Amid all the talk about the supposed crisis in Iran, I haven’t heard anyone say what the legal basis would be for an attack on Iran. Is there any? Is there an international lawyer in the house?
My guess is: No. The invasion of Iraq was the de facto implementation of the Bush administration’s preventive/pre-emptive war policy. But the neocons cooked up a legal justification, based on Iraq’s supposed violations of UN Security Council resolutions. (I personally interviewed the general counsel of the U.S. NSC about this, and listened in amazement as he spun the tale of how spurious Iraqi violations meant that the United States could invade Iraq in defiance of international law.)
Is this why the neocons are so hot to get the Iran nuclear issue to the UN? Usually they attack the UN lustily, but now they are pushing the issue there. Is it because they are seeking some vaguely worded UN resolution that they can use to invade or bomb Iran? As far as I can tell, Iran has every right in the world to develop nuclear weapons, since last time I checked it was a sovereign nation. We can be mad about it, but I don’t there is the slightest legal justification for an attack.
Of course, that doesn’t stop Bush and the denizens of Neocon World. Here’s the entire text of a UPI release today:
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- The U.S. Defense Department reportedly held simulations to determine the effectiveness of an attack on Iran, the Middle East Newsline reported Sunday
The Atlantic Monthly revealed the Pentagon held simulations of a U.S. military strike on Iranian bases and nuclear facilities. The war games also included a ground invasion.
A silly piece in the New Republic—a cover story no less—by Franklin Foer, purports to be an account of how the neocons are divided about how to deal with Iran. Maybe they haven’t settled on a specific plan yet (though the outlines are pretty clear), but Foer goes on and on about some supposed big division among them. Perhaps Foer ought to interview the neocons that run the New Republic first.
As the Times reported over the weekend, the United States (led by neocon-in-chief at the State Department John Bolton) and Europe are still at loggerheads over Iran, with the United States still trying to undermine the deal that Europe is trying to consolidate with Teheran. The article included this stunner :
U.S. officials say, however, they are suspicious of any partial deals that do not encompass an end to Iran’s support of insurgents in Iran and to groups that carry out attacks on Israeli citizens, including Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and militant factions within the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Huh? So it’s not enough to get Iran’s agreement to slow down its nuclear program, but Washington wants Iran to change its whole foreign policy and to bail out the United States’ bungled war in Iraq? Including a poison pill like this is obviously designed to scuttle an agreement.
