By Shannon Brincat and Juan Zahir Naranjo Cáceres
The joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran represent a further erosion of the international legal order. Under international law, these attacks are neither preemptive nor lawful.
Israel and the United States launched Operation Shield of Judah and Operation Epic Fury while diplomatic negotiations between Washington and Tehran were actively underway on Iran’s nuclear program.
Just two days earlier, the most intense round of US-Iran talks concluded in Geneva, with both sides agreeing to continue. US President Donald Trump indicated he would give negotiators more time. Then came the bombs.
The illegality of the attack
Israel said the strikes were “preventive”, meaning they were to prevent Iran from developing a capacity to be a threat. But preventive war has no legal basis under international law. The UN Security Council did not authorise any military action, meaning the sole lawful pathway for the use of force for self-defence was never pursued.
Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Preemptive self-defence, as we have argued previously, has extremely narrow prescriptions under the Caroline doctrine. It requires a threat to be “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means”. No such conditions existed with Iran on February 28.
Central to the current crisis is that it was Trump who ended the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, which had regional support for controlling Iran’s nuclear program. The US director of national intelligence testified in March 2025 that Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons, which the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency affirmed.
US intelligence also reportedly indicated it would take three years for Iran to build a nuclear weapon. Moreover, US and Israeli strikes on Iran last year had put the program back by months. Trump claimed Iran’s nuclear program had been obliterated.
Regime change by force is unlawful
Trump said the attacks were intended to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program and bring about regime change. Trump urged Iranians to “take over your government”, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the goal was to “remove the existential threat posed by the terrorist regime in Iran”.
Forcible regime change violates the foundational principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention under the UN Charter.
The strikes targeted Iran’s supreme leader, president, and military chief of staff, as well as military infrastructure. Deliberately targeting heads of state also crosses a threshold that distinguishes military operations from acts of aggression.
Attacking heads of state is illegal under New York Convention, for obvious reasons of stability. With the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the power vacuum will only increase the hardship on the ground for Iranians.
In addition, promises to return the shah – Iran’s previous monarch – have not considered the authoritarian implications of such rule.
Reports that an airstrike on an elementary school in Minab killed at least 100 girls aged between seven and 12 underscore the human cost of unplanned regime change.
US and Israeli statements imply that regime change is prioritised over any plans of a replacement. But just like the aftermath of the death of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi that saw slavery return to Libya, or how Islamic State filled the power vacuum after the death of dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq, regime change requires extremely careful planning.
In this case, there is no obvious plan to rebuild or stabilise Iran after these strikes. Western allies have expressed concern that Washington lacks a coherent strategy for the aftermath of the attacks, noting the minimal preparation for post-conflict reconstruction and government transition.
As Mexico’s representative stated at the UN Security Council following recent US actions in Venezuela, the historical record of regime change shows it has only “exacerbated conflicts and weakened the social and political fabric of nations”. According to The Atlantic, “complete chaos” is likely.
Diplomacy as deception
Launching strikes during active negotiations violates the principle of good faith in Article 2(2) of the UN Charter. As the Arms Control Association noted, Iranian policymakers had already accused the US of bad faith after the June 2025 strikes disrupted previously scheduled talks.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry denounced the February 28 attacks as striking during negotiations, violating international law.
World leaders’ response
We should be dismayed by the worrying acceptance of increased brazen illegality by Western leaders, including our own prime minister. Anthony Albanese has supported the strikes as “acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon”. This places Australia, once again, in open contradiction with basic principles of liberal international order.
France, Germany, and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement urging Iran to negotiate a solution, condemning Iranian retaliatory attacks. However, they did not directly comment on the US and Israeli strikes on Iran. Their silence is deafening.
Russia and China criticised the US-Israeli actions and urged an immediate end to military operations and a return to diplomatic negotiations.
The international legal order is now in free-fall. When powerful states conduct illegal wars under the guise of prevention, weaponise diplomacy as cover, and openly pursue regime change, the “rules-based order” is literally dead.
Shannon Brincat is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Juan Zahir Naranjo Cáceres is a doctoral candidate in Political Science, International Relations and Constitutional Law at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
Dick Abbott says
The UN is a useless organization, as is any international law developed by it. It does nothing, accomplishes nothing, and should be shut down.
.PaulT says
This ‘righteous war stunt’ by your man Trump and his ally Netanyahu is yet another misleading distraction led by the old fool in the White House. And it’s one which may have a major financial impact on the world’s population incldin all of us in the Americas.
How much is this vastly expensive war going to cost the United States?
What is the replenishment cost of all those munitions being thrown at Iran? The Israeli ones too because they’re supplied by the US.
What does it cost to deploy two Carrier Groups on a war footing and half the US air force? So much for deficit reduction. Just wait for the GOP fools in House and Senate to demand cuts to Medicaire, Medicaid and Social Security so we can pour more money into the sump of military spending.
The Straits of Hormuz are closed to shipping because insurers refuse to cover the risk of ships navigating near or through the Straits. As of Sunday 150 loaded oil tankers were at anchor unable to leave the Persian Gulf. Oil production in Iraq is being cut, they’ve run out of storage space. Saudi Arabia has shut down refineries and loading facilities at Ras Tanura, Qatar has stopped exports of natural gas.
Oil and natural gas prices are spiking.
20% of the world’s fertilizer, used for corn, wheat and rice crops, comes through the Straits of Hormuz. The market is tight because supplies from Ukraine have dwindled due to that war. It’s planting season in the Northern Hemisphere where without urea, yields will be diminished by up to 50%.
As a result commodity futures are spiking. Food will cost more worldwide.
Then there are the stock markets. At time of writing late Tuesday AM the Dow was down nearly 3% since today’sopening bell.
And you Mr Abbot like your MAGA peers deride the UN. decry International Law and support this ill conceived ‘War of False Pretenses’, based on fatuous claims by a proven liar. In reality a war of distraction by the leaders of the US and Israel., Both are sinking in a scummy pool of scandal, beset by negative publicopinion which swirls around them and threatens to submerge them.
Shame on all of you who have been fooled by Trump. who still believe his lies and still enable him.
Jeff B says
We spent more than 20 years in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan, with thousands of U.S. service members killed, many more wounded, and trillions of dollars spent — with complicated and costly outcomes.
Iran has a significantly larger population and deeper regional influence than Afghanistan or Iraq did at the start of those wars, which makes any escalation more serious.
The Middle East’s strategic importance has long been tied to energy and global power politics, and history shows how easily those interests can entangle nations in prolonged conflict.
I’m concerned about the people of the region, the safety of our service members, and the possibility of another long war without a clearly defined end state.
Prudence, restraint, and careful planning matter. The stakes are high enough that we cannot afford to ignore what history has already taught us.
Skibum says
The Trump-Epstein administration officials are now openly admitting that the convicted felon pedo prez is nothing more than Bibi’s lap dog, being led around on a leash by his nose ring, wagging his tail and obediently following in the shadow of Israel’s indicted prime minister. Sec state “little Marco” Rubio said to the media that the Iran attack was totally Israel’s plan.
Comrade bone spurs so needs all of his maga faithful to believe that HE orchestrated, planned and led this attack… NOT so! HE wants them to believe he is some awesome military genius… NOT so! HE repeats the lie that this was never about regime change… NOT so! Bibi has publicly stated for decades that he will stop at nothing to topple the regime in Iran, and that is and has been the strategy all along, so our own military reject idiot simply does what all lap dogs do… obey the one who holds the leash.
What a little man!
Pogo says
@Shannon Brincat and Juan Zahir Naranjo Cáceres
Thanks for the word from Tehran; give China credit for what it’s owed too. You can do it — I have faith in you.
Ed P says
The authors of today’s opinion piece are out of step with reality. To ignore the brutality of the Iranian regimes’ 46 years history is the missing puzzle piece.
Even if history is ignored, where were these two when 30,000+ protesters were slaughtered in the streets? Lawless and illegal?
Yep, they are dead right.
Pierre Tristam says
Then we should be bombing China, Russia, Belarus, the Congo, Pakistan, Afghanistan and of course Israel, all of whom have unleashed massacres, though none with the concentrated proportional atrocities opf Israel. So where are those bombings? Of course, we teamed up with Israel in Iran. Classic. And here’s the king kong of the disingenuous defending it.
JC says
Why the American Iranians are partying in the streets?
R.S. says
Wasn’t there said to have been some dancing in the street when the towers of the World Trade Center fell? I don’t believe we felt that to have been a defense of the act, did we? It’s simply the saner route to go when we follow International Law and not the whims of some person’s questionable mentality.
JC says
LOL look R.S. please tell that to the American Iranians who are partying in the streets. Are you mentality retarded with your comment?
