Forty Years in the Desert

One month ago, a new account on Substack published an essay which argues that Libertarianism justifies the present conflict between the United States and Iran. Normally some ramblings on Substack would be unnoteworthy, but Walter Block co-authored this screed. This caught my attention since Dr. Block – as a prominent economist and Libertarian theorist – should know better.

The essay’s argument is straightforward; Iran’s government is illegitimate because it oppresses the populace, which prevents the citizens from enjoying the freedoms they deserve. This illegitimacy entitles the USA and its ally Israel to usurp the regime or otherwise coerce it to respect the citizenry’s freedoms since no other entity (like the United Nations) can accomplish this. The essay is misguided on multiple levels, as the disproportionate negative commentary indicates (7 likes to 23 dislikes at time of writing). Much of the negative feedback assails the authors’ post hoc rationalization of the conflict through theoretical Libertarianism. However, the essay engenders another type of criticism which engages the polemic in practical terms, whilst also scrutinizing the authors’ motives for writing it.

Dr. Block and newcomer James Delmore marshal scant yet undisputed facts to corroborate their position. They recount the conflict’s outbreak in June 2025 when the USA and Israel targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities, then “pursued the broader removal of the regime.” They assert that the regime has “spent decades… forcing 90 million people to live under an oppressive, murderous government,” and that the people “have no peaceful means of removing their oppressors, no free elections, no independent courts, and no protected right of dissent.” The essay cites the protests which rocked Iran in January 2026, during which the regime reportedly killed 30,000 demonstrators who were demanding civil liberties, after which the international community tendered “condemnation without consequence.”

Thus far, the facts as stated are uncontested, yet the discerning reader is left unfazed asking, “And?”

There are many countries around the world with oppressive regimes, as judged by popular unrest which the governments have harshly quelled. Countries such as Thailand, Bolivia, Sri Lanka and Guatemala have in recent memory experienced widespread protests which elicited harsh governmental crackdowns. Whilst the plight of these countries’ disenfranchised peoples inspires sympathy – no less than that felt for Iranians suffering under their regime – no one argues that the U.S. military has any mandate or obligation to topple those governments and install ones more agreeable. This prompts the question of what distinguishes Iran from other countries with oppressive regimes?

The answer, of course, is Iran’s proximity and relationship to Israel. The essay’s co-author Delmore is commendably transparent in his Substack bio to specify that he is “pro-Israel,” so concern for that country is what motivates the professed desire to intervene in Iran over all the world’s other oppressive regimes. Installment in Iran of a regime which is kinder to its populace is equated to a regime which would be a friendlier regional neighbor to Israel. That could well be the case, but it is also conceivable that a new regime is installed, and though the citizenry has more freedoms, the country continues its lamentable antagonism of Israel. Conversely, regime-change in Iran could install a government which restricts Iranians’ freedoms even more than presently, yet which maintains a favorable relationship with Israel. (suggested at time stamp 16:03) At that point, philosophical consistency would require Delmore to denounce that new regime, despite its amity to Israel.

Merging concern for Israel with that of regimes oppressive to their own populace, the essay woefully overlooks the plight of Palestinians within Israel. Palestinians within Israel live in legal limbo whereby they are subject to Israeli sovereignty yet not quite recognized as Israeli subjects. The Israeli regime’s treatment of Palestinians depends in part on where they are, for Palestinians on the West Bank enjoy greater freedoms than their brethren confined to Gaza. The regime restricts their freedom of movement, access to supplies, freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, and freedom from interference with realty. (¶ 3-6) Palestinians who reside in Jerusalem occupy still another tier along the continuum of civic freedom in Israel. Nevertheless, the plain fact is that the Palestinians – like Iranians under their regime – have “no peaceful means of removing their oppressors, no free elections, no independent courts, and no protected right of dissent.” Their legal status is precarious and steadily worsening. Whatever de jure “protections” Palestinians currently enjoy under Israeli law, under the de facto regime, all it takes is one bad encounter with Daniella Weiss’ Hilltop Youth to deprive a Palestinian of everything, including his own life.

This neatly segues into Dr. Walter Block’s possible motives for co-authoring the essay. As previously stated, Dr. Block was a luminary within the Libertarian intelligentsia, teaching Austrian economics for years in association with the Mises Institute based in Auburn, Alabama. Following Hamas’ attack on Israel of October 7th, 2023, which killed 1,300 Israelis and kidnapped 251, the event’s trauma changed him. Abandoning Libertarian skepticism of the claims of any and all government, Dr. Block has argued that the Israeli government should do anything which in its own view makes Israel safer, no matter whom that harms. In fact, Block has stated outright that anyone harmed during Israel’s endless pursuit of security was not harmed by Israel but rather by Hamas for having spurred Israel into action. Such apostasy has resulted in his self-described “exile” from polite Libertarian society, with none other than Dr. Hans Hermann-Hoppe publishing on February 1st, 2024, a scathing article to formalize Block’s disassociation from the Mises Institute.

