All Members shall refrain from the threat or use of force against territorial integrity or political independence of any other state

Will Iran be US’s Melos?
By Peter Jenkins – Asia Times – 23 August, 2012

One of the most depressing aspects of all the talk about Israel or the United States destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities (and much else besides, no doubt) is the near absence of any reference to international law. Even so distinguished an expert as Anthony Cordesman seems to take it for granted that there will be no legal impediment to the US attacking Iran if a credible threat of an attack fails to intimidate Iran into making the concessions required to pacify Israel.

In my country, Britain, on February 20, 2012, members of the House of Commons spent five hours debating whether the use of force against Iran would be “productive” without dwelling more than cursorily on the legal aspects of the question.

How is one to account for this blind spot? Are ignorance and oversight to blame, or has respect for international law gone out of fashion?

It’s hard to believe that anyone who has policy-making responsibilities that involve other states, or who takes a professional interest in such policy-making, can be unaware of what the bed-rock of the post-1945 international system has to say about war-making. The United Nations Charter was drafted to be understood by a much wider readership than international law-focused lawyers. Paragraphs 3 and 4 of Article 2 of the Charter could hardly be clearer:

3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered.

4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any other state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Read in conjunction with Article 1, which spells out the Purposes of the UN, and Articles 39 to 50, which detail how the Security Council should react to “Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace and Acts of Aggression”, these paragraphs suggest that the use of force by one state against another state is only lawful if the Security Council authorizes it.

An exception to this rule can be found in Article 51 of the Charter: the right of self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member. But this is irrelevant to the Iranian nuclear dispute at the present juncture, for reasons set out most recently by Dan Joyner.

These points are so easily understood, and so clearly central to any proposal to attack Iran for its nuclear activities, that ignorance and oversight can hardly explain their widespread absence from the public debate, or the conspicuous failure of Western politicians to inject a reminder of the legal dimension into that debate. …more