Ed P says
Hello Pierre,
Patience, patience. There’s time. (Sarcasm)
Putting aside Trump and Netanyahu.
How did we open our borders for 4 years for the oppressed fleeing dangerous conditions yesterday, but ignore atrocities today?
You are correct, we can’t solve all the world’s problems. But starting with 90 million isn’t nothing. Also why does it matter who we picked as an ally?
Iran has openly been at war with the United States for 46 years.
Would you suggest we wait until Iran could send nukes to our neighborhoods? You of all people know the Iranian regime would use nukes if they obtain them. The Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans all know it. Otherwise the Iranians would have them. Undeniable.
It wise to listen to any zealots, especially when their Manta is unchanged for half a century.
If this was any other President would that be your position?
Finally, at the end of the conflict, is it reasonable to think the world will be a safer place for generations?
Please….
Ray W. says
Actually, EdP, you may have hit the nail directly on the head about Iran using weapons of mass destruction if only they had them. Valid point.
History informs that Saddam Hussein coveted the Iranian southwestern oil fields abutting Iraq. When the Shah’s violent and brutal regime fell, Hussein’s military attacked the perceived weakened Iran, starting a deadly war that lasted nearly nine years. Iran so valued the oil fields that the military threw waves of child soldiers, many unarmed, at the Iraqi lines. Reportedly, large numbers of Iraqi soldiers emotionally broke at killing so many children.
The Iraqis developed newer chemical weapons, using them at first only on Iranian combatants. In time, poison gas bombs were dropped indiscriminately from aircraft into Iranian cities far from the fighting.
Iran has long had a quality university system. The academic capacity to make poison gas was within their grasp. The military, it was long ago reported, approached the Ayatollah for permission to make and use such weapons.
Citing to the Quran’s section 2, chapter 190, titled “Etiquette of Fighting Enemy Combatants”, which reads: “Fight in the cause of God ‘only’ against those who wage war against you, but do not exceed the limits. God does not like transgressors”, the Ayatollah forbade development of weapons of mass destruction. Chemical weapons that indiscriminately mass-kill the innocent, in his estimate, exceeded God’s limits.
Unable to transgress God’s limits, Iran’s military never made what it had the capacity to make; it eventually sued for peace. The Ayatollah issued an oral fatwa forbidding the making of weapons of mass destruction.
When the Ayatollah died, reports at the time had it that his successor issued another oral fatwa forbidding the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, on the same ground that God does not like transgressors of limits.
In 1992, Netanyahu addressed the Knesset, claiming for the first time that Iran was only mere years away from developing a nuclear weapon. Ever since then, Iran, he has claimed, was oh so close to developing nuclear weapons. Years, months, weeks, days, the term of time he proclaimed to all who would listen, droned on for more than three decades.
Last June, American pilots “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear weapons capability. Now, Iran is “weeks” away again.
I don’t know who to trust. Maybe Iran is weeks away. Too many among us have based careers on lying to people.
All I know is that Iran, according to stories of the day, lost a war before it would allow the building of a chemical weapons capability because it’s religious leader had interpreted God’s will, as he interpreted the Quran, as forbidding such weapons.
If this is true, and I am not saying it is true, what if, arising from ashes and death, a religious hardliner emerges who interprets the Quran differently? What if the nation’s scientists and engineers have already been, or soon will be given, a green light? It’s been 47 years and Iran has never built a chemical weapon to anyone’s fact-based reporting, yet the knowledge and capability has been within its grasp the entire time.
Yes, at certain times, American leaders claim that Iran has a secret chemical weapons program, based on knowledge that Iran has imported chemical precursors that have dual uses. That very well may mean that Iran does have secret stocks of chemical weapons.
Again, in whom should one place his or her trust?
Make of this what you will.
R.S. says
We definitely should be bombing the US of A because of its holocaust of the indigenous people who owned the place before the European invaders. That holocaust had between 60 and a 100 million victims. They’d really needed to be avenged with an attached regime change to a government that is willing to pay some major reparations, and not one that just exonerated the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee of their victimizer role.
R.S. says
International law protects all sovereign nations–the ones we like as well as the ones we don’t like. And regime change is up to the people living under the regime. This war is undoubtedly illegal by international laws and agreements, which is not to say that any nitwit can indeed break these international laws–relying on his own morality ensconced between his two ears. The Trump-Putin-Netanyahu triumvirate is ringing in the next catastrophic changes for this world by exacerbating climate change, risking nuclear conflict, and definitely ending many a human life including the 100 young girls in the Iranian school.
JC says
Poster above haven’t talked with Iranians who are in America.
.PaulT says
After US and Israeli air strikes in June 2025 Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu announced that jointly they had ‘Completely Obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Then in February Trump started sabre waving threats against Iran’s remaining nuclear assets. Diplomatic talks ensued and perhaps Iran was conceding too much when in midst of the negotiations Trump and Netanyahu started the current war against Iran.
Trump’s claims about nuclear weapons developments an intercontinental missile capability have no substance, are not factual, so is this war about regime change?
If so the US and Israel’s careless use of indiscriminate force may have turn most of the Iranian people against them. The very people the claim to be ‘liberating’
Al Jazeera reports why this is:
Mass funeral for victims of US-Israeli attack on girl school brings Iran together
By Mohammed Vall
Reporting from Tehran, Iran
The story of this school is an open wound here. People are very shocked by this. Even those not on the side of the government are talking about this school tragedy.
At least 165 people, including dozens of children, were killed in the attack by either Israel or the United States.
The mass ceremony that took place was attended by so many people from all walks of life in Minab, southern Iran. The government is focusing on this story because it is extremely painful to the people here, and it has been condemned across the board.
President Pezeshkian talked about it yesterday saying there is no reason whatsoever for any country to be suffering this way, for children to be suffering this way.
He pointed out the goals of this attack by the Americans and Israelis have now revealed that it’s not just a campaign against military facilities and strategic locations, but it’s also a war on the Iranian people.
Skibum says
Yes, yet another war of unintended consequences. Some people easily forget what happened in Iraq after Desert Storm. Videos of citizens jumping up and down with glee, welcoming U.S. soldiers after Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled. Fast forward…
The “welcome” was soon worn out. Iraq citizens in mass protests against American occupation of their country, shouting “Yankee go home!” Iraq advisors to U.S. military troops under suspicion after incidents of supposed ally Iraqis targeting and killing American soldiers.
At the end, America was once again seen as the enemy by many of those who were initially shouting for joy.
All because our leaders in the WH and the republican administration at the time LIED to all of us, trying to make America believe that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and attacks on American interests were imminent. Sec. of State Colin Powel much later had to apologize to the American people for being deluded into believing that lie, and the one that falsely blamed Iraq for the loss of American lives in the World trade center plane attacks which were planned and carried out by Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist cell… not from Iraq, but from Saudi Arabia.
.PaulT says
Exactly.
Different war, different countries but the White House spewed virtually the same LIES.
BUSH:
Long range UAV’s that would target the US with chemica/biological weapons.
TRUMP:
ICBM’s that would target the US with nuclear warheads.
Where on earth is Tulsi Gabbard?
Al says
[Disallowed. Please comply with our comment policy. Thank you.–FL]
Deborah Coffey says
The whole thing is viciously disgusting and would never have happened if Donald J. Trump and Bibi Netanyahu had both been put in prison for life for their criminal behaviors.
.PaulT says
Or is it: Trump, unlike Faust doesn’t have the will to resist a lucrative offer like gaining the whole world (or a bucket of bitcoin) when it is whispered into his ear by Mephistopheles, The Devil, Epstein, Putin, Netanyay or all the emirs and princes in Arabia.
Unlike Faust Trump can’t lose his soul cos he doesn’t seem to have one, or for that matter anything resembling a conscience.
Laurel says
The Ayatollah was 86 years old, and not expected to live much longer. He made no attempt to shelter himself, so he died a martyr.
Trump didn’t realize he enter us into a religious war, that we should not be involved in.
100 little girls were not a threat to us, but their families will not forget. Trump’s plan was to make us forget about the other 1,000 little girls.
We’re in it now.
Truth Out says
I watched Trump at his press conference with the German leader. He sat in his disgustingly ornate gold-plated room telling the world that he started a war with Iran because he was sure, with no evidence whatsoever, that Iran was about to attack us first. I watched the Secretary of War, Hegseth, practically ejaculate on the podium as he “updated” us on our war against Iran. Hegseth likes wars where other people get killed and maimed. Although he did claim to have fought in two previous wars. Israel’s concept of war is to flatten countries into rubble with American made bombs. World leaders are afraid to say “NO” to little fat man lest he retaliates by imposing tariffs or whatever cruelties the lunatic decides to inflict.