'What would be left of international legal order': Araghchi on US strikes

详细摘要

'What would be left of international legal order': Araghchi on US strikes "If states were free to attack one another based on their own assessments of possible future threats,…

"If states were free to attack one another based on their own assessments of possible future threats, what would be left of the international legal order?" Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has asked in an opinion piece for Japan's Kyodo News.

"This question," Araghchi wrote, "goes well beyond the political dispute between Iran and the United States."

"It concerns one of the fundamental principles on which the international order established after the Second World War rests: the use of force is governed by law, and no state, however powerful, is entitled to place its own judgment above binding rules of international law," the article read.

He said the US-Israeli strikes constituted a clear violation of the prohibition on the use of force and an infringement of Iran's sovereignty.

"Their legality must be assessed against the U.N. Charter and established principles of international law, not against political arguments or justifications advanced after military operations have begun," he wrote.

He said the US had neither obtained UN Security Council authorisation nor established grounds for invoking self-defence under Article 51, which permits force in response to an armed attack.

The attacks on schools, sports stadiums, civilian infrastructure, and Iranian nuclear facilities subject to International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards raise further questions under international law, and they must be examined under international humanitarian law.

文章开头，摘自Middle East Eye。如需阅读全文，请前往媒体网站。