International Law is the Number One Casualty of America’s and Israel’s Illegal War on Iran

And that has led the U.S. and Israel to believe that they can easily defeat Iran despite its significant size and military capabilities. But the hypocrisy of this claim is all the more stunning. First, it’s clearly false. And there’s no suggestion that Iran has a nuclear weapon or was developing a nuclear weapon. The only party in the region that does have nuclear weapons, entirely undeclared and unsupervised nuclear weapons, is Israel. And Israel was joined in attacking Iran by another nuclear power, the United States, which under Donald Trump has withdrawn from the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty, has rejected extension of the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction) Treaty, and as I said before, withdrew from the JCPOA. So in other words, two rogue nuclear powers have tried to justify their attacks on a third state that has no nuclear weapons by invoking nuclear control and non-proliferation. And then what I’ve written about this is the other distinction here is that you’ve got two countries that hold the world record for aggression, which is to say the United States and Israel, claiming that somehow Iran was the threat.

Iran a country that has literally not initiated a war with any other country in centuries, and the U.S. and the Israeli regime together responsible for most of the aggression in the world with attacks. You mentioned Donald Trump. Donald Trump has the distinction now of being the president in U.S. history who has attacked the most countries. No other president in U.S. history has attacked as many countries as Donald Trump—who has attacked 10 countries, just seven in his second term alone. And between them, they have attacked Palestine and Lebanon and Syria and Iraq and Yemen and Somalia and Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, Venezuela, of course, Qatar, Iran, besides attacking boats in the Caribbean and humanitarian ships and the Mediterranean. There’s no other country that even comes close to the threat that is represented by these two countries and yet with the help of a very complicit corporate media in this country, they’ve tried to basically turn reality on its head to justify their war.

And then of course, when the nuclear justification fell apart, they tried to raise human rights concerns. And this, as somebody who has spent more than 40 years in the international human rights movement, I find this deeply offensive, right? And this should be very familiar. They did this with regard to Iraq when there were no weapons of mass destruction. They tried to shift their arguments to human rights justifications. They used human rights justifications to destroy Libya, to have its leader tortured to death and to return chattel slavery to Libya, all in the name of human rights. It’s absurd to hear them now making these same claims here.

They did this first by exaggerating and fabricating claims on the number of protestors killed in the protests at the beginning of this year, which were tragic. But what they’re doing is grossly exaggerating the numbers, pulling out numbers like 30,000 or 50,000 killed by the government without any evidence and without any disaggregation to point out that many of those who were killed were on the other side— who were police, government officials, people who were loyal to the government, shopkeepers who refused to close their shops, and that the CIA and the Mossad had actually sent in armed groups of thugs to try to hijack the protest and to turn them into the violence into which they descended.

So no disaggregation of what actually happened there, just the repetition of all of these false claims. We heard Donald Trump on his plane yesterday tell reporters they’re doing this because these people cut the heads off of babies and cut women in half. Completely fabricated claims from Donald Trump and the people around him, including Pete Hegseth, who was standing next to him at the time, just nodding his head at the misrepresentations coming out of his commander-in-chief’s mouth.

The Israeli regime invoking human rights. The Israeli regime is recognized broadly as one of the most brutal regimes in modern history.This is the regime that has carried out eight decades of colonialism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid that has ethnosupremacist government, race-based mass incarceration, systematic and often legalized torture and abuse, summary executions, pogroms on the West Bank, war crimes, crimes against humanity. And of course, the universally recognized genocide that they are perpetrating in Palestine.

This is a regime that’s on trial for genocide in the International Court of Justice. It’s leaders, including Netanyahu are indicted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. It’s murdered countless Iranians. It’s excessive assassinations and military attacks and acts of sabotage. They’ve used the Mossad and armed groups to hijack those protests I talked about in the beginning of the year. They murdered over a thousand together with the U.S., over a thousand Iranians in their attacks just eight months ago in June. And of course, the U.S. itself, making human rights claims as equally absurd after the terrorism that the U.S. government has brought around the world with its violent aggression, attacking human rights defenders, by the way, inside the United States and abroad, sanctioning UN human rights officials, ICC judges and prosecutors. It’s used its military and intelligence agencies to violate human rights all around the globe.

This is the same government that was shooting those boats out of the water in the Caribbean that kidnapped the president of Venezuela. And by the way, I can tell you from having worked in the UN for many years, the same U.S. government that has systematically opposed the UN human rights agenda, rejecting most human rights treaties, trying to obstruct human rights mechanisms.

And before we even talk about what happens right here at home with the persecution of minorities and migrants and dissidents and protesters and students right here. So the idea that these two countries that have violated human rights at home, abroad, and by the way, of the Iranian people for more than 70 years overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Iran; installing the brutal dictator of the shah before the revolution; imposing sanctions, sabotage, military attacks, all of the things that they have been done to violate the human rights of the Iranian people—to now claim that they are dropping human rights bombs on the heads of the Iranian people is, I think, just a perverse representation and something that should be rejected out of hand.

