On June 11, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations offered the world a lesson in peace. Vasily Nebenzya, Moscow’s permanent representative, warned that those who seek to send Iran “back to the Stone Age,” or to destroy Hezbollah and Hamas, “are not helping peace.” The remarks were carried, approvingly, by the Iranian state news agency Tasnim, under the headline “Russia strongly opposes destructive US and Israeli actions against Iran.”

I read it in the original Persian, in the feed of Iranian state channels I monitor daily, and I had to sit with the sentence for a moment. Here was the representative of a government that has spent more than four years waging the largest war in Europe since 1945, a war that has flattened cities and killed tens of thousands, presenting itself as the conscience of the Middle East. The arsonist, hose in hand, gravely lecturing the neighbors about fire safety.

Set aside, for a moment, the bottomless hypocrisy of the messenger. Look at what the message actually defends. Nebenzya’s objection was not to violence in the abstract. It was specifically........

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