When Can an Illegal War Be Morally Justified? The Iran Case

There should be no doubt that the initiation of this war by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a flagrant violation of international law, even if many of their allies have shown a willingness to gloss over the issue. Iran posed no threat to either country – not in the form of nuclear weapons, not in the form of conventional missiles, not in the form of state terrorism – either in terms of imminence or on a scale that could justify, absent U.N. Security Council approval, preventive military action as a form of self-defense. The United States and Israel acted not because of Iran’s strength but because of its relative weakness.

Bad news for the world

This attack is just the latest in a series of actions by the world’s most powerful countries, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s militarization of the South China Sea, and the U.S. takeover of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, that defy international law. The collapse of what is left of the rules-based order is bad news for the rest of the world. It requires a concerted response from capable middle powers, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney argued persuasively in his landmark speech at Davos in January.

Nevertheless, can it still be argued that, regardless of the law, the heinous crimes of Iran’s theocratic leadership justify its military destruction? The list of accusations against the regime, both at home and abroad, is long and gruesome, culminating in the killing of tens of thousands of peaceful protesting citizens earlier this year, an atrocity comparable in intensity to those committed in Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s, and more recently in Myanmar and Sudan.

The joyous celebrations on the streets of Iran and among diaspora communities following the news of the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speak for themselves. This is a war, at least initially, that a significant portion – perhaps even a majority – of Iran’s citizens welcome rather than fear.

We have experienced this sort of thing before. Perhaps the most memorable dispute over legality and legitimacy was the NATO military intervention – without UN Security Council authorization – to prevent the ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Kosovo Albanians in 1999. Most of the world considered this air campaign morally, if not legally, justified, fully motivated by a genuine concern for the protection of civilians, proportionate and effective in its implementation, and doing more good than harm.

It is a difficult task to justify war with Iran

If war with Iran is to be morally justified, then the conditions that convinced skeptics in the case of Kosovo must be met here as well. Judging from the available evidence, this seems a daunting task. As for motivation, only the most gullible observers would believe that Trump and Netanyahu were driven by a passion for human rights and democracy.

Netanyahu has always been concerned only with eliminating Iran as a security threat – real, exaggerated or imagined. Given his record on Palestinian rights, it is hard to believe that his stated desire to “create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to throw off the yoke of tyranny” is based on principles rather than realpolitik. Trump, for his part, could be motivated by a multitude of impulses: a desire to poke fun at U.S. military might, to be the center of attention, to divert attention from the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal, to gain economic advantage, or all of the above. Common decency is the least likely motive.

Wrong motives do not necessarily preclude right outcomes. But the US and Israel must demonstrate that their aggression will ultimately do more good than harm, which won’t be easy. Neither has an explicit strategy to end the war with a clear net gain in regional and global security, let alone domestic human rights and democracy.

Achieving favorable regime change through air power alone is unlikely, as NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011 showed, and ground troops have not fared much better, as in Afghanistan and Iraq. A regime overthrow could produce a successor that is more loyal to external actors but as authoritarian as Venezuela is today.

There is enormous discontent among the Iranian population, but effective organizational leadership has yet to emerge. Unless Iranian military leaders defect en masse or cracks begin to appear in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other parts of the country’s vast and brutal security apparatus, those who take to the streets could face dire consequences. Fighting to the last drop of the Iranian people’s blood is hardly a morally attractive option. But at present, it seems to be the only option offered by the US.

There is another obstacle to recognizing this war as illegal but legitimate. In the case of Kosovo, the argument was helped by the fact that the violators of the UN Charter did not regard the law they were breaking as irrelevant, but argued – quite convincingly – that they were doing so for exceptional and justifiable reasons.

The threat to international law lies not in its occasional violations – this happens in all legal systems, sometimes for the most good reasons – but in its contemptuous disregard. And that is exactly how both Trump and Netanyahu have treated it throughout their time in power. As Trump told the New York Times in January, “I don’t need international law,” arguing that the only limit on his power is “my own morality, my own reason.”

This war of choice does not meet the conditions necessary to be recognized as morally legitimate. And from what we have seen so far, Trump and Netanyahu will have an uphill battle to prove the legality of their actions.

Gareth Evans

Gareth Evans – was Australia’s Foreign Minister (1988-96), President of the International Crisis Group (2000-09) and Chancellor of the Australian National University (2010-19). He is the author of the recent book Good International Citizenship: arguments for decency(Monash University Publishing, 2022).