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By Craig Mokhiber for Mondoweiss
Once again, the U.S.-Israel Axis has launched an unnecessary, unprovoked, and deeply immoral attack against the sovereign nation of Iran.
But what is largely missing from Western corporate media coverage of the attack is that it is also an entirely unlawful, indeed criminal act.
And that the armed Iranian response, as a matter of international law, is both justified and entirely lawful.
Western media audiences are being spoon-fed the usual false narrative, framed as it is by the state perpetrators of the aggression, the war profiteers, and Zionist proxies. War is peace. Peace is a threat. Aggression is self-defense. Self-defense is aggression. The victim is the perpetrator. And the perpetrator is the victim.
On Saturday morning, Axis bombs rained down on the capital Tehran and on cities across Iran, targeting civilian and military targets alike, and leaving a massive trail of blood and destruction.
The Axis unleashed massive destruction on the country’s infrastructure, killed hundreds in the first attacks, wounded hundreds more, assassinated Iranian leaders, and killed some 150 civilians in a single strike on a school, many of them school girls aged 10-12.
In the now-familiar pattern of perfidy for which the Axis has become infamous, the U.S. feigned participation in a diplomatic process of negotiations as a smokescreen for its war preparations, before launching a treacherous blitzkrieg attack alongside its Israeli regime ally.
In fact, the attack was launched just hours after Omani mediators announced publicly that a major breakthrough had been reached whereby Iran had both affirmed that it would not pursue nuclear weapons, and, in surrender of its sovereign rights to develop peaceful nuclear energy, it would also commit to not accumulate the nuclear material that could create a weapon.
Nuclear hypocrisy
Indeed, Iran has long renounced the quest for nuclear weapons, has codified this into its national laws and directives, has ratified the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has opened itself to international inspections, and even entered into a formal agreement with the U.S. and others that would prevent them from developing nuclear weapons (the JCPOA) later abandoned not by Iran but by Donald Trump, at the insistence of his Israel proxy donors.
But, of course, all who have been paying attention know all too well that Iran was not attacked because it has nuclear weapons. Rather, it was bombed because it does not have nuclear weapons and therefore is viewed by the Axis as a defeatable target (despite its size and conventional military capabilities), and the final major domino standing against Axis hegemony and Israeli dominance in the Western Asia region.
What’s more, the hypocrisy of the Axis claims is stunning. The only party in the region that does have stockpiles of nuclear weapons (entirely undeclared and unsupervised) is the Israeli regime, which was joined in attacking Iran by another nuclear power, the U.S. (which, under Trump, has withdrawn from the INF Treaty, rejected extension of the New START Treaty, and, as noted, withdrawn from the JCPOA).
In other words, two rogue nuclear powers have sought to justify their attacks on a third state that has no nuclear weapons by invoking nuclear control and non-proliferation.
Add to this the fact that, while Iran has not initiated a war with any other country in some two centuries, the U.S. and the Israeli regime are together responsible for most of the military aggression in today’s world, with attacks in recent years on Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, Venezuela, Qatar, and Iran, as well as boats in the Mediterranean and in the Caribbean.
No other country on the planet even comes close to the violent record of the U.S. or of Israel.
At the same time, both countries are headed by violent, far-right, racist governments with records of extreme lawlessness. Both have joined together to perpetrate a genocide in Palestine. And both are headed by serial war criminals.
Indeed, Trump has attacked more countries (10) than any other President in U.S. history (not an easy record to break), demonstrating unprecedented recidivism for the crime of aggression, has murdered boat crews in the Caribbean, has attacked students and human rights defenders at home, and has unleashed violent, armed, xenophobic paramilitaries on people in U.S. cities.
For his part, Netanyahu is literally an indicted fugitive from justice, charged with crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court, and he heads a regime that has been declared to be guilty of apartheid, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Any fair assessment could only conclude that the focus on Iranian leadership and weaponry, in this context, is as absurd as it is dangerous.
The prostitution of human rights
The manifest weakness of the nuclear justification for Axis aggression against Iran has forced them to construct an alternative propaganda script to defend its aggression, one at least as absurd as the nuclear ruse.
This claim, recycled from earlier U.S. aggressions in Iraq and Libya, is that the Axis is intervening to protect the human rights of the Iranian people.
Let me say that again: The U.S. and the Israeli regime have attempted to justify their bloody attacks on the basis of human rights, a claim that would be comical if it were not so deadly.
This is not to suggest that Iran does not have human rights problems. Every country does, and Iran is no exception.
But the idea that these two rogue states, both of which have horrendous human rights records, and which have represented the principal sources of suffering across Western Asia for eight decades, are somehow motivated by concern for human rights, is preposterous.
