Church and Faith Leaders can play a vital role in preventing the Trump Administration from further attacks on Iran, including the possible use of Massive Ordinance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) and tactical nuclear weapons, by calling on followers of Jesus to refuse to wage war and make, finance, or use nuclear and other deadly weapons.
There has been widespread condemnation of the immoral and illegal US and Israeli war against Iran by religious, faith, political, human rights leaders and many others, and urgent calls for peace. However, immediate conscientious action, including calling on soldiers to refuse to participate in this war in any capacity, is needed now to end the war and avert a catastrophe in light of the Trump Administration’s intent to wage new devastating military attacks either before or after the election.
On October 16, 2026, news reports cited Trump Administration plans involving the possible use of a Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB, in Iran. President Trump set a precedent for using the MOAB, also known as the “mother of all bombs,” when it was used in 2017 to attack an Islamic State cave complex in Afghanistan. The bomb is the largest U.S. non-nuclear weapon, weighing upwards of 30,000 pounds at a cost of $170,000 per unit. Plans to use such a weapon must be unequivocally condemned by church, faith and political leaders.
Pronouncements by President Trump to obliterate Iran and destroy an entire civilization last April, as well as to annihilate Iran during his recent speech to the UN General Assembly, implies the very real danger of the use of nuclear weapons. Continuing to wage this war and make such genocidal threats is a colossal sin and crime against humanity in violation of international law.
The danger of US tactical nuclear weapons being used against Iran is very real. In his first term, the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review included planning for limited nuclear war by developing low-yield nuclear weapons to counter an adversary’s limited use of nuclear weapons in any conflict. According to a recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, if the United States chooses to go nuclear in Iran, the Pentagon’s solution would likely be an earth-penetrating warhead like the B61-11 or the newly deployed B61-12. Any such “limited” use of nuclear weapons is a fallacy. If the US were to ever use tactical nuclear weapons in Iran, it could lead to an all-out nuclear war.
It’s important to note that the US government refuses to adopt a “no first-use” nuclear policy, declaring it reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in the case of conflict. Therefore, a US president could unilaterally order a nuclear attack at any time. According to peace advocate and author Joseph Gerson, the US has prepared or threatened to use nuclear weapons against adversaries an estimated 30 times to bolster its aims. During the first Trump Administration, threats to use nuclear weapons were made against North Korea and Iran.
The prospect of artificial intelligence being integrated into nuclear command-and-control systems–or such systems being hacked–further increases the risk of nuclear war.
Recently, an AI related calamity almost occurred. On September 18, 2026, CNN reported that last Spring, US armed personnel were ready to board a Chinese vessel in the Middle East and military aircraft were already in the air, supporting a mission to intercept a ship that an intelligence report said was carrying components of a nuclear weapons program. That report was entirely false.
Eighty-one years have passed since the US committed the unspeakable nuclear atrocities in Japan that ushered in the Nuclear Age, a crime still unrepented for. The US has become a leading nuclear superpower and practices a double standard by calling on other nations to disarm while, at the same time, it refuses to disarm and instead is rapidly expanding its own arsenal. The US government is now continuing a several decades long process to modernize its nuclear arsenal at a cost of nearly $1 trillion. Instead of funding vital human needs programs and protect the environment, this exorbitant expenditure (along with the $1.5 trillion 2027 military budget) constitutes a direct theft from the poor!
In 2017, for the first time ever, a pope condemned the very possession of nuclear weapons as immoral. In 2020, Pope Francis reiterated, “The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral, as I already said two years ago.”
Despite these pronouncements, the US, along with the eight other nuclear nations, refuse to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which now deems nuclear weapons illegal under international law. Seventy-five nations have ratified the TPNW.
Pope Leo XIV decried the new nuclear arms race and lack of support for the TPNW in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, writing: “[D]étente and disarmament negotiations [have] been left behind, and the evolution of nuclear arsenals — including the prospect of its “tactical” use — makes the use of such weapons seem less improbable. In this context, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons . . risks remaining largely symbolic since the major nuclear powers have not agreed to it. . . This has also contributed to a new arms race, which is hard to control and accompanied by the gradual dismantling of nuclear reduction agreements, as well as the development of “miniaturized” weapons, that make their use seem like a more viable option.” MH ¶ 194
At the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for ICAN, Setsuko Thurlow, a Hiroshima survivor (Hibakusha) declared: “The development of nuclear weapons signifies not a country’s elevation to greatness, but its descent to the darkest depths of depravity. These weapons are not a necessary evil; they are the ultimate evil.”
Drawing on the example and statements of the Hibakusha, faith and church leaders, and different denominations’ organizations, and NGOs who have condemned nuclear weapons, bold moral leadership calling for the abolition of war and nuclear weapons and for Gospel Nonviolence is needed more than ever! What is required at this crucial time is for people of faith and conscience to totally repudiate the evil of war and nuclear weapons.