The subject essay exhibits Block’s extremist mentality in its section about casualties. The authors dismiss as acceptably low the casualties arising from the current conflict between the USA and Iran, including the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in the city of Minab on February 28th, 2026, which murdered 170 civilians, mostly the young students. Neither the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) nor the U.S. military has claimed responsibility for the bombing, yet strong evidence points to a U.S. tomahawk missile as the ordnance at fault. Yet the authors impute any resultant casualties to Iran, for “ultimate responsibility lies with the murderous Iranian regime for acting in a manner that justified the U.S. and Israeli incursions in the first place.” That “acting in a manner” is the Iranian regime’s oppression of its populace. The irony here, apparently lost on the authors, is that the Israeli regime’s oppression of Palestinians (particularly those in Gaza) has been Iran’s justification for supporting Hamas and previously, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

Where It Falls Apart

However, the essay’s logic fails by its appeal to Libertarianism, for the essay absolves the military of any blame for harming bystanders in a conflict. Whilst the IDF and U.S. military are, as the essay correctly acknowledges, “constrained by wanting to limit civilian casualties,” it is equally true that expansionism drives both organizations, historically and currently. If an Iranian official – as a valid target for neutralization – lives in a high-rise situated on realty which the U.S. military desires, Block and Delmore hand the military carte blanche remorselessly to raze the whole populated high-rise when he is at home. No true Libertarian could be comfortable broadly exempting government and its agencies from the same moral constraints imposed on private actors. As an ironic aside, the essay extols the IDF and U.S. military’s “modern precision weapons, guided by artificial intelligence,” when reports abound that the ordnance which obliterated the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Hormozgan province utilized A.I. based on outdated maps (that is, a human operator in real-time may have prevented the airstrike based on ground observations).

Engaging the essay as a polemic on its own terms, advocacy of this conflict is short-sighted, both prospectively and retrospectively. The peroration emphasizes that “none of our points argues for military intervention as a general principle… We instead pose an argument for this particular intervention, in these circumstances, against this regime, at this moment.” Prospectively, it becomes practically impossible to limit future resort to the precedent which this latest intervention may establish, especially if the intervention succeeds.

If the U.S. military’s intervention in Iran (which the War Department dubs Epic Fury) succeeds as handily as did its Operation Absolute Resolve in January 2026 to extract Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, then summarily government will add it to the toolkit and the zeitgeist will be forever altered towards the expectation that might always makes right. After smart-bombing Iran into submission, American taxpayers will be extorted to rebuild the extensive civilian infrastructure which Epic Fury demolishes, just as they forked over $20.9 billion to rebuild Iraq after Operation Iraqi Freedom had blitzed that country. Finally, given that the intervention in Iran influenced U.S. Selective Service in March 2026 to automate the registration of American males for conscription, it is paradoxical that Americans will fight for Iranian freedom when we’re now a step short of slavery!

Retrospectively, this intervention’s approval disregards the fact that war-hawks in the USA have long wanted to topple Iran. President George W. Bush in 2002 lumped Iran into his infamous “Axis of Evil” alongside North Korea and Iraq, which destined Iran for regime-change. A young man like James Delmore will not remember or be unaware of this, but Dr. Block knows better. Firsthand he remembers how government insisted the U.S. military would find “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq despite Iraqi denials, only for no WMDs to materialize. Block now writes of Iran that “a nuclear-armed Islamist regime is anathema to libertarians,” yet after much blood and treasure are spilt on this intervention, we may discover that Iranian assertions about its nuclear program’s purely civilian applications proved correct. And for the record, on March 3rd, 2026, neo-con U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) tweeted that “Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years”… and this stooge’s malapropism of imminent proves the point about the danger which unprovoked Iran directly poses to the USA.

Forty Years in the Desert

The Old Testament recounts the inspirational story of Moses leading the Hebrews out of their captivity in Egypt. Advanced in age and worn down by tribulations, Moses relinquishes leadership to Joshua, who must guide the Hebrews to the Promised Land of flowing milk and honey. Yet G-d condemns the Hebrews to wander the desert for forty years, such that only those born free and faithful will reach the Promised Land.

Fervently it is hoped that the enmity between Israel and Iran can be reversed. Reconciliation will not come easily, and like the Hebrews’ sojourn in the desert, it may take at least two generations before reasonable entente can be reached. Yet certain actions will urge the two nations down that path, whilst others will drive them towards further conflict.

A stand-alone essay could be written on the bilateral actions necessary to channel Israel and Iran towards reconciliation, but a humble realization can be offered now against my esteemed colleagues’ interventionist proposal: friendship never comes at the point of a bayonet.