Schrödinger’s War, When Starting a Conflict to Stop a Conflict Becomes a Quantum Absurdity
In the annals of military and political rhetoric, few justifications for war are as audacious as the one currently being offered by the Trump administration. The United States, in coordination with Israel, has launched a sustained military campaign against Iran. Officially dubbed “Operation Epic Fury,” it has already drawn over a dozen nations into its orbit, choked off the Strait of Hormuz, sent oil prices soaring, and cost billions of dollars in military hardware. Yet, when asked about the origins of this conflagration, President Donald Trump has offered two competing, and logically incompatible, explanations. He has stated, on the one hand, that he did not start Netanyahu’s war against Iran. On the other, he has claimed that he did start a war—a “preventive” war—to stop a war before it could start.
We are, in effect, officially witnessing a Schrödinger’s war. The reference, of course, is to Erwin Schrödinger’s famous 1935 quantum mechanics thought experiment, in which a cat in a sealed box is simultaneously alive and dead, existing in a state of superposition until an observer opens the box and collapses the wave function. In Trump’s telling, the war in West Asia is both started and not started, a conflict that exists in multiple, contradictory states at once. It is a masterpiece of political obfuscation, a rhetorical sleight of hand designed to confuse, deflect, and ultimately, to absolve. But beneath the absurdity lies a dangerous reality: real lives are being lost, real cities are being bombed, and the world is being dragged into a conflict whose rationale is as murky as the quantum state of a cat.
Let us first consider the first explanation: that the Israel-US combine did not start the war. This is, on its face, a difficult proposition to sustain. The assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the decapitation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership, and the sustained bombing of Iranian nuclear and military facilities would seem, to the lay observer, to constitute the very definition of “starting” something. But in the topsy-turvy world of Trumpian logic, the first shot was not fired in 2026, or even in 2025. It was fired, perhaps, in 1457 BCE, at the Battle of Megiddo, when Pharaoh Thutmose III—no relation to current US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth—went on an expansionist spree in the Levant. Megiddo, a royal city in the Canaanite kingdom of Israel, is the etymological source of the word “Armageddon.” One can almost imagine Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a student of history, convincing Trump that the loss of Megiddo, millennia ago, demanded a belated but fitting response. The Egyptians of today not being up to the task, the Iranians would have to serve as stand-ins. It is a theory so preposterous that it circles back to a kind of genius: if you can frame your enemy as the inheritor of a 3,500-year-old grievance, then any action you take today is merely a continuation of an ancient struggle, not a new war you started.
Then there is the second, and even more confounding, explanation: the “preventive” or “inoculation” war. The argument, in essence, is that you introduce an infective material to immunize the patient against a more serious infection. You start a war to stop a war from starting. It is a medical metaphor applied to geopolitics, and it is every bit as nonsensical as it sounds. Never mind that anti-vaxxers like US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would likely be unconvinced by the logic. The idea that a massive military campaign, involving thousands of sorties, hundreds of missiles, and the loss of countless lives, can be framed as a prophylactic measure is a breathtaking act of linguistic legerdemain. It is reminiscent of the Vietnam War era, when an American officer famously explained that it became necessary to destroy a village in order to save it. The absurdity is of the same order.
Whichever way the US administration wants to play the Billy Joel song—”We Didn’t Start the Fire” versus “We Did Start the Fire But Only So That It Wouldn’t Start Burning”—the real challenge is not in the starting, but in the ending. And in this, as in all other major competitive spectacles, the world has chosen its sides. There is a quiet, and sometimes not so quiet, schadenfreude at play. Many of us, when calling a friend in Muscat or Dubai, are not just checking on their safety; we are, in a sense, checking the score. We are quietly cheering not so much for the wins of our chosen side, but for the defeats of the side we dislike. The war has become another form of entertainment, a reality show with higher stakes and real explosions.
One of the most striking features of this conflict is the sheer deluge of information—reliable and otherwise—being churned out by the 24-hour news cycle and, even more potently, by social media. Just as you finish watching a video of a former US Marine being forcibly removed from a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing for shouting, “America does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel,” your algorithm serves up a bearded MAGA enthusiast, looking like a Midwestern Jehovah’s Witness, earnestly explaining to his followers how the Bible, and especially the Book of Revelations, had prophesied this exact “war for Israel.” The Apocalypse, he seems to think, is a good thing, a necessary prelude to salvation. This cacophony of competing narratives, of fact and faith, of reasoned analysis and end-times prophecy, creates a fog of war that is as thick as any smoke on a battlefield.
