September 07, 2026

Good morning! Today is Monday, September 7th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Emily Jashinsky examines how Christian conservatives, from Tucker Carlson to Catholic thinkers at First Things and Public Discourse, are breaking with the interventionist consensus and applying Just War criteria to Operation Epic Fury. Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf warns that Tehran's era of proportionate responses is over after U.S. strikes crippled three Iranian oil tankers, while Israeli strikes hit southern Lebanon and Gaza. Energy Secretary Chris Wright concedes a nuclear deal with Iran may have to wait for the next government, as gas prices climb to 4 dollars and 15 cents a gallon on day 191 of the war. and now for the details. We begin this morning with a look at how Christian conservatives are increasingly breaking with the interventionist consensus, particularly over the ongoing war with Iran. Tucker Carlson has repeatedly returned to the moral question of nuclear weapons, arguing on Joe Rogan's program and again this August that it is simply wrong to drop atomic bombs on people. After President Trump's Easter Sunday threat to Iran, Carlson warned that desecrating Easter was, in his words, the first step toward nuclear war. Joe Kent, a practicing Catholic, resigned as counterterrorism director with an open letter urging the president to reflect on what the United States is doing in Iran, and for whom. As Emily Jashinsky reports, this represents a significant fracture in a movement whose postwar identity was forged in the shadow of Hiroshima and the Cold War struggle against Bolshevism. Jashinsky traces how domino theory once justified interventions from Iran in 1953 to Vietnam and Central America, and how Christian thinkers including Senator Robert Taft and even Billy Graham warned against the moral costs of that posture. Today, in publications like First Things and Public Discourse, writers such as R.R. Reno and Edward Feser are applying Just War criteria to Operation Epic Fury and finding it wanting. Reno argues the strikes are likely to accomplish nothing lasting; Feser contends that preventive war falls outside the natural law tradition altogether. Jashinsky concludes that after Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Iran, Taft's warnings about global hatred and equal justice under law are finding a new audience among exhausted Christian conservatives. Turning to the war itself, now in its 191st day. Mohammad Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran's parliament, warned Sunday that Tehran's era of proportionate responses is over, promising faster, more intense, and more painful retaliation following U.S. strikes that appeared to cripple three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed to have struck several U.S.-affiliated vessels, including what it described as a successful hit on a U.S. Navy drone, though a Pentagon spokesman denied that account. Elsewhere in the region, Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon reportedly killed at least seven and wounded twenty, while a strike in Gaza left two dead, including a six-year-old girl. Here at home, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told ABC News that a nuclear agreement with Iran may never materialize, saying any deal may simply have to await the next Iranian government. As Luke Nicastro reports in TAC's daily war tracker, triple A put the national average price of gasoline at four dollars and fifteen cents per gallon. Those are today's highlights. For the full stories and more, visit theamericanconservative.com. Thank you for starting your morning with us.