Attack on Iran echoes Russia's invasion of Ukraine

IT WAS BEYOND disconcerting to hear the Iranian foreign minister on Sunday sounding like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy circa 2022.

- JILL LAWRENCE GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

A PLUME of smoke rises over the city after an explosion in Iran's capital on Monday as the U.S. and Israel continued bombing.

(MAJID SAEEDI Getty Images)

But that's the comparison that instantly sprang to mind when Abbas Araghchi told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week": "What the United States is doing is an act of aggression. What we are doing is the act of self-defense. There are huge differences between these two.All you have to do is substitute Russia for the United States and it is all too clear who and what we have become. An aggressor nation that kills people on Caribbean fishing boats without evidence or due process. That captures and removes the Venezuelan president, then lays claim to Venezuela's oil. That assassinates Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sparking retaliatory attacks by Iran across the Middle East.

There are, of course, differences. When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and started the war that's still raging, he targeted the democratically elected leader of a sovereign nation, with the intent of seizing territory and installing a Russian puppet at the top. By contrast, President Trump took out a theocratic dictator who in January told his security forces to crush mass protests against him with lethal force, leading to thousands of deaths.

And yet. Trump started this war with no constitutional authority.