The Israeli regime, widely recognized as one of the most brutal in modern history, has claimed that one of its motives for attacking Iran is the defense of human rights.
The same Israeli regime with a record that includes eight decades of violent colonialism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, ethno-supremacist governance, race-based mass incarceration, systematic torture and abuse, summary executions, state-sponsored pogroms, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
The same Israeli regime that is on trial for genocide in the International Court of Justice, and the leaders of which are indicted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
The same Israeli regime that for decades has murdered countless Iranians in successive assassinations, military attacks, and acts of sabotage.
The same Israeli regime that deployed spy agencies and armed groups just two months ago to hijack peaceful protests in order to carry out violent attacks and destabilize the country.
The same Israeli regime that, with its U.S. ally, murdered over a thousand Iranians in unlawful attacks just eight months ago.
And the same U.S. government that has terrorized the globe with repeated acts of violent aggression, attacked human rights defenders inside the U.S. and abroad, and sanctioned UN human rights officials and ICC judges, and prosecutors.
The same U.S. government that has used its military and intelligence agencies to violate human rights all around the globe, murdered boat crews in the Caribbean, and kidnapped the president of Venezuela.
The same U.S. government that systematically opposes the UN human rights agenda, rejects international human rights treaties, and works to obstruct international human rights mechanisms.
The same U.S. government that has persecuted minorities, migrants, dissidents, protesters, peace activists, and students at home, allied itself with the most oppressive forces in the Middle East and beyond, and has participated actively in genocide in Palestine.
And the same U.S. government that has violated the human rights of the Iranian people for more than 70 years, overthrowing the democratically elected government and installing a brutal dictator before the revolution, and later imposing crippling sanctions, carrying out sabotage, launching military attacks, destabilizing the currency, and sowing violence against civilians in an effort to overthrow the government.
The claim that the same forces that have violated human rights in Iran for decades are now killing Iranians in order to restore their human rights is an affront to the Iranian people, to the many victims of the U.S.-Israel Axis around the world, and to the very notion of human rights.
Wagging the dog
The U.S. has carried out these criminal attacks despite the fact that they are manifestly contrary to U.S. obligations under international law, contrary to U.S. domestic law, contrary to the economic, national security, diplomatic, and reputational interests of the U.S., and contrary to the wishes of the majority of the people of the U.S.
It has committed billions of dollars in military spending to carry out the aggression and has launched a war that will disrupt global energy markets in ways that will certainly negatively impact the U.S. (and global) economy.
It has jeopardized its relations with key U.S. allies in the region, who had worked hard to prevent the Axis attacks on Iran.
And it has put its soldiers at physical risk (with the first casualties of U.S. soldiers already announced), and its commanders and politicians in potential legal jeopardy for aggression and war crimes.
What could possibly explain Trump’s decision to opt for such self-inflicted wounds to U.S. interests?
The answer, in a word, is Israel.
The Israeli regime and its proxies and lobbies in the U.S. have worked for decades to achieve precisely this outcome.
The rise to power of Donald Trump, his appointment of a cadre of extreme Zionists, and his securing of hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from Israel proxies and lobbyists (and perhaps his exposure in the Epstein files) have provided the perfect opportunity for the Israeli regime to compel the U.S. to sacrifice its own interests on behalf of the regime.
And, to the joy of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, it is doing precisely this.
Whistling the old ‘regime change’ tune
The scenario that has emerged is eerily familiar, drawn as it is directly from the Iraq playbook: scream “WMDs,” shift to “human rights” when the WMD claim fails, and then, having launched your war of aggression, reveal your true hand and admit that it was all about “regime change.”
And, indeed, once the aggression on Iran had been launched, both Trump and Netanyahu publicly announced the real motives for the attack – regime change, a revelation that surprised precisely no one.
Thus, the ultimate goal of the U.S.-Israel Axis is to destroy the government of Iran and to either install a puppet regime loyal to and directed by U.S. imperialism and submissive to Israeli Zionism, or, failing that, to destabilize, crush, and balkanize Iran so that its natural resources can be commandeered by the West, and it can never challenge the hegemony of the Axis.
Their preferred candidate for puppet ruler appears to be Reza Pahlavi, the U.S.-resident son of the former, CIA-installed, Iranian dictator Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in a popular revolution in 1979.
Pahlavi has lived a privileged life in exile, supported by wealth channeled out of Iran before the revolution, by wealthy monarchists, and by U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies.
Having declared himself “Reza Shah II, the Shah of Iran” after his father’s death in 1980, Pahlavi has worked for decades, reportedly with the help of the CIA and the Mossad, to cultivate a constituency among Iranians in the diaspora, and to lobby for violent regime change in Iran.
