An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-03
============================================================

Tom Clonan (IND), University of Dublin

I do not mourn the passing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He was a man who slaughtered tens of thousands of his countrymen and hung beautiful young men and women. I think of my 21-year-old daughter and the thought of her being hung by the neck for revealing her hair. It is a disgusting regime. I do not mourn his passing. What I do mourn, however, is the passing of the international rules-based order. That is something that impacts everybody in this room, our children and our grandchildren. Trump, in case anybody has failed to notice, did not consult Congress. He sought no legal justification or cover whatsoever. He and Netanyahu launched this attack like medieval kings decapitating the king of another warring province. That is where we are now.
The UN is the only system we have to regulate international conflict. It was set up by our grandparents after the slaughter of World War II to prevent this type of international polity. Yet, when Deputy McEntee, our Minister for Defence, was asked if she felt the invasion was illegal, she was either unable or unwilling to say so. I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt and say she was unwilling because if she is unable to tell that is an illegal act, how can we trust her in the absence of a triple lock to make sensible decisions about where we send our troops?
At the moment, the Americans and Israelis have completed the suppression part of their mission. The next part, once they have full control of the airspace, will be the absolute and complete destruction of Iranian military facilities and command and control centres. We will see an escalation, and in that context our people are trapped. The French are sending an aircraft carrier. The British are sending two frigates - two destroyers - to Cyprus. What are we sending? A message to stay indoors. That is good advice, but we have no means of getting our people out and this will continue for some time. Due to the Shia concept of martyrdom, this war is not going to go as planned. It is one thing to kill a nuclear scientist; they are hard to replace. When you kill zealots and martyrs, however, there is no end of replacements. This conflict is going to spiral out and spread into places like Lebanon and other countries. We, as a neutral country, should be using our voice, as Senator O'Loughlin said, to call for a de-escalation. I know my Fianna Fáil colleagues here are very uncomfortable with the idea of abolishing the triple lock. They know that is not what the Irish people want. Last night, Dublin City Council voted by a big majority to retain the triple lock. I know my colleagues in Fine Gael ultimately favour us joining NATO.
They have been intellectually honest about that.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-03/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-03