The hypocrisy apparently knows no bounds when the Norwegian foreign policy elite are to assess war and peace in the world.

Now that the USA and Israel have directed a massive and targeted attack against the Iranian clerical regime, the habitual critics are lining up to condemn it. Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide is, of course, on the spot with his profound concern and his admonitions about international law. The experts from the state-funded institutes compete to tell us how dangerous and unlawful it is to attack a sovereign state. They shed crocodile tears over the fact that the ayatollahs in Tehran are finally feeling the consequences of their own years-long financing of terrorism.

One can almost pinch oneself when one hears this moralising. It is the very same politicians and the same experts who applauded when Norway some years ago decided to bomb an African country back to the Stone Age. Where were Espen Barth Eide and the rest of the chorus of protest when Jens Stoltenberg sat at home in Norway and dispatched Norwegian fighter aircraft to Libya on the basis of a few text messages and swift telephone conversations with his fellow members of the Government? On that occasion, it was not a matter of defending oneself against a regime that openly threatens to annihilate other nations. It was a matter of participating in a war that transformed a well-functioning country into a lawless anarchy driven by human traffickers and warlords.

The fact is that Norwegian pilots dropped no fewer than 588 bombs over Libya. We played a decisive role in bringing down Muammar al-Gaddafi, and we left behind us a country in total chaos. At that time, it was remarkably quiet from those who today shout the loudest about principles of international law. Neither politicians nor researchers appeared to care to any significant extent about the principle of sovereignty when the bombs rained down over the capital Tripoli. On the contrary, the effort was hailed as a noble mission to save the civilian population. Today we see that the result was a gigantic catastrophe for the entire region and a direct triggering factor for the wave of migration across the Mediterranean.

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (l.) and Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide.
Photo: Jonas Been Henriksen / NTB

When Donald Trump and Israeli leaders now choose to crush the leadership of the regime that demonstrably stands behind Hamas and Hizbollah, entirely different rules suddenly apply in the Norwegian corridors of power. It is no longer a matter of protecting the civilian population from a brutal dictatorship. The Iranian regime has oppressed its own people for decades, and imprisoned and killed thousands of demonstrators. Women are beaten to death in the open street for having exposed a little hair. Nevertheless, the Norwegian foreign policy leadership manages to focus on the fact that the attack against this bestial terror regime allegedly violates the international rules of the game. The Norwegian left-wing politicians and analysts simply appear as apologists for the world’s worst terror state.

This is a double standard so thick that one can cut it with a knife. Invoking international law is evidently something one does exclusively when it suits one’s own political and ideological narrative. If one belongs within the good social-democratic fold, one may drop almost six hundred bombs over an African country without it having any consequences whatsoever for one’s legacy. But if one is called Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu and removes by force the world’s by far most dangerous terror leadership, one is immediately branded as a threat to world peace.

The Norwegian people deserve politicians who dare to call a spade a spade, and we have long since grown weary of this spectacle. We do not need to be lectured on international law by people who themselves have blood on their hands from a completely failed regime change in North Africa. That the regime in Iran is now finally facing an opponent who speaks the only language they actually understand ought in reality to be welcomed by absolutely everyone who genuinely cares about freedom and human rights. Instead, we are served an endless demonstration of political hypocrisy and cowardice.