While he has won the support of some conservative monarchists and Zionists, he is rejected by more progressive Iranian exiles, has often been referred to derisively as “the Clown Prince,” and has very little support of any kind within Iran itself.
Of course, even if the Axis were to succeed in its nefarious regime change goals, there is no guarantee that Pahlavi would actually be installed as the puppet of the Axis.
What is important to them is not who dances on the strings, but rather who pulls them. And empires and colonizers never have much difficulty in finding amoral quislings and pliant vassals to front for their projects of subjugation.
The crime of crimes
Thus, the attack on Iran by the U.S.-Israel Axis is self-evidently immoral, unwise, and indefensible. But it is also blatantly illegal.
The Axis has paraded out the usual mouthpieces of U.S. imperialism, Israeli Zionism, predatory neoconservatism, and Iranian monarchism to dust off old, discredited arguments about “preemptive war” and “anticipatory self-defense.”
This, as any international lawyer can tell you, and as I have written before, is utter nonsense.
Simply put, the unprovoked attack on Iran by the U.S.-Israel Axis is a crime under international law.
Article 51 of the UN Charter recognizes the right of self-defense only in response to an “armed attack,” or when specifically authorized by the Security Council.
Any other armed attack constitutes the crime of aggression, which was deemed “the supreme international crime,” and “the crime of crimes” by participants in the Nuremburg Tribunal.
That means that the Axis is using force against Iran unlawfully, in violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, prohibiting the threat or use of force, and, as such, is committing the crime of aggression.
In this case, as a matter of law, the right to use force (in self-defense) belongs to Iran, and decidedly not to Israel or the U.S.
Furthermore, contrary to Axis claims, international law does not allow for so-called “anticipatory self-defense” or so-called “pre-emptive strikes.” These are simply acts of aggression, as a matter of law.
Indeed, the intent of the UN Charter (a binding treaty) was to prohibit claims of self-defense unless and until an armed attack has occurred, or military force is authorized by the Security Council, neither of which applies in this case.
Even the now-defunct 19th-century customary international law idea of anticipatory self-defense, argued by some before the adoption of the UN Charter, did not go as far as the distortions asserted by the Axis and its proxies.
Before the Charter was adopted in 1945, the Caroline Test allowed anticipatory self-defense only if the threat was “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation,” clearly not the case in the Axis attacks on Iran.
As I have written before, others have tried to carve out a middle ground, claiming anticipatory action may be permissible whenever an attack is deemed “imminent.”
But this, too, is a dubious argument, since there is no hint of such an exception in modern international law. And, in any event, in the current case, no such attack was imminent, and the Axis does not even claim that it was.
And as we have seen in previous U.S. and Israeli acts of aggression against Iran, the Axis often tries to distort the idea of anticipatory self-defense even further by claiming the right to attack anybody who might someday in the future decide to attack Israel or the U.S.
Their argument, absurd on its face, is that Iran may one day develop nuclear weapons, that it may use them on Israel or the U.S. if it develops them, and that therefore the Axis has no choice but to attack Iran now.
As a matter of international law, this argument is entirely without merit.
Clearly, if that were the rule, any state could lawfully attack any other state at any time, just by claiming a potential future threat. And that would effectively annul the UN Charter and plunge the world into a state of permanent, unrelenting violence.
But even under the broadest possible arguments of anticipatory self-defense (which, again, is rejected by almost the entire discipline of public international law), the attacks on Iran would still be illegal.
This is not a hard case. (1) Iran does not have nuclear weapons, (2) there is no evidence that it is developing nuclear weapons, (3) there is no evidence that it would use those weapons against the Israeli regime even if it obtained them, (4) there was no imminent threat, and (5) the Axis powers have not exhausted peaceful means, as required by international law.
And to close the case definitively, even the actual possession of nuclear weapons by a state is not a lawful justification for an armed attack on the state. If it were, any state could lawfully launch an attack on the U.S. or the Israeli regime at any time, as both are nuclear-armed states.
In sum, the attack on Iran is a quintessential case of unlawful aggression, the supreme crime in international law, and, to make matters worse, is being perpetrated by the same Axis of countries that is currently perpetrating the other crime of crimes, genocide.
There is, however, one party to this conflict that does have a legal right to use armed force in this situation. That is Iran.
And, indeed, Iran, having been subjected to an unlawful armed attack by the U.S. and Israel, has responded in self-defense, as is its lawful right under Article 51 of the UN Charter, and has duly notified the UN Security Council accordingly.
War crimes
Beyond the crime of aggression, the Axis attacks on Iran have included a number of other grave breaches of international humanitarian law – in other words, war crimes.
