, then it is not Iran we need to fear most—it is ourselves.

The United States possesses approximately 5,244 nuclear warheads, more than ten times the estimated number in Israel’s undeclared arsenal and infinitely more than Iran, which, according to U.S. and IAEA intelligence, has not yet produced a nuclear weapon. Despite constant media drumbeats to the contrary, Iran remains a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Israel is not. The United States is—but what does that mean when our own modernization of nuclear capabilities continues unchecked, at a projected cost of $1.5 trillion over 30 years?

Trump’s statement, though predictably hawkish, rests on a broader American illusion—that we are the keepers of peace, when in fact we are often its greatest obstacle. The U.S. has over 800 military bases across more than 100 countries. Compare that to China, which maintains just one overseas military bases, all within neighboring regions, or Russia, which manages roughly twenty. This is not a sign of global stability. It is an imperial footprint.

And that footprint is soaked in blood.

No recent adversary, including Iran, has carpet-bombed entire regions as we did in Southeast Asia. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia still carry the scars of American napalm, Agent Orange, and unexploded ordnance. Iran has not toppled democratically elected governments or invaded sovereign nations on fabricated evidence. We did, in Iraq. Iran did not assassinate foreign leaders and then laugh about it on camera, as Hillary Clinton did after Muammar Gaddafi’s death: “We came, we saw, he died.”

Nor is Iran blockading a starving people, denying them medicine and clean water. The United States, however, continues to fund Israel’s siege of Gaza, supplying the weapons and political cover for what scores of international legal scholars now call genocide. We feign shock when desperate resistance erupts, then amplify it as justification for further bombing campaigns.

And now, in 2025, the trajectory is clear. Washington is laying the rhetorical groundwork to do what it has always done—manufacture provocation, then claim retaliation. One can already predict the headlines: “U.S. Facility Targeted in Iranian Strike—Pentagon Responds.” Never mind whether the strike was real, fabricated, or invited. The result is always the same: war.

Who gave the United States the moral authority to decide which nations may or may not harness energy, build infrastructure, or defend themselves? If Iran enriches uranium, it is deemed a threat. When we do it, it is a matter of national security. If Iran funds proxies, it’s terrorism. If we fund right-wing militias and intelligence coups—“regime change”—it’s “democracy promotion.”

Let us not kid ourselves. This is not about nonproliferation. It is about hegemony. It is about doing the bidding of Israel’s far-right regime, which has successfully manipulated U.S. foreign policy for decades. It is about oil, about control, and about keeping the post–World War II imperial architecture intact at all costs.

And so, a heretical but necessary question: Who will stop America?

In a world dominated by Western economic and military supremacy, perhaps only China could. The irony is thick: that a nation accused of authoritarianism might be the only force capable of halting America’s reckless march toward perpetual war. Imagine a world where China, in response to U.S. escalation, said: “No semiconductors for you. No lithium. No rare earth minerals. No pharmaceuticals. Not until you disarm. Not until you stop bombing. Not until you stop acting like a god.”

Because if peace is incompatible with Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, as Trump insists, then surely peace is incompatible with the world’s most dangerous superpower having thousands.

Until America is held to the same standard it imposes on others, there will be no peace. There will only be the illusion of righteousness—fueled by bombs, cloaked in flags, and sold to the public in soundbites.