This morning, Israel launched a major military operation against Iran targeting its nuclear programme, including facilities, individual scientists and military leadership. In this post, I will provide a quick, preliminary analysis of the legality of Israel’s use of force against Iran as a matter of the jus ad bellum. As I will explain, Israel’s use of force against Iran is, on the facts as we know them, almost certainly illegal. The only justification that Israel can provide for its use of force is self-defence under Article 51 of the Charter – using force to repel an armed attack, subject to the criteria of necessity and proportionality. The first point to clarify here is that the nature and stated goals of Israel’s use of force – damaging Iran’s nuclear programme and preventing it from developing a nuclear weapon that could be used against Israel – are explicitly about deflecting a future armed attack by Iran against Israel, i.e. an attack that is yet to occur. In other words, this is not a…
Israel
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Privatizing Aid: The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Affair
Israel and its allies have introduced quite a number of legal and political configurations over the past 19 months that even the most creative Jessup moot court problem writers would not dare to imagine. One such staggering development was the announcement of a new plan to replace the United Nations (UN) agencies that were vital in the provision…
Removing Palestinians from Gaza is not a plan; it is a crime against humanity
The relocation of Palestinians from Gaza is regularly raised by Israel in the wake of the outlandish Trump’s Riviera Plan. The US President proposed in February 2025 a dystopian project to resettle Palestinians in neighboring countries and transform the enclave into a luxurious coastal resort. A month later, Israel's Security Cabinet established a new agency within…
The Universal Obligation to Arrest Netanyahu and Gallant: Ending State Officials’ Immunity Saga with respect to grave breaches of IHL
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made two trips in April without being arrested: one to Hungary and the other to the United States (US). While commentators criticized Hungary for failing to arrest Netanyahu, arguing that as a state party to the International Criminal Court (ICC), it had a duty to do so (the ICC initiated non-compliance proceedings),…
Gaza and the Collective Political Costs of Algorithmic Warfare
Since Israel started its military campaigns against Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank after the terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, both academia and the media have intensely debated the Israel Defence Force's (IDF) use of so-called artificial intelligence-enabled decision-support systems (AI-DSS) for its combat operations. Controversies have mainly revolved around the staggering number of deaths…
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