Christopher Luxon’s Iran problem: Between Trump and the rules-based order
Wednesday, 4 March 2026
OPINION: After a vociferous debate and questioning in Parliament on Tuesday, it is clear that the debate over the US intervention in Iran has split and is heading along two separate paths.
This comes as the global fallout from the attacks — and Iran’s retaliations — has ramped up across the region and become increasingly apparent.
The first argument is about the desirability of getting rid of an evil theocratic regime, that has exported terror around the world. The second is whether that goal is worth the moral or principled cost of supporting an intervention that may fall foul of international law — however well-intentioned.
Overlaying all of that is the fact that it is US President Donald Trump who has presided over the attack - a man very unpopular in New Zealand.
Read more:
Insurance companies invoke war clause that restricts travel insurance payouts
Iran conflict hits NZ meat and seafood exports to Gulf states, more disruption expected
The basic US argument runs like this: Washington is justifying its actions as an act of self-defence. On Tuesday (NZT), US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Israel was going to attack Iran regardless, and that such a move would have prompted Iranian retaliation against US targets in the region. Hence, the US needed to act in concert with Israel to reduce that threat.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran was months away from making its nuclear programme “immune” from foreign attack, referencing the US bombing of the Fordow nuclear enrichment facility last year.
Meanwhile, Trump — who has turned out to be more hawkish and more inclined towards foreign policy adventurism than previously assumed — has deployed multiple justifications for the strikes.
Those claims will need to be tested. It appears more likely there was an opportunity to strike the regime while it was weakened, having seen its overseas proxies and allied forces in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria battered since the Hamas attacks on Israel in 2023. That assault was arguably both the high point of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ influence abroad — and potentially the beginning of the end for the regime.
From New Zealand, a long way from the action, the debate has been shaped more by abstract concerns about international law and the rules-based order — and whether any of the US justifications pass that test.
Labour and the left say they do not. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he does not yet know — that we should wait and see — and that it is not for him to demand the legal reasoning.
Increasingly, it looks as though the world is at an inflection point, where the old order of US-led rules gives way to a new order of US-led power — with some rules attached. It is not an either-or shift, and the old system has not collapsed, but it is changing fast.
All this bears on Luxon’s response, which so far has been less than adroit. Not so much the substance — that Iran is malign and that it is for the US to justify the legality of its actions — but the tone.
There are multiple ways of saying it. Even expressing that he looks forward, alongside other nations, to the US setting out its evidence would go some way to cauterising the criticism.
(On Tuesday, he walked back his comments that suggested New Zealand supported “any actions” taken against Iran. He said he should have said “action” not “any action”.)
Much of the criticism — partly sparked by Helen Clark (still possessed of exquisite political timing) and some of her former foreign policy mates denouncing the Government’s response — is around what Clark called the Government’s “servility” to Washington.
Indeed, Luxon’s response doesn’t seem especially calibrated for New Zealand, but instead designed to ensure that people in Washington and elsewhere do not think he is naïve enough to believe New Zealand’s matters enough to lecture them.
But Americans will not be voting in the upcoming election. New Zealanders will. And this is a country where standing up to the United States over nuclear policy forms part of the national mythology.
Being prime minister in a more complicated era of geo-strategic competition — where rules exist, but so do obvious adversaries — is not easy. It would test even a more rhetorically gifted leader. But seeming to try to wash his hands of having a view is neither sound diplomacy nor sound domestic politics.
Equally unconvincing was Chris Hipkins’ speech in the House arguing that military interventions always end in failure. This is not Iraq or Afghanistan. We do not yet know what it is. Unlike those conflicts, it is not yet a war of occupation, and New Zealand is not being asked to participate.
Democracy is not a commodity that can be exported by force. There is also zero clarity about how long the US–Israeli offensive will continue. But given Trump’s hucksterish luck elsewhere in his career, who would be entirely surprised if events turned out better than many expect — or than US decision-making might deserve?
The immediate issues for New Zealand will be disruption to markets and global supply chains. Iran has been attacking sites across the region — from Dubai to Oman, which had been negotiating on its behalf before the strikes commenced. An Australian base in the region was reportedly ablaze at the time of writing, and Gulf states were confronting questions about how many Iranian drone attacks they can realistically intercept.
If the conflict continues and results in sharp price rises — especially at the petrol pump — pressure will mount on the Government to adopt a more definitive view of Trump’s adventurism.