International law and the Iran war

“One State should not feel it has the right to change the political system of another,” Tony Blair declared in his often quoted April 1999 speech in Chicago.  He was reflecting in the context of three months of bombing Serbia by NATO starting in response to mass murders of Muslim men and boys in Kosovo by President Milosevic’s forces.  His  assertion that “The most pressing foreign policy problem we face is to identify the circumstances in which we should get involved in other people’s conflicts” is no less relevant today.

Fast forward to this January and Trump’s take on foreign policy.   “I don’t need international law”, Trump told the world.  His “own morality”, his “own mind” was all that he needed to formulate foreign policy.  Trump’s mind and morality do not inspire confidence.

An extraordinary social video came out of the White House last week, a mix of actual “strike footage” from Iran, illustrating the promised “death and destruction all day long”, alongside clips from Top Gun, Spiderman and (perhaps a nod at Trump’s Scottish ancestry) Braveheart.  Entitled Justice the American Way, its moral depravity is striking. Just as Archbishop Blaise Cupich of Chicago wrote in response, it depicted a “real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game”: an “American way” which ignores the very existence of international law and the values it attempts to preserve.   Pete Hegseth, self-styled US Secretary of State for War, a man responsible for the largest military force in the world, both approved it and appeared in it.  Archbishop Cupich’s is a refreshingly clear voice of condemnation, with his focus on the victims of war.

But law to be effective must be enforceable.  And international law and international institutions, if they are to make a difference, need an international community with shared values.    

After the Second World War the Catholic Church, with its worldwide  membership, supported the creation of the UN and its institutions, which were intended to protect and develop the principles of international law. They were pioneered by the League of Nations Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), whose prime purpose was to reduce and eliminate causes and justifications for states going to war ever again.

Prominent Catholic statesmen made a significant  contribution to the creation in 1952 of the European Iron and Steel Community, which by 1993 had evolved into the European Union, as defined by the Maastricht Treaty.  The EU and its predecessors have produced, embodied in various institutions,  a unique  body of supra-national law, its consequential judicial proceedings notably taken up within the courts of its member states.

The authority of the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ), set up in 1945, which adjudicates on disputes between states, is weakened by the need for states’ consent to being a party to a dispute in the court, and after adjudication the lack of enforcement procedures. In this sense the court’s power remains more of a moral than a decisive operational constraint. South Africa’s filing a complaint at the very end of 2023, called a “Memorial”,  garnering support for their application under the genocide convention from other countries against Israel’s conduct in Gaza, was an almost unique event.

From 1993 to 2017,  the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia did try men accused of grave offenses against international law committed in the Balkans’ wars.  Similarly the International Tribunal for Rwanda from 1994 to 2015 tried individuals for genocidal crimes.  The International Criminal Court was set up in 2002.   But the USA, Russia and China refused to play any part and rejected the authority of this judicial body.  Trump’s administration openly tries to undermine it with sanctions.

It is in the International Criminal Court (ICC), with its 125 member States (including the UK) that the most serious offences, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are tried and individuals convicted and punished. Warrants for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallanz (Israel’s former Defence Minister) and Mohammed Deif (a Hamas commander) were issued in November 2024.

Abandoning international law, with all its weaknesses, solves nothing.  Nor does “Might is Right” aggressive war.  There is not going to be any reconciliation between the barbaric regime in Iran and today’s American government.  At best, there will be some kind of transactional agreement after thousands are killed by persistent heavy bombing, but the repression will probably continue in less draconian form.  At worst there may be civil war.

No reasonable person in a democracy would willingly endorse or tolerate lawlessness within their own nation-state, so why is lawlessness between states once more acceptable, or becomes the pretext for war?  If law and moral principles underpin a successful economy and a harmonious society, why should we consider them superfluous to the conduct of international relations?  If there were shared values and no national rivalries for power and dominance, if humanity overcame its failings and all became virtuous citizens, we might be able to do without laws, national and international.   But for the time being, our attempt to formulate and enforce just laws is as good as it gets.  Yet, the Vatican apart, leaders are balancing speaking clearly in defence of international law against avoiding alienating Trump, who punishes those who resist him.

In his Chicago speech, delivered in a very different world, but only 27 years ago, Tony Blair set five conditions for getting involved in other people’s conflicts.  Does the case for intervention hold water? Have all diplomatic options been exhausted? Can military operations be sensibly and prudently undertaken?  Are we prepared for the long haul?  Are our national interests involved?   His own failure to apply these criteria to the Iraq invasion was a tragedy.  Keeping close to America, sharing in military interventions, had overridden all other considerations.

Everyone should feel deep compassion for the protesting citizens of Iran, massacred in their thousands by their own government.  But Sir Tony Blair, who has argued Britain should immediately have supported Trump’s attack on Iran, should re-read his own conditions for intervention and apply them.

Britain rightly refused to enter another aggressive war on Trump’s coattails.  The former Labour Prime Minister still believes he was right about intervention in Iraq.  But he should not be providing a pretext for bullying a present-day Labour Prime Minister, especially one who is a distinguished human rights lawyer with wide international experience and who has concluded that attacking Iran was not legal.

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