Moral Polarization in Exile: Necessary Evil and the Decoupling of Nation and State in Wartime

• In Event: Peace, War, and Social Conflict Panel Session: War

Abstract

This paper examines how members of the Iranian diaspora in the United States conceptualized “necessary evil” during the twelve-day military escalation between Iran and Israel in June 2025. Classic sociological accounts of wartime crisis often anticipate patriotic consolidation or rally effects that strengthen national unity in the face of external threat. Yet among diaspora actors positioned between homeland conflict and transnational distance, the escalation instead generated sharp moral polarization. I ask whether opposing actors shared a common definition of “evil,” differing primarily in strategic evaluation, or whether they fundamentally disagreed about the moral status of war itself.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted between September and December 2025, I analyze how participants justified their positions and located themselves within a contested moral landscape. For some, war was framed as a tragic but potentially redemptive “necessary evil,” an instrument for dismantling authoritarian rule. For others, war was morally and existentially impermissible regardless of possible political gains. These positions reflected not simply pro- and anti-war attitudes but competing moral worlds structured by divergent understandings of harm, responsibility, nationalism, and political possibility.

I show that wartime crisis became a site of boundary making through which participants differentiated the Iranian nation from the Iranian state. This decoupling enabled some actors to interpret military escalation as violence against a regime while sustaining attachment to the people, whereas others rejected such distinctions and viewed war as harm inflicted upon a shared moral community. Rather than functioning as a stable evaluative category, “necessary evil” shifted across these moral worlds, revealing how legitimacy for violence depends on socially situated definitions of political community.

By examining moral reasoning among diaspora actors during an unfolding conflict, the paper contributes to research on peace, war, and social conflict by foregrounding civilian legitimacy for violence beyond the nation-state context. The findings demonstrate how wartime crisis reorganizes boundaries of belonging and responsibility, producing polarization not only over strategy but over who constitutes the moral subject of war.

Author

• Golasa sadat Haji mirzaei, Yale University