On the 13th of June 2025, Israel launched an unprovoked war on the Islamic government and people of Iran in contravention of international law. Israel and the West have framed it as a pre-emptive war. In International Law, a pre-emptive attack is only allowed if there is evidence of an imminent attack against you. There was no imminent attack from Iran. Iran had no plans to attack Israel. The war against Iran is simply unlawful.
In this context there was a duty on all nation states to condemn the Israeli attack as unlawful and call for an immediate end to the unlawful military action against Iran and recognize Iran’s right to self –defence. In terms of article 51 of the UN charter that authorises “lawful self-defence” Israel is not acting in self-defence. Instead, Western Governments supported this unlawful war and repeated their now familiar mantra “Israel has a right to defend itself” leaving every sane person on planet earth bewildered. Israel launched the war without any attack or military provocation from Iran and the aggressor is said to be defending itself?
Israel’s stated reason for launching the war on Iran is to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities because Iran is about to build nuclear weapons. There is no evidence to support this allegation. Even Israel’s closest ally and prime military and economic financier does not believe that Iran is building a nuclear weapon. The United States Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the Senate Intelligence Committee in March 2025 that the Intelligence Community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003”. The IAEA chief told Al Jazeera on the 18th June 2025, that there is no evidence to prove that Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
International law forbids attacks on nuclear facilities but the IAEA has failed to condemn Israel’s multiple attacks on nuclear facilities in Iran. When Russia conducted military operations against Ukraine, the IAEA chief condemned Russia and was pleading with the world to make sure that the Ukrainian nuclear facilities are not attacked but the same chief refuses to condemn Israeli attacks on multiple Iranian nuclear facilities.
UNSC Resolution 487(1981) called on Israel to urgently place all of its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards and to refrain or threaten to attack nuclear facilities. Israel and Netanyahu have always been in violation of International law, they have belligerently refused to place Israel’s nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards for more than 44 years after the resolution was passed. Israel brazenly acts with impunity because it has been given immunity by Western powers to violate every human rights law that exists. After all if you are given a Genocidal green light in Gaza for more than twenty months, what law will you not violate?
Israel has deliberately attacked the national media building in Iran where journalists were working among them the internationally acclaimed academic Muhammad Marandi. There was no condemnation from world powers. It attacked a hospital in Kermanshah, no condemnation from the West. It attacked civilian buildings in Tehran which led to many civilian deaths with no condemnation from the West. The Israeli Minister of Defence in blood curdling genocidal language threatened “Tehran will burn” but this too was received with no condemnation from the West. How does bombing Iran’s hospitals, gas fields and media houses degrade Iran’s nuclear facilities? Article 52 of Additional Protocols 1 to the Geneva Convention specifically protects civilian infrastructure but Israel is attacking Iranian civilian infrastructure every day since June 13.
This unlawful war was launched on Iran in the aftermath of the 2003 American led invasion and occupation of Iraq. According to the medical journal Lancet approximately six hundred thousand people in Iraq were killed and the war created 3.9 million Iraqi refugees. The stated reason for the war was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was about to produce nuclear weapons. The other stated reason was that the Iraqi government of Sadaam Hussein had an operational relationship with Al Qaeda and was somehow linked with the September 11th attacks on the U.S.
No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. A U.S bipartisan commission found that there was no evidence of an operational relationship between the Iraqi government and Saddam Hussein. They deliberately lied to manufacture consent for the unlawful war. They are doing the same thing today in Iran.
Benjamin Netanyahu was the prime mover behind the Iraq war and in 2002 stated that “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is wanting, and is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons”.
Netanyahu has been telling the world for the last three decades that Iran is on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon. In 1992 he told the Israeli Knesset “Within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb”
On the second day of this Iran war, Netanyahu called for regime change. Behold, his lie about the reason for the war was exposed by his own tongue, the war has nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear programme, the purpose is and always was regime change.
International law is the only law that binds all of us, immaterial of our race, religion, background, nationality, ethnicity or gender. It is the one thing that we should all strive to defend at all costs. The problem is that International Law is excellent on paper but not in its application and enforcement. It is not applied in equal measure. It is violated with impunity and war criminals are not held to account. George Bush, Tony Blair and Benjamin Netanyahu will die in the comfort of their palatial villas and not in a prison cell.
The reality is that there is no international law in the world today that protects you if you are black, brown or Muslim. You don’t even have a seat on the decision-making body of the United Nations Security Council. Your life does not matter. You are not human. You are not allowed to democratically elect your own leaders and be the owners of your national resources. Your little kid can be shot at 355 times and the killer will not be condemned. You can be deprived of food and water for months on end. After deliberately starving you, they can call you to collect bread and shoot you at the same time and then blame you for your own death. You can be bombed under tents and burnt to death. They can rape you on camera at a detention facility and let the world see it. Every one of your hospitals and schools can be bombed and they will blame you instead of the bomber. Your Genocide can be broadcast across the world and no one will intervene to stop it. Your body can rot under the rubble for twenty months and no one will provide the equipment to retrieve it. You will rot like an animal and you won’t even be a number counted among the dead. They will start the war and bomb every part of your country but will blame you for the war. A country with nuclear weapons can start a war with a country that doesn’t have nuclear weapons based on a lie that it is trying to build a nuclear weapon. They can deliberately lie about a war and kill more than six hundred thousand of you and they will not be held accountable. This is why they can use the same play book, tell the same lies and wage an unlawful war again today. They keep on doing it because they know they can get away with it but in the process, they have shred to smithereens International Law as we know it.
Iqbal Suleman
Suleman is a social justice lawyer and former head of the law clinic for Lawyers for Human Rights in Pretoria and Research Associate: Media Review Network