Experts say the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, which have sparked a regional war, likely violate the U.N. Charter’s prohibition on aggression and lack valid legal legitimacy.
“This is not legitimate self-defense against an armed attack by Iran, and the UN Security Council does not recognize it,” Ben Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of human rights and “counter-terrorism”, told Al Jazeera.
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“Preventive disarmament, counter-terrorism, and regime change constitute international crimes of aggression. All responsible governments should condemn this unlawful act by two countries skilled at shredding the international legal order.”
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration did not seek authorization for war from domestic lawmakers, let alone the United Nations Security Council.
And Iran had not attacked the United States or Israel before the airstrike that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, several other senior officials, and hundreds of civilians.
Yusra Suedi, assistant professor of international law at the University of Manchester, said there was reason to believe that an attack on Iran amounted to a crime of aggression.
“This was an unjustified use of force,” Suedi told Al Jazeera.
International law is the set of treaties, agreements, and widely accepted rules that govern relations between states.
Imminent threat?
The Trump administration has argued that Iran poses a threat to the United States with its missile and nuclear programs, and has called for military action.
However, the United Nations Charter prohibits unprovoked attacks on other countries.
“All Member States shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or from any other method inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations,” the founding document of the United Nations states.
Rebecca Ingber, a professor at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law and a former adviser to the U.S. State Department, said the prohibition on the use of force is a “foundational” principle of international law, with only limited exceptions.
“A state may not use force against the territorial integrity of another state, except in two limited circumstances: when authorized by the United Nations Security Council or in self-defense against armed attack,” Ingber said.
Suedi said one example where the use of force could be legal is when one country seeks to stop an imminent attack by another country.
President Trump said the purpose of the war was “to protect the American people by eliminating the imminent threat from the Iranian regime.”
But Suedi cast doubt on that claim.
“The imminence in international law is really understood to be something immediate, something overwhelming, something that leaves no choice but to be the first to act, and something that is mostly happening right now,” Suedi said.
He noted that Trump himself has repeatedly said that the U.S. attack on Iran in June 2025 “annihilated” the country’s nuclear program, and that Iran and the U.S. were in talks at the time of Saturday’s outbreak of war.
“There is actually no evidence of an imminent threat, and the attack was a pre-emptive strike,” Suedi told Al Jazeera.
“If it’s preemptive, it means you’re acting against something hypothetical, speculative and not imminent in the future, but that’s exactly what happened here. It’s illegal under international law.”
U.S. officials, including President Trump, have said Iran is building a ballistic missile arsenal to protect its nuclear program and then build a nuclear bomb.
“scatterplot” argument
Trump also said he wants “freedom” for the Iranian people, after his aides have described the regime in Tehran as brutal.
In January, Iran responded to a wave of anti-government demonstrations with a severe security crackdown. Thousands of people lost their lives to this violence.
At the time, President Trump encouraged protesters to occupy government buildings and promised “help is on the way.”
Experts say humanitarian intervention to help Iranian protesters would have required UN Security Council approval, which exceeds legal standards.
Brian Finucane, senior U.S. program adviser at the International Crisis Group, said the rationale for the U.S. airstrikes is “mixed.”
“Certainly, none of them merit serious international legal discussion.”
Beyond potentially violating the United Nations Charter, the U.S. and Israeli attacks risk violating provisions of international humanitarian law aimed at protecting civilians from war.
At least 165 people were killed in an Israeli or US attack on a girls’ school in the southern Iranian city of Minab on Saturday, local officials said.
“Civilians are already paying the price for this military escalation,” Annie Seal, US director of the Civilian Center for Conflict (CIVIC), told Al Jazeera in an email.
“We are seeing deeply disturbing reports of attacks on schools and critical civilian infrastructure in Iran and across the region, resulting in devastating casualties, including many children. These attacks risk triggering a broader regional catastrophe.”
embrace of military power
The attack on Iran is the latest example of President Trump’s reliance on U.S. military violence to advance his global agenda.
During President Trump’s second term, the United States threatened to take over Denmark’s Greenland by military force, killed at least 150 people in an operation targeting suspected drug-trafficking fishing boats in Latin America, and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a military attack that killed at least 80 people.
The legality of all these policies has been questioned at home and abroad, with UN experts saying the boat strikes amount to extrajudicial killings.
President Trump told the New York Times in January that he is driven by his own morals.
At the time, the US president said: “We don’t need international law. We’re not going to hurt people.”
In recent years, despite the Israeli military’s genocidal war in Gaza, both Democratic and Republican administrations in the United States have continued to send billions of dollars in arms to Israel, as documented by rights groups and UN experts.
Ingber, the law professor, said the unjustified use of military force contributes to a sense of impunity for powerful countries and undermines the international legal system that has sought to impose certain limits on conflicts since World War II.
“The prohibition on the use of force is overall a relatively recent innovation. This rule is being enforced through state actions and reactions and currently feels fragile,” she said. “Do we want to return to a world where states can use force as a policy tool?”
Iran itself has slammed countries across the region in response to the U.S. attacks, firing missiles and drones at military bases as well as civilian targets such as airports, hotels and energy facilities.
“In a war situation, it is clear that the rules of war apply from the moment the first attack is launched and that civilian objects and spaces are not targeted,” Suedi said.
He said Iran also appeared to be violating international law in its response.
Suedi told Al Jazeera that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza showed the “unraveling weaknesses” of international law.
The war against Iran is “the next episode in a very worrying trend,” she said.
