“Jesus, the King of Peace, who rejects war and whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage wars, but rejects them, saying: even if you multiply your prayers, I will not hear you, because your hands are full of blood.”

This is what the Pope said on Palm Sunday, not as a passing sermon, but as a late moral warning to a world on the verge of losing what remains of its sanity. His words were not merely a call for peace, but an objection to the dangerous blending of God with fire, of prayer with bombardment, of the altar with the operations room.

What gave this message its exceptional weight is that it came from the first American pope. The issue here is not a personal biography or a historical first, but a deeply sensitive symbolism: that a reminder about the ethics of power should come from a man who belongs, geographically and culturally, to a country that still sees itself as the center of global decision making. It is as if America, even as it speaks to the world in its hard language, has finally found within itself a voice quietly pushing back against it. The point is, he was not the only one.

While the Pope was stripping war of its moral cover, the American street was expressing in its own louder and clearer way that something profound is no longer acceptable at this moment. This is why the recent No Kings protests were not just another passing demonstration, nor the first wave of opposition to the climate of centralized power during the presidency of Donald Trump. This time they appeared more intense, more widespread, and more closely tied to the very question of war itself. Most striking of all, they emerged from states that have supported the president.

The scene was not limited to chants and the number of protesters, which exceeded eight million people. What gave this wave its symbolism was that it began in Minnesota as its main center, rather than in Washington or New York. This is not an organizational detail, but a charged political signal. In recent weeks, Minnesota has become more than just an angry state; it has turned into an early mirror of the broader American tension: between the federal state and the street, between executive power and society, between the language of security and the logic of excess that often accompanies it.

More importantly, these protests were not only against the president, but against the absurdity of the war strategy into which the country has been drawn. Here, the American paradox becomes starkly clear: analysts within the United States do not see the absurdity of the war only in its cost or its risks, but in the fact that it began before it was even defined. From the outset, there was no real clarity about what Washington wanted from this confrontation.

Is the goal to end the nuclear program? To deter Iran? To weaken the regime? Or to move toward toppling it? The president’s statements have affirmed and denied all of these at different times, revealing a flaw in the very definition of the war itself. States may enter battles under the pressure of the moment, but they cannot sustain them for long if they do not know, with precision, what they want to remain after the strike.

The most dangerous aspect of the absence of strategy is that it creates a terrifying gap between the strike and the outcome, between what force can destroy and what politics fails to rebuild afterward.

Moreover, a war with Iran is not a file that can be handled with the mindset of strike first and decide later. Iran is not an isolated island in a vacuum, but a tightly bound knot within a highly sensitive network.

The Gulf is affected in terms of security and the economy, Israel is affected militarily and strategically, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon are affected on the ground, global energy markets tremble, Russia and China watch how American power is being managed, and Europe fears a new security and economic explosion on the edge of its fragile world.

This is why the Pope’s words may not be as distant from the street as they seem. Between the church pulpit and the chants of protesters, there is one clear thread: the world can no longer endure a war without a moral compass, and America can no longer sustain a war without reason.

If the presidency in Washington still insists on addressing fire in the same language with which it ignited it, then perhaps the time has come to say, with a calm befitting the gravity of the moment:

Mr. President, it is not enough to know how to start a war. What matters more is knowing why it was started, and where you intend to take the world afterward. Strategy is not a luxury in wars; it is the minimum requirement of sound judgment before igniting them.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar