Iran-Israel war
Israel’s Iran attack sparks legal debate
Israel says it struck Iran in self-defense, fearing a nuclear threat. But international law covering self-defense by states is very strict — fueling heated debate about the legality of Israel’s initial attack.
Israel launched strikes at Iran on June 13, saying they were aimed at degrading the country’s ability to make a nuclear weapon.
When it comes to discussing whether Israel’s initial attack on Iran was justified or not, the arguments on both sides are strident and emotional.
Israel broke international law by attacking another country, one side says. It’s a rogue state, bombing across borders with impunity, they claim.
But Israel has been threatened by Iran for years and Iran was on the verge of making a nuclear bomb, the other side argues. That poses an existential threat, they insist.
But which side does international law — unswayed by emotion — come down on?
Iranian leaders have been threatening Israel for years but in legal terms, the question must be whether they were making a nuclear bomb they would fire at Tel Aviv, experts say.
Senior Israeli politicians described their country’s attack on Iran on June 13 as a “preemptive, precise” attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, arguing it was self-defense because they feared a future nuclear attack by Iran.
Under international law, there are very specific rules about self-defense, for example Articles 2 and 51 of the United Nations Charter, and it’s more likely this was what’s known as a “preventive” attack.
“My impression is that the majority of legal analysts see [Israel’s attack] as a case of ‘prohibited self-defense’,” Matthias Goldmann, a law professor and international law expert at EBS University Wiesbaden, told DW.
“Because the requirements for self-defense are rather strict. They require an imminent attack that cannot be fended off in any other way. If you apply that requirement, you come to the conclusion that there was no attack imminent from Iran.”
The timing alone makes that clear, Goldmann and others argue. On June 12, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, issued a statement saying that Iran was not fully cooperating with it.
But Israel has not presented any evidence as to why they believed a nuclear threat from Iran was so close and US intelligence suggests Iran was possibly three years away from a bomb.
There have been years of threatening rhetoric between Iran and Israel but it’s deemed highly unlikely that Iran would fire a nuclear weapon at Israel later this month.
“Look back at the Cold War,” Goldmann suggested. “Both sides had nuclear weapons and relied on the principle of mutually assured destruction — where you don’t use your nuclear weapon because you know the counterstrike would be fatal. That’s why the mere fact of possessing nuclear weapons in itself cannot be considered an imminent attack.”
Israel itself already has an unspecified number of nuclear weapons but never signed the UN’s Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and does not allow international inspection.
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