A pre-emptive Israeli or U.S. strike on Iran would breach international law and damage any international peacemaking process, one of the world’s leading international legal experts has said.
Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, L. Michael Hager, co-founder and former director general of the International Development Law Organization in Rome, Italy, said that the world “can’t tolerate a preemptive Israeli attack on Iran.
“Under the UN Charter, neither Israel nor the US would have a legal right to preemptively launch a military attack on Iran. Do we want a world in which leaders are free to launch military attacks on other countries simply on an assumption of hostile intent and military capacity?” he asked.
“What is now at stake is not only a threat of a major war in a volatile region, but more importantly for the long run, the future of the international peacemaking process itself.”
Mr Hager pointed out that in response to the “horrors of World War II, countries sought to build an international order that would ensure and maintain international peace and security.”
He said that the United Nations Charter stated that all members shall refrain from “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
At the same time, the Charter recognized as an exception the right of self-defense. Article 51 provides:
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
Under the strict wording of the Charter, neither Israel nor the United States would have a legal right to preemptively launch a military strike on Iran, Mr Hager continued.
“Moreover, if the US were to participate in such an attack without the approval of Congress, the president would violate US law as well as the UN Charter, which by treaty became part of US law.
“Because international law is mostly defined by international practice, the so-called “Bush Doctrine” of preemptive attack has seriously compromised Article 51. Nothing in the UN Charter would justify a preemptive strike, yet George W. Bush proceeded with the 2003 “shock and awe” strikes on Iraq, based on faulty intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Recall Colin Powell’s speech to the UN on February 5, 2003 in which he insisted that Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction, and implied that weapons capacity alone was enough to justify a preemptive strike. In the wake of 9/11, the Iraq war planners simply disregarded Article 51 as outmoded.
No wonder that Israeli planners think they have a legal carte blanche to bomb the Iranians, even if their rationale for attack rests only on an assumption that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb capacity and does intend to use it against Israel.
“It is time for President Obama to say “No” to the Israelis – no more military aid (now amounting to more than $3 billion a year) if they launch a military strike on Iran.”