If there is a complaint to be lodged, it is about the stark asymmetry in the information we receive. From the Iranian side, the imagery is largely confined to the traditional iconography of victimhood: destroyed buildings, grieving families, the aftermath of strikes caused by the “infidels.” We see the destruction, but we do not see the decision-making. We do not see the internal debates, the strategic calculations, the human faces of the leadership. This asymmetry may not be helpful for Tehran’s propaganda purposes. A purely passive narrative of victimhood, without a corresponding narrative of resilience, resistance, and agency, can become demoralizing. It can make a population feel like helpless targets rather than active participants in their own destiny.
A week into the war, and we are deep into the territory of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove. The iconic line echoes in the mind: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight here! This is the War Room!” Except in the Trumpian version, it has become, “Gentlemen, you can’t start a war here! I’ve already started it to stop you from starting it! Now, let’s talk about buying Greenland!” One can only imagine the faces of the generals in the Pentagon, trying to brief a president who operates on a different plane of reality. “Mr. President, we’ve deployed more missiles to prevent the war.” “Good. But make sure we get more interceptors to stop their missiles, otherwise people will think it’s a war. Let’s start Operation EpicPuree to get the Ukrainians to give us back the interceptors we gave them.”
We have, of course, been here before. Or, more precisely, the English novelist and futurist H.G. Wells had been here before. In 1914, as the guns of August were roaring to life, he published a book with the tragically optimistic title, The War That Will End War. The central thesis was that the conflict, which would later be known as World War I, was so horrific, so all-consuming, that it would make future large-scale conflicts impossible. Humanity would learn its lesson. The war to end all wars would, in fact, end all wars. Wells, of course, got things terribly wrong. The war did not end war; it sowed the seeds for an even more devastating global conflict two decades later. Trump, it seems, has not read the memo. Or perhaps he has, and he is determined to prove that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
Incidentally, the official reports claim that real lives are being affected by this conflict. But as the satirical tone of this analysis suggests, in the age of misinformation and propaganda, even that can be dismissed as “pure Persian propaganda.” And that, perhaps, is the most terrifying aspect of Schrödinger’s war. In a conflict that is both started and not started, where the rationale shifts with the tides, and where information is weaponized by all sides, the very concept of truth becomes a casualty. The cat in the box is not just alive and dead; its very existence has become a matter of partisan debate. And while we argue about the state of the cat, the box is on fire.
Questions and Answers
Q1: What is meant by the term “Schrödinger’s war” in the context of the US-Iran conflict?
A1: The term is a satirical reference to Erwin Schrödinger’s quantum mechanics thought experiment, where a cat is simultaneously alive and dead. It is applied here to describe President Trump’s contradictory explanations for the war: he claims both that he did not start the war and that he did start it as a “preventive” measure to stop another war. The war, in his rhetoric, exists in two mutually exclusive states at once.
Q2: What is the “Battle of Megiddo” mentioned in the article, and how is it linked to the current conflict?
A2: The Battle of Megiddo was fought in 1457 BCE between Egyptian forces under Pharaoh Thutmose III and a Canaanite coalition. The city of Megiddo is the source of the word “Armageddon.” The article uses it satirically to illustrate the absurdity of Trump’s claim that he didn’t “start” the war. It suggests that one could argue the conflict began millennia ago, and today’s actions are just a continuation, thus absolving the current administration of responsibility.
Q3: What is the concept of a “preventive” or “inoculation” war, and why is it considered illogical?
A3: The concept, as presented, argues that you start a limited war to prevent a larger, future war, similar to how a vaccine introduces a weak form of a virus to immunize against it. The article calls this illogical because it involves launching a massive military campaign—with all its death and destruction—as a supposed “prophylactic” measure. It is compared to the absurd Vietnam-era logic of “destroying a village to save it.”
Q4: What role does information and propaganda play in this conflict, according to the article?
A4: The article highlights the “deluge of information” from all sides, much of it unreliable. It contrasts viral social media content, from anti-war protesters to pro-war apocalyptic prophets, with the stark asymmetry of coverage from Iran, which mostly shows victimhood. This cacophony creates a “fog of war” where the truth is obscured, and even reports of civilian casualties can be dismissed as propaganda.
Q5: What is the significance of the reference to H.G. Wells’ book The War That Will End War?
A5: H.G. Wells’ 1914 book was tragically optimistic, arguing that the horrors of World War I would make future wars impossible. The reference serves as a historical warning. It points out that Wells’ thesis failed spectacularly, as WWI led directly to WWII. The implication is that Trump’s justification for this war, whatever it may be, is equally likely to be proven wrong, and that this conflict will not “end war” but will instead sow the seeds for future instability.