As nuclear weapons are immoral and illegal, faith and church leaders must provide moral guidance to all followers of Jesus to renounce all complicity in the nuclear sin. Specifically, this would mean that no follower of Jesus should be involved in making, financing, threatening to use and using nuclear weapons. It would also mean that any Christian in the chain of military command to use nuclear weapons must refuse orders to use them if ordered to do so. There are legal provisions in the US military code for soldiers to refuse illegal orders. Also, the GI Rights hotline would be an important resource for soldiers to utilize. Those engaged in such acts of refusal need to know they will be supported by their respective church.
There are two courageous examples of people who refused orders to use nuclear weapons that are instructive for us today.
On October 27, 1962, off the coast of Cuba, the US Navy was attacking the nuclear torpedo equipped Soviet submarine B-59 with depth charges. The submarine captain and the political officer believed war had begun and prepared to launch a nuclear torpedo against United States Navy ships. However, launch authorization required the agreement of all three senior officers. Vasily Arkhipov, who was serving as chief of staff of a Soviet flotilla refused, and his decision prevented the use of nuclear weapons.
In his book Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift, Pope Leo recounts the conscientious action of Stanislav Petrov. “It was September 26, 1983. The radars of the bunker near Moscow, where Petrov was on duty, signaled the launch of multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles from the United States toward the Soviet Union. However, it was an error of the Soviet satellite detection system. Petrov disobeyed orders and chose not to signal the presumed attack. It was a decision that was made with the conscience of someone who knew that that simple gesture could have caused millions of deaths. A world in which machines, albeit sophisticated and faster than us, are the ones to decide to bomb defenseless people would be truly frightening. The conscience of a single person can be worth the entire world.”
Furthermore, church and faith leaders should demand that the US government and other nuclear nations ratify the TPNW. And they should support the coalition of nations, civil society organizations and international institutions who are holding the upcoming Review Conference of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the UN from November 30-December 4, 2026, to review progress on the treaty and renew an appeal to nuclear nations to ratify it.
In addition to the above, church and faith leaders can also take the following steps:
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Call for the conversion of all nuclear weapons industries to non-military production. (see Statement of the Holy See Statement on Disarmament “Strengthening the Role of the UN in the Field of Disarmament,” submitted to the UN on May 7, 1976. STATEMENT OF THE HOLY SEE ON DISARMAMENT — The SisyphIn 1972, Pope Paul VI stated: “How can it be admitted that there is no way of finding work for hundreds of thousands of workers other than setting them to making instruments of death?” For information on how military spending creates the fewest jobs per dollar of any major sector of government spending see: https://www.warcosts.org/
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Call on those involved in nuclear weapons related work to quit their jobs. In 1981, Bishop Leroy Matthiesen told Catholics in his diocese who worked at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Amarillo, Texas: “In the name of the God of peace, quit your jobs.” In making this appeal, he said he would try to offer financial assistance to any defense worker who would quit.
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Follow the example of and support a new partnership of US, Japanese, and South Korean bishops calling for nuclear abolition. In 2025 they declared: “On the solemn occasion of the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II, Catholic bishops from the United States, Japan, and South Korea have come together in Hiroshima to call for a world free of nuclear weapons. Representing the Partnership for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons, the bishops joined with atomic bomb survivor organizations to honor the memory of those who perished, to stand in solidarity with survivors, and to urge the global community to reject the possession, use, and threat of nuclear arms.”
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Read and promote the landmark pastoral letter on nuclear disarmament issued in January 2022 by Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico and recipient of the 2026 Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace award: “Living in the Light of Christ’s Peace-A Conversation Towards Nuclear Disarmament.” This pastoral letter is an invaluable contribution to encouraging Catholics and Christians to work for total nuclear disarmament.
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Support Catholic Theologians and Educators who in their letter to U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as they prepare for their Fall Assembly November 16-19 appealed to the USCCB to speak with still greater clarity, urgency, and unity against further warfare in Iran and to offer a compelling public witness to the nonviolence of the Gospels and ways of just peace.
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Followers of the nonviolent Jesus, who commands us to love and never to kill, cannot allow war, nuclear weapons and death-dealing technologies to ever be normalized. We must reject Christian nationalism and any theology that justifies killing, war, nuclear weapons, genocide and omnicide. We need to adopt nonviolent practices, as many are doing today, as a primary means to respond to conflict, to resist systemic racism, violence, injustice and authoritarianism, and advocate for nonviolent civilian defense as an alternative to militarized-based national security.
If further attacks are to be averted in Iran and the nuclear peril eradicated, religious leaders from all churches and faith leaders must now call for these and other necessary actions to be taken. These efforts would go a long way to help create the climate necessary to bring about and end to the Iran war and nuclear disarmament.
Pope Francis declared, “Before the danger of self-destruction, may humanity understand that the moment has come to abolish war, to erase it from human history before it erases human history.” Pope Leo reminds us as Christians of what is essential to our faith: “War is never worthy of humanity, and it is never blessed by God… “…We cannot believe in Jesus and promote war. We cannot believe in Jesus and kill the innocent….
All followers of Jesus have a crucial role to play in helping to abolish war, eliminate the nuclear threat and bring about a disarmed world. For with God, and people acting on their faith convictions, all things are possible. Now is the time for decisive action!