As of the drafting of this article, the attacks have already killed hundreds of Iranians, many of them civilians.
Alongside military targets, the Axis has attacked civilian neighborhoods, apartment buildings, civilian infrastructure, and at least one high school and one primary school for girls.
Such acts, on their face, violate the principle of distinction and the prohibition of targeting protected persons and protected civilian infrastructure.
Axis targeting of civilian infrastructure (e.g., apartment buildings) could not pass the international humanitarian law tests of precaution, distinction, or proportionality, and is thus unlawful.
Particularly serious, as a matter of both law and humanity, is the Axis attacks (for the second time in months) on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Attacks on dangerous facilities, such as nuclear power plants and other facilities containing what the law calls “dangerous forces,” are generally prohibited in international humanitarian law. The International Atomic Energy Agency itself has affirmed that such attacks are prohibited in international law and are a violation of the UN Charter.
These facilities are protected under international law due to the potential for severe harm to the civilian population in the event of an attack. And while, in theory, there may be circumstances in which such attacks are allowed, in practice, it would be almost impossible for a warring party to meet the conditions for lawfully attacking such facilities.
The only circumstances in which it may be permitted are when (1) these facilities are directly used for military purposes (like launching attacks), and (2) there is a legitimate military objective, and (3) the attack is necessary for that objective, and (4) an effective warning is given, and (5) the military action meets the legal tests of precaution, distinction, and proportionality.
Such a standard is almost impossible to satisfy with regard to a nuclear facility, because of the risk of radiation leaks and dissemination and the potential for widespread civilian harm.
And, in the Iranian case, none of the necessary conditions exist.
International humanitarian law also prohibits any means of warfare that are intended or may be expected to cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment.
And the law of neutrality requires that parties to the conflict must not cause transborder damage to a neutral state due to the use of a weapon in a belligerent state, which would be inevitable with the release of nuclear emissions.
As such, the U.S.-Israel Axis attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities are unlawful.
An unholy alliance
The U.S.-Israel Axis has been on a violent rampage for more than two years now, leaving a trail of blood and destruction everywhere in its wake. Iran is but the latest target in what has been an orgy of aggression and genocide all too familiar in centuries past, but unprecedented in modern, post-World War II history.
Indeed, driven by the same kind of imperial, far-right, supremacist, colonial, and militarist ideology that cursed the planet with the Second World War, the Axis is determined to impose its brutal form of domination across Western Asia and beyond, and to turn back the clock to a darker chapter in our collective history.
Central to this villainous project has been the systematic dismantling of any post-war guardrails, with assaults on the United Nations, international tribunals like the ICC and ICJ, independent human rights mechanisms like the Special Rapporteur on Palestine, and on international law itself, all to ensure the absolute impunity of the Israeli regime and the U.S. empire.
They are betting that nations of the world and international institutions can either be cowed or corrupted into servile acquiescence or crushed into the dust of history. That even the brightest red lines of the modern legal order – the prohibition of aggression and of genocide – can be erased at the will of the perpetrators.
And, indeed, thus far, the leaders of far too many states and international institutions have proven them right. Free nations have fallen like dominoes. Rules of international law have crumbled. Institutions cower at the fascistic roar of the Axis. Victims and the vulnerable are left to bleed and die alone without succor or solidarity, as trepidatious leaders hide in the shadows, too terrified to challenge the onslaught.
Defeating the two-headed Orthus
But the two-headed Orthus of U.S. imperialism and Israeli Zionism has not won yet.
The Iranian people are fighting back. Resistance groups across the region are preparing to stand in solidarity. The Palestinian people are teaching the world the meaning of sumud and steadfastness. Perpetrators are being called to account in courts of law. Unions and dockworkers, and social movements across the West are standing to fight back from within the belly of the beast.
Students, human rights defenders, peace activists, and ordinary people everywhere are rising up in record numbers to resist the darkness and to stand in solidarity with those in the crosshairs of fascism and empire, even in the face of unprecedented repression.
In their millions, they are resisting, and protesting, and demonstrating, and striking, and boycotting, and divesting, and taking direct action and civil disobedience, and exposing and prosecuting perpetrators, and voting against the corrupt and complicit, and blowing away the fog of propaganda to educate their neighbors in the truth.
Their message is a lighted path out of this darkness: No to impunity. No to imperialism. No to Zionism. No to fascism. No to militarism. No to Aggression. And no to genocide.
A world without moral or legal red lines is not a livable world. But this is our fate if we do not rise to meet the moment. And the moment is now.
Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and former senior United Nations Official. He left the UN in October of 2023, penning a widely read letter that warned of genocide in Gaza, criticized the international response and called for a new approach to Palestine and Israel based on equality, human rights and international law.
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