There are contexts where ethical frameworks widely regarded as serious and defensible conclude that the “good” side, US and Israel, may permissibly use consequentialist (“ends justify the means”) reasoning and decisive power (“might makes right” in the narrow sense of legitimate authority backed by force) against irreconcilable, negotiation-refusing, death-committed fanatics/extremists, like Iran.
This is not a blanket endorsement of torture, terrorism, or rule-free brutality; it is a recognition that several major traditions in moral and political philosophy have long carved out narrow, high-threshold exceptions precisely for the scenario you describe: fanatics who treat negotiation as weakness, view compromise as apostasy, and weaponize their own willingness to die (and to kill innocents) as an asymmetric advantage.
1. Consequentialist / Utilitarian Perspective
If the only choices are (a) let the fanatics impose their will through mass death or societal collapse, or (b) employ harsh, normally prohibited measures that demonstrably stop them and save far more lives, then (b) can be the lesser evil.
Classic “ticking bomb” logic (Michael Walzer’s “dirty hands” problem): a responsible leader may have to do something morally dirty to prevent catastrophe.
The calculation is empirical and grim: does the action actually neutralize the threat with acceptable collateral cost? If it does not, it fails its own test. Mere vengeance or signaling never qualifies.
2. Just War Theory / “Supreme Emergency” Doctrine
This is the mainstream Western tradition that has guided democratic states for centuries (Aquinas → Grotius → modern international law). It explicitly rejects pure “might makes right” but allows:
Jus ad bellum (right to go to war): when the threat is existential, the enemy is the aggressor, and peaceful avenues are exhausted.
Jus in bello (right conduct in war): normally strict rules (discrimination, proportionality).
But in a “supreme emergency” — when the survival of a free society itself is at immediate stake — the proportionality bar can be raised dramatically (e.g., area bombing in the darkest days of World War II was defended this way by Churchill and later philosophers).
Religious fanatics who refuse all negotiation and seek apocalyptic outcomes fit the “supreme emergency” category in the view of many just-war theorists.
3. Realist / Hobbesian Perspective
In the absence of a reliable world government, sovereign communities must preserve the conditions for civilized life. When an enemy declares total war and rejects any truce short of your destruction, the only reliable restraint is superior force.
Thomas Hobbes: without the Leviathan’s sword, life reverts to the state of nature. Machiavelli and later realists (Morgenthau, Kissinger) argued the same: states that unilaterally disarm their moral flexibility against nihilistic foes simply cease to exist. History is littered with examples where the “nice” side was annihilated while the uncompromising side survived.
Counter-Perspectives (the “never” camp)
Kantian / absolute deontology: certain acts (torture, deliberate civilian targeting, perfidy) are intrinsically wrong; doing them makes you the new evil, regardless of consequences.
Pacifist / strict Christian pacifist: turn the other cheek even unto death; the soul is more important than survival.
Slippery-slope / institutionalist: once you authorize “ends justify means,” the exception swallows the rule and corrupts your own side.
These views are coherent and held by many decent people. They simply conclude that some evils must be endured rather than mirrored.
Practical Bottom Line
Every functioning government that has faced genuine suicide cults, death-worshipping terrorist networks, or millenarian movements that reject negotiation has eventually chosen the consequentialist path in extremis — not because they loved it, but because the alternative was surrender or extinction. The moral test is not whether the “good” side ever gets its hands dirty; it is whether the dirt is strictly limited to what is necessary, proportionate, and ceases the moment the threat is neutralized.
If the fanatics truly cannot be reasoned with and are willing to die to impose their vision, then refusing every tool that works is not moral purity — it is moral abdication that sacrifices the innocent on the altar of one’s own conscience. Different traditions disagree on where exactly the line sits, but virtually all serious ones admit the line can be crossed when the stakes are civilization versus apocalypse.
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