If You Want Peace, Prepare for War

Let’s be honest: Peace comes at a price.

Not with speeches or wishful thinking, but with courage, clarity, and sometimes even pain. In a world where pacifism is often confused with weakness, it’s important to remember that peace doesn’t just happen—it’s built, and often in the heart of the storm.

Today, the Middle East is once again on fire. Borders are shifting, alliances are changing, rhetoric is growing sharper. And in the middle of all this noise, we must keep our eyes open and our minds steady.

As Sunnis, it only makes sense that we should feel closer to Israel than to the Islamic Republic of Iran. That may sound shocking to some, but it’s a truth we need to face. While the Israeli state remains within its territorial bounds, Tehran operates from the shadows, infiltrating, manipulating and imposing its Shiite vision across the region.

Iran is no longer preaching; it’s acting. It finances militias, fuels division, and fans the flames of conflict from Gaza to Beirut, from Sanaa to Damascus. The method is always the same: weaken states from within to dominate them from without—all under the guise of resistance and justice, which no one buys anymore.

Worse still, Iran has no issue working with radical Sunni groups when it serves its own ends. Ideology takes a back seat to ambition. Hypocrisy is the only constant. Behind its eternal anti-Israel slogans lies a much colder goal: to rise as an untouchable power on the ashes of Arab sovereignties.

In Morocco, we were never fooled. Back in 2009, we cut diplomatic ties with Tehran over an unacceptable campaign of Shiite proselytism. Then in 2018, the truth became undeniable: Iran, through Hezbollah, was providing military support to the Polisario Front. In other words, a foreign regime was actively undermining our territorial integrity.

That’s not interference; that’s aggression.

And while Iran keeps chanting revolutionary slogans, peoples are falling apart. Yemen is in ruins, Syria bled dry, Lebanon paralyzed, Iraq in pieces. Even the Palestinians, whom Tehran claims to defend, have become pawns in a game that was never theirs.

So no, I’m not outraged by Israel’s decision to go to war against Iran, and I am not here for symbolic outrage. I deal in facts, consequences and reality, and after years of indirect assaults, Israel has simply chosen to name the enemy and confront it.

Because yes, Iran has tried to reach us too.

It has worked to erode our foundations, to spread its influence through political actors cloaked in religion. The PJD, and Al Adl Wal Ihssane, in varying degrees, have followed the logic of transnational political Islam, an ideology that ignores borders, denies national allegiance, and answers to faraway centers of power. So this is no longer about parties; it’s about a system, a network, a global threat.

And when Israel strikes Iran, it doesn’t just retaliate. It exposes a paper giant, it reveals the cracks, the bluff, and a regime that crumbles when faced head-on.

I send a heartfelt thought to the Moroccan Jewish community in Israel. They carry within them a deep and quiet bond between our shared history and what lies ahead. They are a living testimony to a connection that no regime, no ideology can erase. Their loyalty to Morocco, even from afar, calls on us to stand tall, consistent and dignified.

So, yes: To hell with the Iranian regime that lies, divides and destabilizes;  and yes to peace, real peace, earned and protected. God knows how much the world needs it.

Note: Morocco is a country that champions peace and the values of coexistence. The Islamist movement does not represent the State, nor the people, and in fact, it was sanctioned by the Moroccan electorate during the 2021 elections, where it was relegated to where it truly belongs: the bottom of the political scene. Its popularity has been in freefall for years, and as such, its press releases are nothing more than personal exercises, empty of substance, devoid of legitimacy, and entirely inconsequential.

Dr. Loubna El Joud is a Moroccan activist and a professor of Language and Communication. She’s a member of MENA2050, A Middle Eastern and Northern African organization dedicated to promoting regional development and cooperation.