And by the way, let me also say, Scott, no one’s human rights have ever been restored by bombs. The idea that these are somehow feminist bombs killing Iranian women and girls to somehow restore their human rights is just absurd on its face. And if you’re looking for reform in any country, it’s not going to come when the country is in a state of emergency that threatens the life of the nation with external aggression. Those are not the moments at which reform happens. Those are not the moments at which freedom is expanded. And so there is no one in Tel Aviv or Washington who really believes that what they’re trying to do is to advance some human rights agenda.

And of course, they’ve been attacking their own citizens in this country in similar ways as well with abuses of law, everything from getting them kicked out of university; fired from their jobs, arrested, beaten by police, detained, deported, all for the crime of telling the truth about the abuses of the Israeli regime.

And then at the same time, the Trump administration has been attacking the United Nations, withdrawing from a number of its agencies, refusing to pay the dues that it owes to the UN’s regular budget. It is the largest scofflaw in the history of the United Nations in debt for billions of dollars to the UN.

And at the same time, strong arming and threatening UN officials and UN bodies, all with this idea that he wants to replace the UN with his own dictatorial regime on the global front. Donald Trump has created this bizarre dystopian carnival that is called the Board of Peace, which he sees as an alternative to the UN. And if you read the charter of the Board of Peace, the most striking thing about it is that all decisions on all issues, including money and action and positions, all is decided by one human being, which is Donald Trump, not even as president of the United States, but as a person indefinitely.

There’s never been anything like this, even in the colonial era. You had it on a specific country basis where King Leopold basically owned the Congo, but you’ve never had someone assert global dictatorship in the way that Donald Trump has done. And they’ve played it very well because they’ve intimidated international institutions in going along. They’ve intimidated state after state so that countries around the world are on their knees and not joining together to stand up to the brutality of the U.S.-Israel access that continues on this global Irampage.

And then lastly, you see it in the actions of these two regimes, country by country. If you look at what’s happening in Iran right now, you will see that the strategy being used both by the Israeli regime and the U.S. is the so-called Dahiya Doctrine. This is a doctrine developed by Israel in the suburbs of Beirut and Lebanon, where they decided that the best way to take military action is not to respect international humanitarian law and the idea that you distinguish between combatants and non-combatants and you preserve humanitarian sites and so on.

The opposite, that the purpose is to cause maximum civilian suffering so that you bring a country to rubble effectively so that they cannot challenge the power, either of the Israeli regime or this kind of imperial U.S. intervention that’s taking place. So they’re targeting in Iran now, they’re targeting civilians, civilian infrastructure, using massive ordinance and indiscriminate weapons in very densely populated urban areas, just as we saw in Gaza, just as we see in Lebanon. These attacks have already killed now thousands of Iranians. Many more thousands have been wounded. Most of them civilians, many of them children. So some 200 children have already been killed in Iran in this very short war so far, including at least 165 schoolgirls between the ages of 7 and 12. And what it turns out was a double tap strike on a school, the so- called Minab schoolgirl massacre that now is clear was perpetrated by the United States.

And they’ve caused massive destruction of civilian infrastructure more broadly. So alongside military targets, the U.S. and Israel have both been attacking civilian neighborhoods, apartment buildings, civilian infrastructure more broadly, schools, desalination plants to deprive the public of drinkable water. They’re attacking police stations, hospitals. Police stations, by the way, are civilian targets under international humanitarian law. They’re absolutely essential, as anyone will recognize in preserving civilian life in any place during an emergency.

Attacks on legally protected energy installations, you now see that they’ve attacked these oil depots and they have blackened the sky and unleashed a toxic black rain that’s falling on the civilian population and that will cause years and maybe generations of illness. These violate the most basic rules of international humanitarian law—not as collateral damage, not as regrettable errors, but as a part of the doctrine that has long been practiced by the Israelis and has been adopted by U.S. forces as well as they join their Israeli partner in all of this.

So this is a full frontal attack on the Iranian people for purposes of regime change to try to win back what was once effectively a colony of the United States and the United Kingdom, but it is also attack on the broader region of Western Asia where Iran, half of Lebanon and half of Yemen are the only forces left in Western Asia that have stood up to Israeli aggression. And therefore they have to be removed from the perspective of the Israelis and the U.S. partners. And that’s why you see the same bombs and the same tactics being perpetrated on the Syrians, on the Palestinians, on the Lebanese, on the Yemenis and Iraqis and beyond.

And then finally, it is not just limited to Western Asia. This is a regional war to be sure, but it is also a global war in many respects. It is a message being sent to the world that the U.S.-Israel axis will not be defied, that you will bow or you will die.

And that is a frightening moment in history that is far too reminiscent of what we witnessed in the leadup to the second world war. Who will stand up when international institutions are on their knees, when much of Europe has proven to be complicit, when a lot of the global South is cowering in fear because they don’t want to be the next Venezuela, the next Iran, the next Lebanon. Who will stand up as an open question. But if something doesn’t change soon, you’re right, we are headed for a very dark future.