US attempts to frame such overt act of aggression as a legitimate exercise of \u201ccollective self-defence<\/a>\u201d constitute a misrepresentation of international law. This intellectual distortion, however, is not a recent invention. It is a result of a legal playbook forged over the last decade in the crucible of the war against the group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It also carries chilling echoes of the justifications deployed to wage the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, weakening the prohibition on the use of force, creating a permissive environment for the crime of aggression<\/a> today. The same legal and political architecture has been redeployed today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The United Nations\u2019 Charter of 1945 was designed to end unilateral warfare. It established a clear and broad prohibition on the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of a state, with only one unambiguous exception: the \u201cinherent right\u201d of a state to use force in self-defence, in the strict and narrowly defined circumstance of \u201can armed attack\u201d. Force that falls outside of this exception or by a direct authorisation by the U.N. Security Council violates the Charter and constitutes a crime of aggression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Measured against this strict standard, the legal case for the Israeli strikes on Iran collapses, according to the International Commission of Jurists \u2013 which has described<\/a> Israel\u2019s use of armed force as \u201ca grave violation of the United Nations Charter and international law and a major threat to international peace and security\u201d. \u201cA State\u2019s actions only fall within the concept of self-defence (and are lawful) if the State is presently being attacked or if an attack upon it is imminent,\u201d argued on her Linkedin page the London-based international barrister Sheryn Omeri KC, who has previously worked in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). \u201cIran does not possess nuclear weapons and accordingly does not have the capability to deploy them against Israel, let alone a plan to do so imminently\u201d, she added. In a correspondence with Justice Info, she critiqued the G7 leaders\u2019 statement<\/a> on the attack affirming that \u201cIsrael has a right to defend itself\u201d. \u201cThe only State that does have a legal right to defend itself in present circumstances is Iran\u2026 Whatever the G7 may think of Iran\u2019s politics, it is a sovereign State whose sovereignty is and must be protected by international law if the international rules-based order is to retain any credibility, or rather, if the G7 countries wish to be seen to be upholding that order,\u201d Omeri said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This legal assessment is shared by other experts who have decried the hypocrisy of Western powers<\/a>. While Israel\u2019s ambassador to the UN defended Israel\u2019s actions<\/a> before the UN Security Council as a \u201cpreventative strike\u201d carried out with \u201cprecision\u201d aimed at dismantling Iran\u2019s nuclear programme, Omeri is clear: \u201c\u2018Pre-emptive strikes\u2019 do not exist in international law. Their very name suggests unlawfulness.\u201d She referred to Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s rhetoric that, \u201cfor decades the tyrants of Tehran have called for Israel\u2019s destruction,\u201d and she retorted: \u201cIf that has been the case \u2018for decades\u2019 \u2013 and it has not been acted upon by Iran \u2013 that cannot be the basis for any assertion that Iran destroying Israel is \u2018imminent.\u2019\u201d This justification, based on a potential future capability rather than a present threat, is reminiscent of the flawed intelligence and pretext for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq; a \u201cdusting off<\/a>\u201d of the fabricated weapons of mass destruction justifications, two decades ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thelegality of the strikes on Iran is further challenged by the way they were \u2013 and are, still \u2013 conducted. \u201cA State\u2019s response which may amount to self-defence at its outset will fall foul of the principle of self-defence where it becomes disproportionate to the initial threat sought to be defended,\u201d Omeri told Justice Info. The killing of Iranian nuclear scientists, an intentional targeting of civilians, is prohibited under international humanitarian law. The attacks on nuclear facilities like Natanz carry the catastrophic risk of radioactive release, a danger that has led the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)<\/a> to affirm that such attacks \u201cconstitutes\u00a0 a violation of the UN Charter\u201d, and led millions of people in Iran \u2013 and across the border, in Iraq \u2013 to fear the potential effects of any radiation leaks<\/a>. The principle of proportionality means that a state\u2019s response must be limited to what is necessary to repel an attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The intellectual origins of the \u2018existential threat\u2019 advanced by Israel and used to circumvent this high bar, can be traced to a narrow and specific ambiguity in international law, famously articulated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ)<\/a> in a\u00a01996 Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons<\/a>. In that case, the Court found that while the threat or use of nuclear weapons would \u201cgenerally be contrary\u201d to the rules of international law, it could not definitively conclude whether it would be lawful or unlawful in one very specific scenario: \u201cAn extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.\u201d This narrow carve-out has since been politically co-opted and broadened over time to justify other, conventional uses of force against any state that can be\u00a0framed\u00a0as an existential threat \u2013 providing disingenuous legal cover<\/a> for acts of aggression, for example when the US introduced a pre-emptive doctrine in its\u00a0national security strategy<\/a> of 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\t The framing of the Iran conflict reveals the hypocrisy that is at the heart of the international non-proliferation system. Dr Nada Ali, an international legal expert at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of London University, points to how while Israel \u201cis conducting itself like a rogue regime unconstrained by any legal or moral norms,\u201d the West insists that \u201cneighbouring countries remain non-nuclear\u201d. This creates a security paradox. For a state like Iran, facing a nuclear-armed adversary like Israel which is actively engaging in military strikes, pursuing its own nuclear program becomes a \u201clogical defensive strategy<\/a>\u201d rooted in the principle of deterrence. Ali contends that adhering to the non-proliferation treaty in such a context, where the system has failed to constrain other aggressive, nuclear-armed states like Israel, amounts to an abdication of the autonomy to protect oneself and its people. The entire non-proliferation system is premised on cooperation and the \u2013 broken \u2013 promise of gradual disarmament by existing nuclear powers. This imbalance, Ali suggests, ensures that any Western definition of \u201cregional peace and security amounts to the security of Israel alone\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The theory in favour of intervention may represent a profound distortion of the Charter, but its intellectual origins, and arguably the confidence with which it is now deployed against Iran, could be traced straight back to the Western intervention in Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The war against ISIS provided a testing ground for this new legal architecture. Since 2014, the US-led Global Coalition has carried out thousands of airstrikes in Syria without the consent of the Syrian government and without explicit UN Security Council authorisation. To legitimise this breach of sovereignty, coalition members relied on the nebulous \u201cunwilling or unable\u201d doctrine, justifying strikes in Syria under the \u201ccollective self-defence\u201d of Iraq and the global fight against terrorism. This approach created a \u201ctwo-tiered system\u201d of international law: one of restraint for the Global North, and another of aggressive, exception-based enforcement for the Global South. Despite evidence of indiscriminate <\/a>Global Coalition bombardments against thousands of civilians in Raqqa<\/a>, for example, no state has accepted responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recent Israeli airstrikes targeting military infrastructure in Damascus, Hama and Homs<\/a>, conducted without the consent of Syria\u2019s internationally recognised government, similarly breach principles of sovereignty and non-intervention. There too, such strikes are illegal under international law, undermine international legitimacy, fuel resentment, and weaken the global legal order. Israel\u2019s deadly attack on Iran\u2019s consulate in Damascus in April<\/a>, too, broke it. The legal arguments defending ongoing attacks on Iran and the violent, unending destruction of Gaza and its people are a chilling testament of an international order where the supreme crime of aggression is not only being committed, but is being licensed by the very powers who claim to uphold the law<\/a>, once convincingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat the UN Charter says<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The use and abuse of \u201cexistential\u201d nuclear threats<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Syria\u2019s testing ground\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A decade-long attack on international law<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/div><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t![\"Alannah](\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Alannah-Travers.jpg\")
ALANNAH TRAVERS<\/strong><\/p>\n