On June 13, when Israel first launched missiles into Iran, Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza had been raging for more than 600 days. More than 56,250 Palestinians have been killed, and the number continues to rise daily. The United Nations has said that Israel, by denying Palestinians basic necessities and blocking 400 UN-backed aid sites in favor of four deadly, militarized Israel-based distribution hubs, is putting the entire population of Gaza at risk of a famine. UNICEF reports that Israel is putting thousands of children at risk of dying of thirst. We and others warned that impunity for this genocide would have reverberations outside of it, and this is what we witnessed, with outrage, when Israel and then the United States illegally bombed the sovereign state of Iran.
The attacks by Israel on Iran were by choice and therefore illegal. Under international law and for reasons hard-learned through world wars, the UN Charter prohibits the use of military force between states except in the narrowest of circumstances. There was no attack by Iran, or even the imminent threat of one, that could have justified a military response based on self-defense. While Israel has long wanted to end the nuclear program in Iran, it attacked the country because it could – because it had the backing of the United States, and because it believed it could act with impunity. Our international systems continue utterly to fail to prevent Israel’s crimes and the lack of accountability leads to further crimes.
Trump’s apparently capricious bombing of Iran was likewise an act of aggression prohibited by international law. It also violated U.S. law, as it is a basic tenet of the Constitution that the power to authorize military action lies with Congress, not the President. While Congressional authorization cannot make an illegal act of war legal, it can serve as a check on presidential power and provide military action with democratic legitimacy. Some members of Congress understand the importance of this separation of powers and have proposed further legislation to more effectively enforce it. That previous presidents have acted similarly does not absolve Trump. Nor does the avoidance of worst case scenarios vindicate his decision to drop 30,000-pound bombs on nuclear sites in a sovereign state. It does not bode well that the NATO Secretary General praised Trump’s bombings, absurdly calling him a “man of peace.” Even if the ceasefire holds and we must hope that it does, the United States’ military actions in Iran were illegal and dangerous.
While bombs have stopped falling on Iran and Israel, Palestinians in Gaza continue to face lethal, wanton violence in various forms, often from US-supplied weapons. Since beginning its US-enabled genocidal campaign in Gaza, Israel has bombed Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. Such lawless militarism is utterly predictable. When a government gets away with the very worst crime, it feels empowered to commit other crimes. For the sake of not only Palestinians in Gaza who have endured unimaginable harm over the last 20 months as the world watched, but also peace in the region, the international system and powerful governments in Europe and elsewhere must find a way to defy the United States, rein in Israel, and end the genocide against Palestinians.
